Tomorrow is April 1. You know what that means.
Who’s in?
Stop by to see what we are slinging, every day in April.
And be sure to visit Maureen Thorson’s inimitable (many have tried) website at https://napowrimo.net for the history of this Unofficial, Unsponsored, and Noncommercial poetry game. She also offers optional daily prompts!
We, as in the press, will not be at AWP this year. But several of our poets will be. Here’s a little list to help you spot them in Los Angeles.
MARISA CRAWFORD
Switchback Books / Meekling Press / Futurepoem Reading
Thursday 3/27, 8–10 p.m.
MONKSPACE
4414 W. 2nd Street
Los Angeles
with Fulla Abdul-Jabbar, Marisa Crawford, Lindey Choi, Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough, CR Grimmer, MC Hyland, Stephon Lawrence, Sylvia Jones, Heather McShane, Manuel Paul López, Darby Price, Olivia Muenz, and Rachel Jihye Han.
MARISA CRAWFORD & MORGAN PARKER
OFFSITE: AWP After Party at Tabula Rasa
Hosted by Morgan Parker
Sunday 3/30, 4–8 p.m.
TABULA RASA BAR
5125 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles
with Will Alexander, Juan Amador, Cathy Linh Che, Gabrielle Civil, Marisa Crawford, Sarah Ellen Flower, Tori Gesualdo, Katja Grover, Elisabeth Houston, Genevieve Husdon, Cherene Sherrad-Johnson, Christine Larusso, Tomas Moniz, Alex Moreno, Joseph Mosconi, Paasha Motamedi, Angel Nafis, Lisa Locascio nighthawk, Jennifer Sappettone, Charif Shanahan, Natalie Shapero, Callie Siskel, Adam Stutz, Lynne Thomson & MORE.
DANIELLE PAFUNDA
THURSDAY 3:20 PM – 4:35 PM
AWP PANEL: Still Surreal: A Poetics of Revolution
Room 402AB Level Two LA Convention Center
Will Alexander, C. Francis Fisher, Joyelle McSweeney, and Danielle Pafunda. How do contemporary practitioners of US surrealist poetics grow from, resist, or reenvision André Breton’s 1920s movement? What does it mean to be surrealist amidst the postmodern horror of climate collapse, hyperrealist global warfare, and the absurdity of the twenty-four hour news cycle? Witness writers on the margins—women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+—adopt surrealist practice for personal and political expression to engage its long-standing ideologies and revolutionize its anachronistic tactics.
DANIELLE PAFUNDA
THURSDAY 6:00–8:00 p.m.
OFFSITE READING: Black Ocean / Burnside Review / Saturnalia
Bar Henry
1228 W Sunset Blvd.
DANIELLE PAFUNDA & KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
FRIDAY 12:10 p.m.–1:25 p.m.
PANEL: Reimagining Futures Through Speculative Writing
Room 408B Level Two LA Convention Center
Ching-In Chen, Kenning JP Garcia, Danielle Pafunda, Katie Jean Shinkle, and Dior Stephens. Writers know that who imagines the future and how they imagine it has a profound cultural impact on the eventual present moment. Just as Octavia Butler influenced 2024 when she set Parable of the Sower there in 1993, we BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled innovative and speculative writers rescript those bleak futures spun from our present day marginalization that have been imagined for us. We offer worldbuilding strategies to construct futures rooted in our resistance, liberation, safety, and joy.
BECCA KLAVER
Thursday, Mar 27, 2025
3:20 p.m.—4:35 p.m.
PANEL: Teaching Amidst Trauma: Practices for Our Times
Room 502A, Level Two
Los Angeles Convention Center
Moderator: Miranda McLeod Presenters: Diego Báez, Marcus Jackson, Becca Klaver
Creative writing classrooms can be repositories for artifacts of traumas both personal and public. As university instructors, how do we teach in a time of accelerating emergency? How can we effectively invite students into the time-honored tradition of making art in the face of existential crisis? How can we do so without turning workshop into group therapy? In this panel, we’ll share lesson designs, community practices, and tips for classroom management and self-care for teachers and learners.
MARISSA CRAWFORD will also be signing books with Switchback Books on Friday at 12:00 noon and Saturday at 3:00 p.m. with Feminist Press.
