release reading for MCMF

this will be happening on April 3rd and I would love to see you there!  

I've been in cover design mode this week and got to play a bit with paper in the studio to create the above for our latest release.  There are a few more in the hopper, including designs for the handful of books that we will be unveiling at AWP (and a few others that will be releasing even before that.).  The above was also a trial run for a new series of collages I intend to start on (albeit with a little bit more color happening.)  Sometimes I can't quite master getting what I want digitally with a cover and need to go old school paper-style. 

Winter persists in being an ass, despite its days being relatively numbered.  Already the days are a bit longer and the sun, what little there is of it, warmer on the sidewalk. 

it's here!

Get your very own, here:
https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications/major-characters-in-minor-films-by-kristy-bowen

Today, I was rifling through my flickr account and stumbled upon some photos of dgp operations circa 2007, back when everything was crammed into my dining room--the whole swirling morass of printers and cardstock, trimmers and shipping envelopes. From 2004 til late 2007, everything pretty much happened in my apartment. Around the time we moved into the studio was around the time, dgp really started to grown beyond a handful of titles a year (4 or 5 vs. 50 +). It was also the same time that other artsy craftsy stuff and the etsy shop were taking off, so there was a lot happening in that rather small room stuffed with books and supplies. (though now, you could say my dining room is still a mess with art supplies & sewing machines & all the stuff I tend to work on at home.)  I was also finishing up my MFA that year, which meant alot of poems & schoolwork were happening at that table.  (These days my writing happens more in my living room where the bookshelves are housed and I have my little desk set up, mostly to keep the laptop away from the messier things like paint and modpodge.)

weekend routines

Weekends are my breathing room, the period at the end of the sentence.  When I rest up, recuperate, rally the troops after running around like a crazy person all week.  I do things like sleep til noon and play with collages & irish coin cuff links. Binge watch Bates Motel and organize cardigans or my ballet flats by color (mostly becausee these things make me feel organized while I'm really not).  While I usually spend Saturday afternoons assembling books in the studio, I've been trying to use my Sunday afternoons (somewhere between my usual cleaning routine and brunch and sometime before my weekly phone call with my mother) as writing time, or at least some extended period of getting things on paper.  As I've gotten older, I've found that while I can get more bang for less invested time writing, I tire out more easily and have to refill the well.  Sunday afternoons are for getting things down in whatever rough form and the spending a little time during the week doing some polishing.

 As I'm working through the bulk of the apocalypse poems and hoping to get a full manuscript from it by the end of March, I keep thinking how, while it sometimes feels like I'm writing the same things over and over again, the same obsessions, the same concerns, each book is different mostly in it's tone.  Every once in a while, I pull out the fever almanac, and it feels overly frilly, overly baroque (and perhaps I am stealing the exact same phrase one of my MFA instructors charged me with.) There are poems I love in there ("sangria" and "predictions" still rock my socks off, maybe "night drive".)  Many of the rest feel a little overwrought and way too "poetic" whatever that means, and yet people really love these poems, and sometimes, the most passionate of my readers favor those poems in that very first book far more than anything else I've written since.   But I suppose this is true of all artists and their relationship to their work, that we best can see the cracks in the wall that no one else seems to notice.  I am excited about major characters and it's release mostly because parts of it are a million miles away from that. The two newest manuscripts even more so.  But I suppose that everyone loves their newest darlings best.

The rest of day has been attending to logistical things--travel arrangements for AWP, some laundry, dinner.
Maybe some thoughts on a release shindig for the new book.  I've been dreaming of long train trips and strange rom-com taxi scenes. The weather is milder and my sniffly cold from last week seems to be on the way out...so lets hope this week starts off with a bang...

some upcoming dgp covers

I've been knee deep in designs for upcoming chaps and it's definitely one of my very favorite things to do and one of the chief joys of running my own press...Watch for all of these titles in the coming weeks...

Today, I woke up to a whirling chaos of snow outside my windows and the glorious, glorious thought that I didn't have to wake up until I was damn ready or even really leave the apartment at all.  After burrowing under my comforter for a few more hours,   I spent some time making some valentines for the vending machine that's part of the Aesthetics series with paper hearts.  I'm thinking I'll reproduce them on some nice thick cardstock and pair them with some envelopes.   Judging by the sound of the wind outside even now, I am guessing I might be hunkered down for another day or so (fingers crossed).  I am also plotting another series of collages and finishing up some I started last weekend.

I've been working toward balance this past week.  So often all my efforts lean toward work and the press to the detriment of writing and art, so I'm trying to even things out a little and make sure that every single day, I am at least accomplishing one thing in each of those arenas (finishing a collage, mocking up notecard designs, sending out submissions). This week I finished the notecards and re-created the prints that I lost when my studio laptop died a couple years back, and created some new ones (the radio ocularia series, a piece from the strange machine collages.)  I've been slowly moving all the paper goods into the shop, and plan to have everything new unveiled by mid-February..so stay tuned..