I have strong opinions about art and about publishing, and while it can sometimes be difficult to get people’s attention, I do believe that one can build a devoted, engaged community around a press, just as punk rock communities often coalesce around a particularly beloved venue.
While I can admire perfection, not only can I not achieve it, but it isn’t something I can engage with. The perfect poem or piece of art is on a pedestal. I am interested in text and art that rolls around in the dirt and plays.
I want the press to have a sense of immediacy vital to a small-ish, specific contemporary reading audience that seeks literature with a what I call a visceral-mystical aesthetic—work that seeks a way to engage the big questions by examining the particular leaky, fleshy, grotesque difficulties, embarrassments, and traumas of being embodied.
co•im•press’s closest influences are Action Books, Black Ocean, Noemi Press, Spork, Birds of Lace, Fence, and Tarpaulin Sky. The editorial perspective of the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas is also a significant influence (Roberto Tejada, Kristin Dykstra, and Gabriel Bernal Granados, editors). I worked on production and marketing/distribution for Mandorla from 2009 to 2013 via Illinois State University’s Publications Unit, and through that work, I also learned of its forerunner in spirit, El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn (Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragon, editors; there is a really great documentary on The Plumed Horn, too). I admire the way Mandorla’s editors and contributing editors created an open, networked community of writers across languages, borders, hemispheres, which can be divisive elements if we let them. Working with Kristin Dykstra when she was at ISU, I learned: that publishing can be a political act, to respect translators as much as authors, and the importance of translation as an art and practice. I also became attuned to the shameful dearth of translated works published in the US.
One idea we’re kicking around is an anthology centered on politics, information freedom, and data dissemination. Chelsea Manning would write the introduction, and it would be printed entirely on transparent Mylar sheets. In the meantime, we intend to publish more chapbooks and pursue visual/hybrid content for our online plexus, so we encourage anyone reading to send work.