Reading this collection feels like walking through a post-apocalyptic world where the sounds of torture are mistaken for orgasm, and vise versa: “Everything’s An Orgasm–Growling Frozen–/Mauled & Writhing–Furious & Ecstatic As We–Sail On.” 

Read the review in full here.

We are thrilled to announce that Fjords Vol. 1 by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean 2012) has been slected for the 2013 Oregon Book Award: Stafford Hall Award for Poetry. View the full list of winners HERE!

In selecting Fjords Vol. 1, Judge Mary Jo Bang remarked: 

Perhaps it’s the odd deadpan-earnest tone the speaker uses to address those large lyric subjects—love, death, and the changing of seasons (which is, yes, simply death by another name)—that makes these small prose poems so distinctive, and so convincing. Who would say “From the very beginning, I knew exactly what would kill me” if he or she didn’t mean for such a statement, which openly flaunts its implausibility, to speak figuratively about something much larger than itself. Each of these poems is more than the language with which it’s been constructed. Each is a seedling that is meant to become a full-fledged allegory not on the page, but in the reader’s imagination. Schomburg intuitively knows exactly how much, and how little, it takes to conjure a sense of the ever-puzzling world. He leaves it to the reader to make use of the material he provides. I for one delight in that freedom.

Haven't read Fjords Vol. 1 yet? Visit the catalog page here.

Wednesday, April 3, 5:00 pm @ Brix Cheese Shop and Wine Bar The
Tuesday Agency Presents: Writing Industry Roundtable
Editors Roxane Gay ([PANK] Magazine) and Janaka Stucky (Black Ocean) join Trinity Ray of the Iowa City-based Tuesday Agency (Speaking agents representing Colson Whitehead, Ann Patchett, Khaled Hosseini, Jon Ronson & more) to talk all things writing industry, publishing, and public sphere.

Wednesday, April 3, 9:00 pm @ The Mill
Michael Zapruder's Pink Thunder
Pink Thunder is a record. Pink Thunder is a book of poems. Pink Thunder is an art show featuring the work of 23 poets, illustrated and hand-lettered, and all set to music. A collaboration between the poets (such as D.A. Powell, David Berman, Matthew Zapruder, Joshua Beckman, Matthew Rohrer, James Tate, Mary Ruefle, Dara Weir & more), and musician Michael Zapruder, Pink Thunder will be read and performed at Mission Creek Festival. Readings by Black Ocean Editor Janaka Stucky will accompany Michael’s performance. Iowa band Christopher the Conquered will open, and support.

Friday, April 5, 7:00 @ Foxhead, Clinton Street Social Club
Lit Crawl Iowa City: Round 3: Black Ocean & Spork Press
Featuring readings by: Feng Sun Chen, Amelia Gray, Aase Berg (in person all the way from Sweden!), Steve Roggenbuck, Rauan Klassnik, Thea Brown and Grant Souders.

Saturday, April 6, 11:00a – 6:00p @ The Mill
4th Annual Small Press and Literary Journal Book Fair (with New Belgium Beer)
Presses large and small, literary magazines in print and online, from all corners of the U.S., once again gather at The Mill to sell some of the most exciting books being published today. Publishers and Editors will be on hand from Granta Magazine, n+1, Cave Canem, A Strange Object, Milkweed Editions, Vice Magazine, Coffee House Press, [PANK] Magazine, POETRY Magazine, Sarabande Books, Dzanc Books, The Collagist, Spork Press, Black Ocean, Forklift Ohio, H_NGM_N, Rescue Press, Birds LLC, MAKE Magazine, Hobart, Perfect Day Publishing, jubilat, Canarium Books, Black Clock, draft: the journal of process, The Iowa Review, UI Press, Wag’s Revue, The Doctor T.J. Eckleberg Review, Autumn Hill Books, The Examined Life, Ninth Letter, and many, many more. And once again, New Belgium Brewery will be handing out a selection of their newest brews.

Opening: March 22, 2013 7-10pm 
Performance: March 30, 2013 7pm
Gallery hours: March 22-April 12, M-F (by appointment)

Rational Park is excited to host 22 portmanteaus, each containing a song from the album Pink Thunder—a collection of free-verse pop art-songs, including contributions from 23 poets, three engineers, and a few dozen musicians.

What began as a bus tour that brought together hundreds of American poets has been recorded and remixed into a potent collection of poem-songs. Pink Thunder features instrumental contributions from over forty musicians and poems from Noelle Kocot, James Tate, Bob Hicok, Mary Ruefle, D.A. Powell, Dara Wier, Joshua Beckman, and Valzhyna Mort.  The album was released on October 16, 2012 via The Kora Records.

Friday, March 22 from 7-10, we invite you to view and listen to each portmanteau. These unique pieces, which combine sculpture and sound, are equipped with headphones for your listening pleasure.

On Saturday, March 30, you’ll be able to follow-up your experience with a live performance by Michael Zapruder and friends at Rational Park. Watch the video for the song Florida

Tuesday, April 2 takes us offsite to presenting partners, Danny’s Reading Series.  At Danny’s Tavern, 1951 W. Dickens Ave, 7:30pm sharp, Zapruder will be joined by Billy Blake and the Vagabonds members, Kennedy Greenrod and Reid Coker. Each will perform a few songs from their recent albums, and then answer questions about blending poetry and songwriting. Hosted by Joel Craig and Fred Sasaki.

Rational Park
2557 W North Ave.

This event is being presented by Black Ocean, Danny’s Reading Series, Rational Park, and MAKE Literary Productions.