DANIELLE PAFUNDA will be signing her new book, Along the Road Everyone Must Travel, on Thursday from 12:00 to 12:30 at the Saturnalia Books table (619). And Friday 10:30 a.m.–12:00 noon Danielle will be signing The Book of Scab at Ricochet Editions @USC’s Bookfair Booth (426).
[Probably more TK. We’ll keep adding …]
THE ART OF THE CHAPBOOK
presented by Bloof Books for the Belfast Poetry Festival
THE ART OF THE CHAPBOOK is an exhibition curated by Shanna Compton of Bloof Books for the 19th annual Belfast Poetry Festival, October 17–20, 2024. The exhibition consists of two parts—THE CABINET contains 40+ chapbooks, and a secondary BROWSING STATION nearby offers 60+ chapbooks available for visitors to read on site. The exhibition is open throughout the weekend during Waterfall Arts hours.
Waterfall Arts
2nd Floor + Dance Annex
256 High Street
Belfast, Maine
Shanna will present a brief introduction during the festival’s kickoff event at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 17. The exhibition is open throughout the weekend during Waterfall Arts hours.
WHAT IS A CHAPBOOK? A small booklet of writing, often staple-bound or sewn. Length may be anywhere from a single folded page with multiple panels to a bound format of 35–40 pages, much shorter than a traditional book. In contemporary scenes, chapbooks typically contain poetry, but also short stories, poetry comix, and hybrid creative texts. (Informational/nonfictional works in short form are more likely to be called pamphlets or tracts.) Unlike traditionally published poetry collections, chapbooks offer poets a more accessible opportunity to be inventive, spontaneous, and variable about how they choose to publish. Chaps are often illustrated, created from repurposed or unexpected materials, and may incorporate other features traditional books tend not to accommodate. Akin to zines, their distribution is also a bit unorthodox—poets and small presses offer them for direct sale at readings, through group exchanges, and by annual subscription, though they can also often be found at bookfairs, artist markets, and indie bookshops that know what’s up. (Check the Local Author section!)
HISTORICALLY, as far back as the 12th century, street peddlers known as chap men traveled town to town, offering a variety of small objects for sale, including (eventually, a few centuries later) small books and pamphlets, or single sheets printed on both sides designed for the buyer to fold and bind themselves. The word chap (from Middle English chep, from Old English cēap, meaning trade) over time took on the connotation of bargain as well, resulting in the English word cheap. (Skipping a lot here, obviously.) By the 1850s, traditional books and newspapers had become more readily available, making the chapbook format obsolete . . . unless you’re a poet, that is.
Chapbooks have ecstatically persisted as a vibrant element within various poetry scenes, because their immediacy, authenticity, and quirky appeal endures. Countless self-published and small-press titles continue to be released and collected year after year. These days chapbooks are sometimes cheap and sometimes not, ranging in materials from photocopies on plain paper bound by a couple of staples to handset letterpress sheets sewn into specialty covers. I hope this exhibition inspires you to collect (or create!) some of your own.
BEFORE, BETWEEN, & BEYOND BOOKS As you explore the collection you’ll find poets publishing chapbooks before their first books, between their longer books, and as a site for more experimental projects that require going beyond the confines of a traditional book.
LIST OF WORKS—CABINET Left to right, beginning at lower shelf
(Links TK, please check back!)
