One of our six Pushcart nominations, Ocean Vuong’s “Self-Portrait with Exit Wounds,” has won a Pushcart Prize and will be featured in the next Pushcart anthology. The poem first appeared in ASSARACUS ISSUE 08. Congratulations, Ocean!
Tag: Gay Poetry
0 Thank You Readers! SRP has 10 of Top 20 Amazon/Gay Poetry Titles!
1 SRP Takes New York (Again)
It’s shaping up to be a big weekend for Sibling Rivalry Press. It all starts Friday night with ASSARACUS: A CELEBRATION OF GAY POETRY:
Sponsored by the Rainbow Book Fair, Belhue Press,
Sibling Rivalry Press, and CLAGS (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies)
at The City University of New York Graduate Center
Room C198, Concourse Level
365 Fifth Ave
New York, NY 10016
7:30 - 9:30 PM
On March 23, 2012, the night before the Rainbow Book Fair, CLAGS (The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) and Sibling Rivalry Press present Assaracus: A Celebration of Gay Poetry. For the first time, poets from the first six issues of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry will read together, legend alongside rising, established next to emerging. Assaracus was created in the spirit of community and brotherhood. Assaracus: A Celebration of Gay Poetry will showcase those themes through the collective voices some of gay poetry’s brightest contemporary writers – in one place, at one time.
The night will also feature the launch of Assaracus: Issue 06 (featuring cover art by Seth Ruggles Hiler), and include remarks on gay publishing and poetry from Ian Young, groundbreaking founder of Catalyst Press and editor of The Male Muse, an early, daring, and important anthology of gay poets.
Come kick off Rainbow Book Fair weekend with the Assaracus poets. Free & open to the public.
Confirmed readers: Christopher Hennessy, Matthew Hittinger, Frank J Miles, Stephen Scott Mills, Eric Norris, Philip F. Clark, Collin Kelley, Michael Klein, Evan J. Peterson, Steven Riel, Robert Siek, Bryan Borland, Steven Cordova, Chuck Willman, Philip (No F.) Clark, Joseph Harker, Emanuel Xavier, Isaiah Vianese, David-Glen Smith, Christopher Gaskins, Perry Brass, Guillermo Filice Castro, Nicolas Destino, D. Gilson, Glenn Phillips, Patrick Stevens, and remarks by Ian Young.
THEN, on Saturday, March 24, don’t miss SRP at the Rainbow Book Fair, happening at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13th Street in NYC. We’ll be at Table A3 next to Belhue Press. Collin Kelley will be at our table at 2:00, and Stephen S. Mills will being reading from He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices at 3:00. We’ll have special book fair prices on all our titles, including the not-yet released Assaracus Issue 06, and we’ll give away a couple of subscriptions to Assaracus.
The Rainbow Book Fair is where Sibling Rivalry Press began. It’s the only largest LGBT book fair in the world and every year it gets better and better. You don’t want to miss this, folks.
0 SRP Press Roundup
- Burnings, Collective Brightness, and When the Only Light Is Fire Included on the Lambda Literary Favorites of 2011 List
- Collective Brightness contributor John Medeiros Goes VIRAL
- Ocean in PANK
- Raymond Luczak Earns a Fan
- Seven CirclePress Reviews Voices Through Skin
- Press 1 Reviews Voices Through Skin
- Christopher Hennessy Interviews Julie Enszer and Kevin Simmonds on Queer Spirituality
- Fat Girl Makes Year-End List of Best Chapbooks
- Gavin Dillard and Eric Norris are a 2011 Favorite of Publishing Legend Richard Labonte
- Saeed Jones interviewed by Newark Women’s Issues Examiner
- Megan Volpert “has the gift” – Sonics in Warholia Reviewed
0 SALE!
Through Wednesday, November 30, use code SHOPINDIE at checkout from the SRP store and get an extra 20% off! We can accommodate any gift-giving secrecy, mail to any address, even add a holiday card to your order. Just email us at siblingrivalrypress@gmail.com following your purchase with any special instructions. Thank you for supporting SRP! We love you! (Yes – you!)
0 Photographic Evidence: The Collective Brightness Book Tour
0 Gavin’s NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
Check out Gavin Geoffrey Dillard’s self-interview at The Nervous Breakdown, then head over to the SRP store and get yourself a copy of Nocturnal Omissions, his new book of poems co-authored with Eric Norris, another The Nervous Breakdown favorite.