The tour continues to expand with new dates added. Here is the most recent schedule from Brandon Shimoda's blog (and some handsome photos as well): 

Clockwise, left-to-right: Schomburg, Devota, Shimoda, Wilkinson

March 12, New York, New York—Triptych Reading Series @ Envoy Enterprises, 7:30 pm—with Dot Devota, James Gendron, Amy Lawless, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Mathias Svalina

March 18, Paris, France—Spoken Word Paris @ Au Chat Noir, 9 pm—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg, Brandon Shimoda, Joshua Marie Wilkinson & various rabble …

March 19, Paris, France—IVY Writers Paris @ Cafe Delaville, 7:30 pm—with Dot Devota, Paul Laborde, Virginie Poitrasson, Martin Richet, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 22, Mulhouse, France—Universite de Haute Alsace—with Dot Devota, Jennifer K. Dick, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 22, Mulhouse, France—The Book Corner—with Dot Devota, Jennifer K. Dick, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 23, Basel, Switzerland—Elaine MGK, Museum für Gegenwartskunst—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 24, Zurich, Switzerland—Cabaret Voltaire, 5 pm—with Dot Devota, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 25, Berlin, German—Saint George’s, 8:30 pm—with Dot Devota, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and special guest hosts Christian Hawkey & Donna Stonecipher

March 27, Amsterdam, Holland—Versal/This Is Not A Reading Series @ Lost Property, 7:30 pm—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

March 29, Brussels, Belgium—International School of Brussels—with Dot Devota, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

From Schomburg's blog, The Lovely Arc:

3/18, Paris, France—Spoken Word Paris @ Au Chat Noir, 9 pm—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg, Joshua Marie Wilkinson & various rabble …

3/19, Paris, France—IVY Writers Paris @ Cafe Delaville, 7:30 pm—with Dot Devota, Paul Laborde, Virginie Poitrasson, Martin Richet, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

3/23, Basel, Switzerland—Elaine MGK, Museum für Gegenwartskunst—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

3/24, Zurich, Switzerland—Cabaret Voltaire—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

3/27, Amsterdam, Holland—Versal/This Is Not A Reading Series—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

3/29, Brussels, Belgium—International School of Brussels—with Dot Devota, Zachary Schomburg & Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

On Thursday, March 7, from 6p-8p we're co-hosting our first party: No Thousands: an Indie Press event (Part 1), with 1913, Action Books, Black Ocean, Octopus Books and Poor Claudia. Nine ground-breaking poets from around the world will be reading short samples from their latest books.

On Friday, March 8, from 8p-1a we're co-hosting our second party: No Thousands: an Indie Press event (Part 2), with Black Ocean, McSweeney's and Wave Books. Seven cutting-edge American poets will be reading short samples from their latest books. Following the readings will be a live music performance by Michael Zapruder, playing songs from PINK THUNDER. The night will close with a dance party curated by Soulelujah DJs Claude Monet and Worth Wagers--spinning Soul, Funk and R&B vinyl 45s deep into the night!

Both venues have a full bar, and our Friday night venue serves up a great dinner menu with a number of locally sourced ingredients.

We hope to see many of you there!

You see, I can make small pieces. Sometimes those small pieces come decently formed into units, but sometimes also it takes a lot of work to make the units right. Then i have to arrange and sequence those units. This is what i’ve come to, what my brain/DNA/blah, blah has bequeathed to and imposed on me. My work’s evolved within this statuesque (ie, Holy Land is spare and pared down, also, but it’s also quite different from the new book) and i’ll have to see where i can take the stones and stony in my new book.

Yes, my poems are filled with death but they are filled also with bright, vivid and lively striving against that death. So, yes, life, decadent, and rotting, increasingly so. But, life. I have no problems with artists trying to impose on things, impose on their subjects, the words, their images, their readers even. In the end, really, artists are trying to enslave their subjects and their audiences. For a period, anyways. But I do feel like some artists are using the wrong chains and electrical boxes, the wrong chocolates and flowers, the wrong starvation, coaxing and rape techniques. The wrong sweet nothings. Certainly I am not real big on socially PC bullshit. Bringing that stuff to your art doesn’t seem, to me anyways, like a good idea.

Don't miss Joe Hall touring for his latest book from Black Ocean, The Devotional Poems, now available for pre-order. View the dates above, and save the date when it hits your town!

Dear People of the Future,

With your lightning powered aggregators, your nanomembranophones, your hydrolytic isomer skin-suit apparatus, it will require an imaginative leap wider than the great San Andreas Canyon that separates The People’s Republic of California from the once great nation of the “United” States to conceive of the cultural landscape in which Michael Zapruder’s Pink Thunder, which I recommend you ingest via light pulse array, was created.

And Rauan Klassnik is hailed "the Jim Jones of Poetry" for his latest Black Ocean title The Moon's Jaw, reviewed on Vice by Blake Butler:

Rauan Klassnik’s new book, The Moon’s Jaw, follows in the black trough of his first, appending the space there with something perhaps even more strangely pregnant. It’s full of knives and silk and peacocks and breast milk and ghosts and fetuses and orchards and wounds and girls and suns. It shifts continually between horny and cruel tones, meditative and exacting tones, stiff and puffy images, swallowed up somewhere in the space between all bodies, where nature mutates and crushes you and grinds against itself forever.

And in the realms of the real, the BASH reading series continues with its 8th installment on February 8 with Darcie Dennigan, Evan Glasson, and Christie Ann Reynolds in Brookline, MA. More info HERE.