1. The Gertrude Spicer Story (Act Two), Jared Hayes (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2010) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
2. Writing in the Margin, Matvei Yank-elevich (Loudmouth Collective, 2001)
3. Residence, Meredith Clark (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2010) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
4. going going, Jen Hofer (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2007)
5. trouble, Jen Hofer (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2010) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
6. Memory/Incision, Joseph Cooper (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2007)
7. Hounds, Alli Warren (self-published, 2005)
8. Conversation with the Stone Wife, Natalie Eilbert (Bloof Books, 2014) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
9. To Do in the New Year, Anna Lena Phillips (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2013)
10. the roof of locked shields, Kaia Sand (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2010) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
11. First the Burning, Catie Rosemurgy (Bloof Books, 2018 ) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
12. Friendship with Things, Elaine Equi (The Figures, 1998)
13. Into the Darkness We Go, Mimi White (The Cougar Press, 1982)
14. Psychic Head Set, Mike Hauser (Mitzvah Chaps, 2008)
15. Now See Here, Homes, Horace Mungin (Brothers’ Distributing Co., 1969)
16. Is Holy, Matthew Henriksen (Horse Less Press, 2006)
17. Out of Bounds, Harry Mathews (Burning Deck, 1989)
18. Mountain Sparrow, Jessica Powers (Carmel of Reno, 1972)
19. Red Book in Three Parts, Bernadette Mayer (United Artists Books, 2002)
20. Spells for Black Wizards, Candace Williams (The Atlas Review / TAR Chapbook Series, 2018)
21. The Woman, the Mirror, the Eye, Maureen Thorson (Bloof Books, 2015) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
22. 13 Osips, Maureen Thorson (Big Game Books, 2006)
23. Postcard Poems, Stephanie Young & Cassie Lewis (Poetry Espresso / Cassie Lewis, 2002)
24. I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel, Nikki Wallschlaeger (Bloof Books, 2015) // HARDCOVER VERSION HERE
25. Slaves of Christo, Julia Hall & Chrissy Leggio (Brooklyn Artists Alliance, 2005)
26. All the Aldas, Daniel Kane & Gillian Kane (Evil Twin Publications, 2002)
27. something else the music was, Eric Baus (Braincase Press, 2004)
28. Falling Forward, Sara Veglahn (Braincase Press, 2003)
29. Drummer, Chad Reynolds (Greying Ghost, 2015)
30. Self-Portrait as a Dictionary of Symbols, Shannon Holman (self-published, 2002)
31. 99-Cent Heart, Ada Limón (Big Game Books, 2006)
32. Le Animal & Other Creatures, Metta Sáma (Miel, 2015)
33. O New York, Trey Sager (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004)
34. Diary, Carrie Hunter (self-published for Dusie Kollektiv, 2010) // PDF AVAILABLE HERE
35. Route, Julia Cohen & Matthias Svalina (Immaculate Disciples Press, 2012)
36. Mental Commitment Robots, Sueyen Juliette Lee (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007)
37. 100 Multiple Choice Questions, John Ashbery (Adventures in Poetry, 2001)
38. Tachistoscope, Stanley Donwood (The Hedonist Press, 2003)
+ a few bonus/unnumbered things! (aka, a rotating handful of out-of-print Bloof Books chaps, 2015–2023) including I Prefer the Forests Making Blankets from Themselves, CAConrad (PDF COMING SOON); Take Me to the Water, Irene Vázquez (PDF AVAILABLE HERE); Hymn: An Ovulution, Mel Coyle & Jen Marie Nunes (PDF AVAILABLE HERE).
BROWSING STATION Too many to include in this exhibition guide, but we will post the full list and links online here after the festival has concluded. Please check back!
BLOOF CHAPBOOKS are available to order here
ABOUT BLOOF BOOKS
Bloof Books is a collective poetry press founded by Shanna Compton in 2007 in Brooklyn, NY to publish the second books of three poets she’d worked with at Soft Skull Press in the mid 2000s. The press relocated to Blue Hill, Maine, in 2021 after about a dozen years in the Delaware Valley (New Hope, PA/Lambertville, NJ). The collective consists of all the poets we have published to date, who are invited to read submissions, suggest new projects, and enthusiastically advocate for each other by reviewing, teaching, and sharing other members’ work. We publish paperback poetry collections and handmade poetry chapbooks, usually with linocut covers. Bloof is more akin to a group art project than to a business. We are/will always remain an independent small press—a micropress, in fact. We are “tiny by design.” bloofbooks.com @bloofbooks
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Shanna Compton is a poet, printmaker, and book artist in Blue Hill, ME. She is the author of five books of poems, most recently Creature Sounds Fade (Black Lawrence Press) and Midwinter Constellation (coauthor, Black Lawrence Press). Her poems have appeared in publications such as the Nation, American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and The Best American Poetry anthology series. As a visual artist, she works in linocut, collage, monotype, screen print, and mixed media. She also freelances as a book designer for many of your favorite indie publishers. shannacompton.com @hiwaterpress
If you’re in midcoast Maine, we hope to see you later this week in beautiful downtown Belfast.
