{ bee + spool }

Precipitating Event #1: Attending the Professional Survival Weekend for MFA grads and candidates (of which I am neither) hosted by the Mills College English Department the weekend of November 10-11 in Oakland. Listening to poets and publishing industry insiders, especially Brent Cunningham of Small Press Distribution and author of Bird & Forest talk about poets and poetry as a community–where poets write poetry, publish it (their own and others) and read other poets; and Craig Perez of Achiote Press talk about having a print run of 200 or so, and disseminating them via online sales, readings, word-of-mouth and also for trade of other chapbooks in order to come across and read new work.

Precipitating Event #2: Coming across Brian Kim Stefans’ wonderful letterpress chapbook, The Window Ordered to be Made, a photo of it found on flickr (see my November 15th post on Needles and Pens, the local zine and things handmade store):

Precipitating Event #3: Poet Barbara Jane Bermeo (nee Reyes) writes in her blog this, in re a reading she attended given by Amiri Baraka: “Again, that very important message of not waiting around for someone to discover you. You must create your own opportunities, which include going DIY.” And a link on her blogroll to DIY Publishing, a blog whose subject matter is self-explanatory.

Precipitating Event #4: Having a conversation with Kearny Street Workshop’s artistic director, Sam Chanse, about using my Gocco press to do a run of 120 covers for the to-be-published chapbook for Truong Tran’s politics and poetics workshop and ready for presentation and sale at our December 7th reading.

Resulting Thought #1: And then reminding myself that during my unemployment months earlier this year, I warmed up the craft muscles and pulled out the box of Gocco supplies from the garage to print, among other things, chapbook covers for a chap of poems and art:

Resulting Thought #2: And how I pretty much abandoned the project after I started working again and how I still have a healthy stack of these and thinking, hell, these are pretty neat-o.

So, this is a call for a chapbook trade, a copy of mine for your DIY publication (or purchase–$5 gets you the chapbook and the money will go to Asian American Women Artists Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization). Email me; let’s trade!