In the early months of 2017, we were discussing how often writers of formal or experimental poetry in Canada had to go through a man to publish a chapbook of experimental literature. We wanted to provide a space for writers to publish experimental, formal, political, feminist, or genre-blurring poetry that wasn’t governed by a dude.
We do a lot of work behind the scenes, but the writers create the work so they deserve the most credit and profit for it. They are the reason we even have a project to work on in the first place.
Over time, The Blasted Tree has increasingly featured odd and eccentric content that just doesn’t seem to belong elsewhere, projects that beg for an out-of-the-box take on publication format or materials.
Website Submission Guidelines Interview with Josh Dale, Editor-in-Chief How did Thirty West Publishing House start? It was in my 3rd year of undergrad at Temple University. I recently switched my…
In a way I think writing is really a more fluid part of reading/thinking/living, which shouldn’t be as limited as it is by the fairly extreme expectations and rules our culture has about publication.
“I strive to incorporate the practice of meditation throughout the entire publishing process. Poetry and books are patient, waiting to be created and read, so we attempt to work and grow like a small but well-tended garden. We search for flowers. We try to subvert the hurry of everything around us. I don’t have a car, so when it’s time to deliver chapbooks, I walk on a trail to the post office and look at trees as I follow the creek that runs through our town.”
At CWP we hand-make our chapbooks and own the means of production. We do not outsource our printing. Each chapbook we publish is printed, folded, assembled, and stapled or sewn by us. We commission artwork from artists for book covers. Our primary goal is to keep the art of the chapbook alive in tandem with building community.
Our influences include: punk music, sustainable agriculture, Final Fantasy VII, our two cats, our friends, drinking in backyards, pizza / bookmaking parties, etc.
in my opinion, the small press gift economy is one that fosters good will within the community. we look to each other as our first readers, our first editors—with a sense of trust and generosity.
VA is more interested in writers who create impressionable images with their words. So, rather than try and break into a market to which we don’t relate, we’re creating our own and shoving it in people’s faces everywhere we can from house parties to barroom readings to your more predictable bookstore settings.
My parting words for anyone interested in publishing books: always trust your gut; prepare to spend a lot of money and make none in return; assume that you will experience some major setbacks; accept that you will disappoint others despite your best efforts to please everyone. If you still want to publish books after taking all of this into consideration, you are doing it for the right reasons, and you’ll likely be thrilled, just as we are, to publish titles that deserve to be distributed the world over.
The birds in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights are an influence. 0 to 9 is an influence. Birds, LLC is an influence. Fuck You is an influence. Getting kicked out of many bars and clubs in New York in the late 90s is an influence. [out of nothing] is an influence. Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters are an influence. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love is an influence. The joy on my children’s faces as they dance to a Flo Rida song is an influence. d.a. levy is an influence. “Not Knowing” is an influence. Being in a grindcore band when I was 14 is an influence. The video for “Genius of Love” is an influence. You are an influence, as are all of our beautiful friends.
We are as delighted to publish a single sentence as we are in publishing a novel-length work. What matters is language, playfulness, openness to the encounter, the way it creates a space that’s very much its own. In this way we envision the process of bookmaking as creating a physical space for the words, where the book is not just a repository or vehicle for these words but is considered just as essential to the work. The materials at hand (whatever we can afford), the printing process, and the text itself are the major influence on the aesthetic of our projects.
We have just been working with the bass player Jørn Stubberud (also known as “Necrobutcher”) of a legendary Norwegian Black Metal band called Mayhem. He wrote an illustrated autobiography and we are his English publishers. The book is called “The Death Archives: 1984-94.” It is very dear to us.