Bloof publisher and poet/printmaker/book artist SHANNA COMPTON has curated a mini exhibition for the festival called THE ART OF THE CHAPBOOK, which showcases the variety and inventiveness of her favorite format in terms of artistic purposes and aesthetic approaches. Bloof poet JJ ROWAN will also be performing.
Thursday, October 17 at 6:30 p.m.
FESTIVAL KICKOFF EVENT & RECEPTION
Waterfall Arts, 256 High Street, 2nd Floor + Dance Annex
Shanna Compton of Bloof Books will introduce The Art of the Chapbook exhibition, JJ Rowan will perform a new poetic movement piece, and the past and present poet laureates of Belfast—Maya Stein, Arielle Greenberg, Judy Kaber, Elizabeth Garber, Linda Buckmaster, Karin Spitfire, Thomas R. Moore, Ellen Sander, Jacob Fricke—will read poems, as well as Millay House writer-in-residence Melissa McKinstry. Reception to follow.
Friday—Sunday, October 18–20
THE ART OF THE CHAPBOOK
Waterfall Arts, 256 High Street, 2nd Floor + Dance Annex
This exhibition is arranged in two parts. The primary display is a large glass cabinet containing more than 40 small-press and poet-made chapbooks ranging in date from the 1960s to the present and showcasing the format’s impressive, expressive possibilities. A secondary Browsing Station at a nearby table offers visitors the opportunity to handle and read selections from Bloof and others. Open during Waterfall Arts hours from Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon.
OTHER EVENTS include group writing sessions, an open mic reading, a haiku death battle, a zine-making workshop, a crankie matinee, a poetry picnic, and MORE. Explore the full schedule at belfastpoetryfestival.com. All events are free! No registration or tickets required.
I just did a quick count. As of this moment, day 8, there are 89 very fresh drafts posted!
Some may disappear as we go, so catch them while you can.
Click a poet’s name to see their drafts collected:
Natalie Eilbert
Irene Vázquez
JJ Rowan
Elisabeth Workman
Steven Karl
Jenn Marie Nunes, translating Yen Ai-lin
Rebecca Loudon
Nicole Steinberg
Katie Jean Shinkle
K. Lorraine Graham
Reagan Louise Wilson
Farrah Field
Jared White
Sharon Mesmer
Peter Davis
Danielle Pafunda
Becca Klaver
Shanna Compton
And we’ll be digging in mud-season style here on the Bloof blog, dropping some poem bulbs into the muck. That’s as far as I’m willing to stretch that metaphor. The point is, it’s NaPoWriMo time.
What is NaPoWriMo? It’s an unofficial, noncommercial, sans-sponsorship, egalitarian, world-wide (that’s GloPoWriMo to you, bub) celebration of poetry that induces a 30-day fever of daily drafts.
NaPoWriMo started 21 years ago when Maureen Thorson gave herself the challenge to write a poem a day on her blog and jokingly called it “national” even though it was just her, after NaNoWriMo, the novel-writing month (and now nonprofit org) that has been held every November since 1999. Shanna and a few others joined her on their own blogs the following year, and well, then it was a whole thing somehow.
You can read more about it at the NaPoWriMo.net site, where Maureen also very generously offers (optional) daily prompts, podcasts, feature sites, and other resources. (Pssst, we’ve got a new book of essays by Maureen, available here.)
Bloof poets are invited to post with abandon here all month. It’s generally a bit of a mess and a ton of fun to follow along.
APRIL ASSEMBLAGE:
Peter Davis
Natalie Eilbert
K. Lorraine Graham
Steven Karl
Kirsten Kaschock
Becca Klaver
Rebecca Loudon
Sharon Mesmer
Danielle Pafunda
JJ Rowan
Katie Jean Shinkle
Nicole Steinberg
Irene Vázquez
Reagan Louise Wilson
Elisabeth Workman
Shanna Compton
Bloof’s first release in the new year comes to us all the way from Brazil: Bruna Beber’s romance in twelve lines. We’ve been working as a guest printer over at Kennedy Press in Belfast, Maine to print up these covers from our hand-carved linoleum block in gold metallic ink on wrought iron gray paper.
