through January 31st

2008 Subscription


Get every single thing we publish next calendar year delivered to your doorstep for

$100 (30% off the regular price)

details here


Your subscription includes:

*16 chapbooks (including work by Daniela Olszewska, Melissa Severin, Julia Drescher, Melissa Crowe, Anne Heide, Miriam Pirone/Edward Smallfield, Kristi Maxwell, Leigh Stein, Kim Young, Danielle Vogel, Claire Hero, Melissa Culbertson, Heather Green, Kim Gek Lin Short, Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis/Caleb Adler, and Julia Cohen.) )

*1 full-length book : Dear American Love Child, Yours, The Beautiful Undead / Robyn Art & Robin Barcus (November 2008)

*2 special limited edition projects, including billet-doux (February, 2008) and another TBA.

Plus other various goodies, occasional broadsides, and our endless adoration...





After January, the price will go back up to it's original $150, still a steal, but not quite so much of one...so get yours while the getting is good...

brief update from dial-up hell

I am being ridiculously lazy the last couple of days, watching movies and sleeping til 1pm. I brought nothing to Rockford poetry-wise to work on, so I needn't feel the least bit guilty about ignoring it. The weekend was filled with many holiday festivities, including a couple different gatherings, then our usual Christmas Eve thing at my aunt's. Lots of lucious presents including loads of bath products, flavored teas and chocolates, a new tv for my bedroom (which recently breathed it's last sigh after 10 years), plus some rather unsexy things like a small drill for bookbinding exploits and a glue gun. We did have a bit of family related medical drama on Christmas--nothing serious--but enough to land us in the ER waiting room a couple hours, a sorry place to be on a holiday, but thankfully I glimpsed no one gushing bodily fluids and only a couple of broken limbs and lots of sick babies. Otherwise, I have been eating chocolate chip cookies, drinking far too many rum & cokes, and attempting to turn off the running commentary in my head about all the things I should be doing that are more productive than lolling on the couch. No luck, but I'll be heading back to the city on Sunday, where I plan to spend a couple days righting the apartment after the pre-holiday tornado that appeared to hit it before I head back into the grind on Wednesday. And of course, it is January, when the grind is ever so much more...well..grinding...

If you're going to be in Chicago over December 28th (sadly I'm homeward bound), there is an MLA-associated reading happening that includes, not ONE, not TWO, but THREE dgp poets (plus some other fancy poet-types.) You should go....

and our final 2007 chapbook

Recovering the Body
poems by Nicole Cartwright Denison
dancing girl press, 2007

get it here


***

Which means that, yes, another season of awesome books has come to a close, with so much more planned for next year, including winter releases by Daniela Olszweska and Melissa Severin, plus Billet Doux, a special book arts anthology project due out around V-Day (Valentines, not Veterans). Also that pesky overdue wicked alice print annual that keeps getting pushed aside for other things. Plus many, many more goodies throught the year. (See the complete list at the dgp blog.)

All in all, it's been a phenomenal year for the press, including our first AWP road trip to Atlanta (sadly New York is a bit too spendy a stay for us this coming year, but we'll be back in full force when the train pulls into Chicago in 2009.) Some excellent reviews, our lovely feature in Poets & Writers, and now our new studio space with Atelier, where we can finally spread out and offer all sorts of cool programming. Watch for upcoming readings & workshops there in the coming months, as well as a California Clipper shindig/release reading with the lovely ladies of Switchback Books in February.

I've also been working at diversifying the etsy store, our little online retail annex, which has helped immensely in paying the rent on our new digs. Now you can find all sorts of book and papery things, art, and non-literary-related pretty things, both vintage and new there, as well as our usual books.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and brought our books, submitted manuscripts, or developed an interest in what we publish and spread the word. Thanks most to the great poets who became part of dgp and the artists who let us use their work to make such lovely covers. (and to the CC LIbrary, for allowing me the opprtunity to *ahem* "work" those long circ desk evenings when I get most of the layout stuff done.)

I had seriously given up on getting up the tree this year and any sort of Christmas decorations..chalk it up to being too late in the month, never being home, too busy, not planning to be here over the holiday anyway, the hassle of putting it all away in January. But then I found this little guy (below) and just HAD to put it up. So last night found me battling tangled lights while watching Planet Terror--not exactly holiday fare, but really cool nonetheless (everyone was on my case to go see Grindhouse when it was in the theaters, but it just never happened.) Then I wrapped some gifts and ate peppermint ice cream. Close enough to holiday traditions, no?





