Flying Object 2nd Anniversary Fundraiser and EPIC RAFFLE

There is this place called Flying Object. It looks like this:

It is located in Hadley, Massachusetts, in the old Firehouse. Amazing things happen there. Events, readings, music, art shows, letterpress classes, lectures, books, and other things. Workshops about pickling. Lectures explaining current linguistic research. Benefits for other local organizations and non-profits. It is a space that makes itself available to support many different communities. Over time, those communities form a larger and more connected community. This is a rare thing.

I got invited to a meeting about a month ago to help plan a party/fundraiser/raffle to help celebrate Flying Object's second anniversary. There's going to be a great party on Oct. 13, and everybody is invited. Information about said party is here and here. CA Conrad, Dorothea Lasky, and Ben Hersey are going to be reading/performing/fortune-telling. I have every confidence that it will be a wonderful event. At the meeting to plan this party, I volunteered to help out with the Raffle portion of the event, because I love raffles.

Raffle Donation from Flood Editions

Raffle Donation from Knopf/ Everyman's Library

                                       
Along with other raffle committee members, I started emailing presses to see if they might donate books, broadsides, chapbooks, ephemera, or anything else for this raffle. The response really amazed and surprised me: many of the presses I got in touch with responded enthusiastically and wonderfully. Presses both small and large were thrilled that a place like Flying Object exists, and wanted to help out. Soon, I began receiving 4 or 5 boxes of books a day. Presses have been sending rare things, beautiful things, surprising things.

Raffle Donation from Octopus Books

Raffle Donation from BOA Editions

Raffle Donation from Visual Editions (UK)

                                     
And I guess that brings me to the other part of this post that I wanted to write about, which is this larger community that also exists, the community of publishers and poets and artists and bookmakers and photographers. People are up to some really wonderful, smart, beautiful things, and their enthusiasm and generosity has reminded me how lucky I am to be a reader and writer and participant in this large, wild community.

Raffle Donation from Twin Palms

Raffle Donation from Cabinet Magazine

Raffle Donation from Anchorite Press

                                              
The local community has also stepped up to support Flying Object. We have received raffle donations from local organizations and businesses like Mass MoCA, Hungry Ghost Bread, Jackson & Connor, The Claw Foot Tub, Popcorn Noir, Hill Farmstead Brewery, Amherst Books, Pale Circus, and Green River Ambrosia. High & Mighty is donating beer for the event. If you live anywhere remotely close to Western Massachusetts, I hope you'll join us on Saturday, October 13 to celebrate and to get some amazing things from the EPIC RAFFLE. Even if you can't make it in person, you can still donate and have raffle tickets entered in your name to win prizes! Please go here to find out more.

Here follows a (still growing) list of the amazing publishers and organizations who have given us EPIC PRIZES to raffle in support of this event. A huge thank you to all of them!

1913, 2-UP, 2HB, 5X7, Action Books, Agnes Fox, Ahsahta, Alice James Books, Amherst Books, Amherst Cinema, Anchorite Press, Birds LLC, Black Ocean Books, BOA, Burning Deck, Cabinet Magazine, Canarium Press, Chelsea Editions, Coach House Books, Coconut Books, Coffee House Press, Content, Cuneiform Press, Denver Quarterly, Dexter Sinister, DoubleCross Press, Elk Books, Europa Editions, Factory Hollow Press, FC2, Flood Editions, Flying Guillotine, Forklift Ohio, Four Way Books, Futurepoem, Green Lantern Press, Greying Ghost Press, Green River Ambrosia, Grove/Atlantic, High & Mighty, Hill Farmstead, Hungry Ghost Bakery, Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Jackson & Connor, Jubilat, Kat Ran Press, Knopf/Everyman’s Library, Lay Flat, Loosestrife Editions, MASS MoCA, McSweeney’s, Mud Luscious Press, Noemi Press, O-Blek, O’Clock Press, Octopus Books, Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, Owl Press, Pale Circus, PEN America, Popcorn Noir, Propolis Press, Publishing Genius, Rescue Press, River Valley Market, Sarabande, Schematic Quarterly, Siglio Press, Slope Editions, Small Anchor Press, Sona Books, Spork Press, Tarpaulin Sky, Telephone, Thames & Hudson, The Caseroom Press, The Claw Foot Tub, The Physiocrats, The Sienese Shredder, Springtide Press, Tibor de Nagy, True Panther Sounds, Twin Palms Publishing, Typecast Publishing/The Lumberyard, Ugly Duckling Presse, Unit Editions, University of Chicago Press, University of Iowa Press, Visual Editions, Wakefield Books, Wave Books, Wesleyan University Press, Wonder



 

Poem Beginning With a Line by Lionel Messi

So, there's this great thing that happened called The Knox Writers' House Recording Project, in which these three Knox College students traveled around the country recording writers reading their work and talking about it. Last year, they found us in Atlanta and sat in our cold dining room with us and encouraged us read to them. Now they have this amazing website where you can listen to all sorts of interesting people read their work. It's great! This week, poet Chris Tonelli has picked a poem of mine as the weekly featured poem, which is really nice, and what is even nicer is that he calls me "the Lionel Messi of poetry," which is the best compliment possible. Here is the text of the poem, just in case you can't understand my weird voice.

 POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE BY LIONEL MESSI

It’s true I still have a thorn inside me,
a little personal weather.
Pace blossoms when I am running.
Districts unfold cement picnics
and spells for athletics
between the arable suburbs.
My calories propagate them
like strange, tiny stars.
I close my eyes.
I cry “Oh cryptic murmurs
listing within my Doppler!”
I slow down, find a great hotel
for my wind to get wasted in.
I go poolside
and ash there a while.
My friend, when it comes to the sweaters,
you are not the wool:
you are the insane gigantic bear design.
I will think of you if I ever see a bear.
I mean, whenever.

Interview at HTMLGIANT

It's not every day you get interviewed by Blake Butler, especially if you are, in fact, me. In other news:

Juniper Festival and an Interview

The Juniper Festival is this weekend! So many good people will be in town to read their poems and stories and to buy and sell beautiful books and magazines and chapbooks!I will be reading from The Black Forest on Saturday at noon at the UMass Fine Arts Center.

Also, an interview! I made one, with the help of the poet Brian Foley. The interview is up here at The Common's Tumblr page and is full of my thoughts on witches, Calvino's Italian Folk Tales, and the "real" Black Forest.

THE BLACK FOREST

My first book of poems, The Black Forest, looks like this:



It is available from Small Press Distribution. They will send it fast!


"These poems sock home truth and enact poetic somersaults that leave me out of breath. It's a pleasure to recommend them to anyone brave enough. Chris DeWeese is the real thing, a poet true to his calling."

— James Tate


"Christopher DeWeese's The Black Forest is a world that splinters into halves, fourths, and thirds all at once. The book is actually a forest, or it is many forests, and they're all ones we know, but they don't look the way we remember. When the book ends, we feel very brave, as if we have gone through the tall and muted trees into the darkest place of all, a place of fundamental urges. DeWeese has painted this forest for us so we might see clearly into the fall."

—Dorothea Lasky