This sequence of poems appears in both English translation by Sarah Rebecca Kersley and in the original Portuguese in the chapbook’s second section. As the titular relationship tumbles through its inevitable phases, Beber’s imagery shifts from the giddy tick tock of anticipation into days of “doubts and lilies” and metaphorically overdrawn accounts. We’ve all been there, and this handful of poems captures each point in love’s arc in deeply observed detail.
Chapbooks are in stock—take a look back at the process of printing and assembling them on Instagram—and are limited to 150 hand-sewn copies. Orders are shipping now, and you can mix and match it in your own custom chapbook bundle. You’ll also find copies at our partner bookstores like Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, and Open Books in Seattle!
Sample April post. This is my text. You can write
directly into the post, or copy/paste from elsewhere
(but weird things sometimes happen in the transition from MSWord).
Experiment! and let me know if you need help.
Single spacing between lines is shift + return.
Double spacing between lines return only.
If you want to use variable spacing
or
stagger
your
lines
use the Preformatted block option
(It will look gray in the editor but
like this! when published!
The Verse paragraph setting
(shown here)
also lets you
manipulate spacing as much as you like
and keeps all the lines in one box
instead of w
e
i
r
d
l
y making each hard return into
a new spaced paragraph
Feel free to add media (Alt Text encouraged!)
Tags can be added by clicking the gear in the upper right
(That’s a bit different since April 2020)
—Shanna
PS: I expire my posts the day after they appear
What is #NaPoWriMo, you wonder? It’s an unofficial, unaffiliated poetry game played annually by poets all over the world (#GloPoWriMo). It grew, sort of accidentally, out of a personal challenge Maureen Thorson set for herself one April, many moons ago in the poetry-blog days of yore. I joined her the following year, and others did too, and soon it became an annual, organic free-for-all, a lively everybody-is-invited event.
Maureen’s idea has proven so popular, people have assumed it’s hosted by some Official Org or Institution, but nope. It’s entirely noncommercial and unsponsored. She’s created a site—napowrimo.net—and accompanying Twitter account to share daily prompts and featured participants every day in April, which is really nice of her.
Bloof always hosts a handful of our authors on our blog, and this April will be no exception. Wanna play? You can join in on your own site or social media account. See napowrimo.net for the details.
PS: This is the 20th year!
Bloof, the press, will not be at AWP. But Bloof, the poets, will be! And you can still grab some bookfair deals online.
VIRTUAL BOOKFAIR at bloofbooks.com
March 7–13. All paperbacks in bundle deals: 2 for $25, 3 or more for $10 each.
+ Free shipping on all orders over $25 (US only).
This virtual bookfair is for everyone, whether or not you’re attending the conference.
Thursday, March 9
DANIELLE PAFUNDA
Family Trees in the Enchanted Forest: Fairy Tales & Intergenerational Trauma
12:10 p.m. Room 427
KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
Two or More Become One: Writing in Collaboration Across Genre
3:20 p.m. Room 337
KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
6:00 p.m. Slip In Beltown Gallery
2301 1st Street
Orchestrate Your Whole Fucking Life! reading
IRENE VÁZQUEZ
Muzzle Magazine reading
7:00 p.m. Loving Room
1400 20th Ave
Friday, March 10
IRENE VÁZQUEZ
10:00 a.m. Bookfair signing
Take Me to the Water chapbooks + broadsides of Glory from Above
Riot in Your Throat table (T1522)
KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
2:00 p.m. Museum of Museums
900 Boylston Ave
University of Louisiana Lafayette and Sam Houston University Graduate Student Reading
DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
7:30 p.m. Alley Mic
1922 Post Alley
Apogee, Diagram, March Fadness, Texas Review, TRP reading
Saturday, March 11
KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, GINGER KO
1:45 p.m. Room 437
#FeelsBad: Writing Discomfort and Pessimism in Genre
GINGER KO, IRENE VÁZQUEZ, DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, NATALIE EILBERT
Essay Press, Noemi Press & Bloof Books Extravaganza reading
(see graphic above for the full list of readers!)
3:30 p.m. Crescent Lounge
1413 E. Olive Way
NATALIE EILBERT
6:00 p.m. Elliot Bay Book Company
1521 10th Ave.
Copper Canyon 50th Anniversary Celebration