dgp news & notes

We are beginning our countdown to AWP Seattle and already, we are so very excited about what's to come.  We've been designing promotional materials, finalizing our author signings schedule, coralling four of our readers for an awesome reading with many other women focused and run presses, and colluding with fellow panelists for our panel on publishing women.    We've been stocking up on paper and ink and cardstock and am ready to begin the serious work of  massing a good stock of books for the table.(We plan on having several copies of books from the 2012-2013 series, but will only have limited earlier titles, so it's best to find us early if you're seeking something out that's older.)  We will also be be sharing alot of our pre-conference prep and train journey out there (with photos!) on the FB page. so keep an eye out there for more...Rumor has it there may be some swag and special sales and giveaways happening as well.  I'm also working on our special edition project, [carriage return], which will be debuting at the conference.

We've already plunged into the new year with some new books, including some titles rounding out the 2013 series (by Laressa Dickey, Molly Curtis, Zoe Dzunko, Jenn Marie Nunes & Carol Rowntree Jones) as well as started our 2014 season with Kathleen Kirk's Interior Structure:  Poems in the Voice of Camille Claudel, which was created in conjunction with The Columbus Dance Theatre.  We debuted KC Trommer's The Hasp Tongue, Carrie Bennett's Animals in Pretty Cages, Lindsay Lusby's Imago, and Tara Mae Mulroy's Philomel over the last few weeks and have started out the 2014 season with a bang.

By now, I am at that point in the winter where I am just ignoring it and hoping it will go away.  Filthy snow and icy lakeside tundra and all, I am still sometimes in love with this city, though it is the sort of love that wavers a little when the temp dips below 20.  I will forget such wavering as soon as it's March and my mood soars as the temps rise, but now is the usual bitter, hold onto your sanity with your frozen fingertips sort of time, the time of year when I am most in danger of losing all perspective and crying over ridiculous setbacks like missed buses and paper cuts. With the holiday off work,  I've been working today on notes for our panel on publishing women authors and thinking about the press as political gesture vs. scholarly interest, about "otherness" and frames of reference. I've working a bit more on the radio ocularia layout (see above).  I've been scribbling a little in my terrestrial animal series and thinking about underground houses and atomic age fear and other cheery things. But chocolate is nice. Tequila is nice (I mixed up a batch of margaritas last night with some Patron I'd gotten as a gift). Laundry and fresh white sheets and fluffy blankets are nice.  At this point, the only way out is through...

january-ness

The end of another week and mostly I am trudging along with usual library and book and press work, but also some serious progress on laying out radio ocularia, which will be debuting in all of its poetry/anatomical goodness likely mid next week. I am also cooking up a little special edition thingy to coincide with girl show's release, which is nigh, and which is  according to BLP, right now at the printers.  I've been working with a co-worker on an exhibit that highlights the ways in which the library can serve as a place for generating and researching creative projects in addition to scholarly ones, so some of the poems a from gs (which involved a lot of research back when it was my thesis) and artwork from the spectacle series, the companion project from which the cover art manifested, will be hitting the walls on the 1st floor, plus some spreads from the zine if I can make it happen in time.

I'm also trying to let go of certain romantic-related things that just need to be put out of their misery, and trying to enjoy new developments (or at this point, merely potential developments) and not backtrack or be nostalgic or all of the other pitfalls I seem to stumble upon when it comes to the male species.   I've learned so much about myself when it comes to these things, but mostly that I have a hard time saying goodbye and moving on when I really should, particularly difficult when nothing else much is happening and I've playing the social hermit far too long. Especially when the person I need to say goodbye to happens to live across the street and seems to careen in and out of my life at regular intervals (and I his.)

On the plus side, I'm hitting one of those swirly, creative maelstrom's lately, which is good since there is so much on the burners coming up on the Seattle trip, not only our usual new book offerings, but also the typewriter anthology, composing and constructing my Dusie chap for the kollectiv, notes and prep for the panel.  Not to mention a big  book coming out and trying to maybe plan some sort of release for that in March or April.   A few other readings (at AWP and elsewhere)  I'm already exhausted thinking about it, but also excited.

something like thawing

So the world outside has thawed just a little bit, and the loads of snow have now dissolved into ginormous puddles and, here and there, piles of grey, muddy snow.  It's supposed to be in the 30's this week, which after last, seems almost spring-like, so I'll take what I can get. Despite the weather, I had a productive week in terms of layouts and designs, and this week will be releasing a slew of chaps (both some holdovers from 2013 and some January titles.)  I've been managing to cut a decent slice through the books I need to make in my time at the studio (only a couple hours til the end of the month when the spring semester begins), so I have a good number of orders set to mail and author copies to be delivered. So January trudges onward, amidst hair color experiments (I'm currently harboring a reddish blonde I'm undecided on), afternoon margaritas as big as my head, and sleepy sundays.

I have the first in the zine series radio ocularia, almost ready to print, and some progress underway on the new chap, terrestrial animal, which I'm excited will debut as part of the dusie kollectiv exchange at AWP end of February (and also online at Dusie at some point down the road).  I'm thinking it it may also be the March zine mailing, so if you want to get dibs now, it's an excellent time to subscribe.  I did the exchange a few years back with brief history of a girl as match and it was so awesome to be getting to see all those chaps, so it should be fun.

greetings from chiberia

Okay it's cold, unreasonably so, and I've spent my extra winter weather day away from the library mostly huddling under blankets and kitties, but also some of it writing.  It feels like a little bit of extra stolen time, so I used it to start on a completely new series, one semi-inspired by the pictures of this house.  I suppose since the last thing I worked on was poems about the apocalypse, it's no wonder I would be both eerily attracted to and haunted by this. Since I spent much of my eighties childhood after watching The Day After plotting how me and my family could survive in our basement should the Russians get unruly, it's not all that surprising.  Plus, you know me and anything mid-century decor (no matter how horrible). I've written a good chunk of pieces and will continue working on it throughout the week.

I've been out a few times in the snow since Friday running errands,  but I am itchy with cabin fever and ready to go back to work and back to the studio.  I like structure and routine and time without it just makes me sort of lazy and much less productive.   I always think of this when I think of retreats and colonies and the lack of day jobs. The dream of all that free and unencumbered time to write and make art is horribly shiny and tempting, but I feel like I'd end up wasting it.

hello, 2014

(view from dgp headquarters)

Today. I braved the snow and the cold and the gray and am back in the studio again, with a whole bunch of orders and author copies to get wrapped up and on their way, plus some stocking up for AWP.  Amidst all the resolutioning everywhere on blogs and on the facebooks, I can't say that I have any more than the usual general ones to be happy, healthy(er) and productive.  Specifically, I would like to read more novels maybe, finish projects I have the supplies for but never get to.  Finish all those little loose ends of things in terms of my own creative projects. (I'm thinking the zine series will go along way towards giving me a deadline on these.)  Maybe actually pull-off some of the shop things I muse over in my more crafty moments. Perhaps, travel more (this will actually be feasible with the Seattle trip this year.)    Always, I think I'd like to blog more, take more pictures.  Pay attention more.  My head sometimes becomes this swirling cyclone of ideas and stress and plans and I would love to be able to not get so caught up in it that I forget the bigger picture and being more present, more in the moment.