After defcon5 at the library in regard to returns, I'm a little achy from all that hefting and checking in of books. Thursday, they were everywhere, sticking out of drops, stacked on the counters, piled on the floor. Yesterday, much the same. This week, since we're technically on break, I get the joy of 9-5 commuting, but at least can hide out in the studio after work and wait a couple hours for it to dissipate. I have lots of stuff to pack and ship in regard to dgp orders and Recovering the Body to wrap up (I just need to scan the cover & check over the galleys one more time, and I will get it up on the website and print it this week.



It's grey and snowy today, but for once I get to stay in. I need to do laundry and work on a couple gifts, but otherwise I plan to just chill. Tonmorrow, I'll be doing a workshop on Approaching Small Presses, so I suppose I should start preparing..

poems are not bombs, I swear...

So I thought I was being smart...since the big box containing MG's Secret Meanings took forever to get overseas, I was going to send more copies in smaller, air mailable packages (about 7 each) put enough stamps for them to get over, and just drop them in the mailbox and send them on their way. WRONG. Apparently, over the summer, the USPS decided anything over 13 ounces MUST, in fact be a bomb, and could not be dropped into a corner mailbox (my only option since I do not have a home box and the PO is a pain to get to). So yesterday I arrive home to find all three packages have been returned to me. My question is where they were in the interim week if they never left the post office? Is there a vast conspiracy to stop the poetry trade from the US to Austria? Am I cursed this week? At least I think I can re-use the stamps since they are uncanceled. I will be trying Express Mail this time...(sorry for the delay M)...

Tomorrow, I'm planning on a good amount of studio time in order too get all the press orders out from the last two weeks and printing the cover for Recovering the Body. I intended to go for a couple hours this morning but last night's post-reading overindulgence involving one too many PBRs (I swear beer is like poison to me anymore) made getting out of bed earlier a little difficult..

argh!

I am having one of those days where everything I seem to try to make or do backfires. I was covering flasks for the shop and kept cutting the paper crooked. I was dying slips and every single one had odd spots of color that I had to get off. I was trying to finish a poem and the damned thing just won't fall into line. I think I'll order in dinner or I'm apt to set the kitchen on fire.

In happier news, I may be planning a southern jaunt in April around my birthday to do a reading at GSU, more details as they become available. I 'm featuring here in Chicago on Tuesday night @ the Cafe, so I guess that means I should figure out what I'm reading. I also just added an 8 week workshop to January's schedule for beginner poets. Tomorrow, I have to meet B-Ho down at the studio before her publication workshop (if you're local, you should come, even if submitting is old hat--I'm still in awe of her organization skills). Afterwards, I need to try to get the damned tree up or I may never get it up at all...

There is alot of snow outside, I'm really just trying to pretend it's not there...

These little guys are up at etsy..luckily I finished them a couple days ago, so they do not, thankfully, suck..

@ Chicagoist.com

there's an interview with moi about the press and the store....

Saturday's reading, despite the crappy weather, drew a pretty good crowd, possibly the biggest yet. I think, besides having awesome people reading, the success may lie in the Saturday night thing, which you would think might be a sure fire way to NOT get a crowd But this is early enough that you still have time to go out afterwards, sort of a good way to start the night with poetry. I actually wound up catching a cab and going home afterwards since I was dead tired after folding and stapling all day, but it was so worth it (see below). Now, onto the next chap..

My plan to make all my Christmas presents has been slightly abandoned when I realized how much more I'd actually have to spend to get the supplies I needed, let alone get them to do exactly what I wanted them to do, in order to really make what I want. I decided to go ahead an buy other things ..stuff that's mostly handmade, just..er.. not by me...I wound up getting pretty much everything in under my budget. Of course, as you know, etsy is a very dangerous place and I just might have inadvertently and surreptitiously snagged a couple things for myself (it happens)...

What I'm stuck on is the two little ones, recent additions, a two year old on my mom's side (the younger generation has indeed started procreating and thank god it skipped me *knock on wood*) and a 6 mo. old on my dad's (my older cousin, first-time happy-but-sort-of-oops! mom at 41 *knock on wood again*). They're a little young for books, I think, and clothes are sort of boring at Christmas, so I'm looking for interesting stuffed things, though maybe I should get the 2 year old this given her father's ban on all super girlie things. Thus, she's clad in unusual amount of camouflage and denim. So not fun.

now available

Bee Spit
Kristy Odelius
dancing girl press, 2007


get yours here...