0 Forthcoming Collective Brightness Events & Readings
10/07 Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas, Raney Building, 3:30pm
10/13 Metropolitan Community Church New York, 446 West 36th St, 6:30pm
10/15 William Way Community Center, 1315 Spruce St., Philadelphia, 3pm
10/15 Lit Crawl, Doc’s Clock, 2575 Mission St., San Francisco, 8:30pm
10/16 Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St. NW, Washington, DC, 5pm
10/17 Rutgers University, Department of English, Murray Hall, 7pm
10/19 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., New York, 6pm
10/21 London Buddhist Centre, London, 7:30pm
10/26 University Baptist Church in Dinkytown, Minneapolis, 7pm
11/05 Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, 2pm
11/10 Hormel Center, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., 6pm
3/22-25, Split This Rock Poetry Festival, Washington, DC, TBA
0 Collective Brightness Featured at THEthe Poetry
Great exchange between Christopher Phelps and Kevin Simmonds at THEthe Poetry! Check out their conversation by clicking here.
0 Assaracus – The Masthead Expands
I am pleased to announce that Kevin Simmonds is joining the Assaracus team as Associate Editor. Kevin is a San Francisco-based writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His writing appears in journals such as Asia Literary Review, Callaloo, jubilat, Kyoto Journal and Poetry. His music and performances have been featured on BBC Radio 3, PBS and Japan’s NHK Television and at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Japan’s Nakano Sun Plaza and the National Black Theatre Festival. feti(sh)ame, his genre-defying short film, based entirely on his poetry, has screened internationally and been hailed by Los Angeles film critic Ernest Hardy as “an elegantly profane meditation on desire.” Mad for Meat, his debut collection, is on its way soon from Salmon Poetry. In short, Kevin gets things done.
My relationship with Kevin is another connection made possible by the late John Stahle. I met Kevin while editing Ganymede Unfinished, and from that interaction, Kevin pitched me Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality. I’ve been consistently impressed by Kevin’s approach to the project, from his strict adherence to the poets’ formatting desires to his successful campaign to schedule Collective Brightness readings worldwide. But most importantly, Kevin and I share an appreciation for the art and possibility of poetry. Sibling Rivalry Press and Assaracus are lucky to have him.
Look for his first contributions to the journal in January’s issue.
- Bryan
4 Guest Blog: D. Gilson on SUBMISSION
I’ve been thinking about submission lately. As in Paul whipped Larry into submission, not I need to send out more poetry submissions. In a recent GOP debate, Bryon York raised the subject with Minnesota Representative and presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann:
“When you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained the Lord said, ‘Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.’ As president, would you be submissive to your husband?”
Immediately, the audience booed York and Bachmann was able to gloss over the legitimate question. I say legitimate because in this case yes, the public has the right, nay, the need, to know. If President Bachmann were to seek advice from her husband on a subject he has strong feelings about—LGBT rights, let’s say—would she automatically submit to his authority as husband? The game of who is to submit to whom may be fun on a Friday night down at your local leather bar, but decidedly less so when it comes to presidential politics.
What does this have to do with poets?
As queer people, and especially as queer writers, we are all familiar with constant, forced submission to a hetero-normative society. Our writing hasn’t been and won’t be the sole solution to this “othering,” to this relegation to second-class citizenry. But, it is part of the solution; art is a necessary part of the solution, and we’re fortunate to have the obligation every day to fight against unwilling submission in our poetry, to show the world that our lives and our loves are not only legitimate, but also beautiful. Maybe this is obvious, and others have said it more eloquently than I, but it warrants repeating often.
To the poets who have come before, from Whitman to Bishop, from O’Hara to Gunn, thank you for wielding a machete and clearing a path for the rest of us. To the poets writing today and tomorrow: write the fucking poems. Let them be born of your very lifeblood. Save the world. Or at least write the world we all dream of.
Submission takes many forms, some of which are fun. Rihanna’s “S&M” is certainly irresistible, and as social chair for Proud Otters of America, I can tell you submission has its place. The submission we choose, however, is different than the submission we don’t. Just remember—you are required to submit to no one except the art before you.
—D. Gilson
D. Gilson is a teaching fellow at Chatham University. A queer boy from the Ozark Mountains, his writing is forthcoming in Assaracus and can be found in Moon City Review, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.
Follow him at twitter.com/dgilson.
