Horse Less Press

There’s a lovely interview between rob mclennan and Pattie McCarthy over at Touch the Donkey’s blog, in which she speaks a little about nulls:

Nulls mostly came out of my process of learning about autism— it is most definitely not about the experience of being autistic, because I don’t know what that is like— it’s about learning a new language, a new history, a new culture. I thought there was a sliver of space in which I could write that book, & I hope I successfully maintained that position throughout. Do I think there are ethical & empathetic ways to include the words & experiences & worlds of our children in our work? Yes. Do I always succeed in being ethical & empathetic about it? No. I know I do not. But I hope I treat them as worthy collaborators always.

Horse Less Press and John Duvernoy’s book SOMETHING IN THE WAY // OBSTRUCTION BLUES get a nice mention by Laura Schadler at KQED’s Pop Blog:

Maybe it’s the cumulative alchemy of all these written words appearing in tangible form on my doorstep lately, but I’m starting to feel like there are choices I can make as a reader and consumer that matter. Horse Less is a small press that often relies on pre-orders to make its books a reality, creating a direct and essential relationship between the publisher, writer and audience. John is an old friend, and his email that informed me of his exciting publication news and how to pre-order his book sat in my inbox for a while. It seemed tricky. I had to go to a website that wasn’t Amazon and I had to buy the book and then wait many months for it to arrive. But I’m so glad I figured it out because when it finally did arrive, it made my brain feel like someone set a firecracker off inside it (in a good way). I read it in one sitting, turning back to certain lines again and again. It occurred to me that I would like my brain to feel like firecrackers are going off inside it more often. Also, in some small way, I helped this beautiful thing exist, which made reading it all the more special.

Summer crept in, and I have been remiss in keeping you updated. In the last week or two, some great reviews of horse less books have materialized on the internet. Check out Connor Childers’ review of Tim Earley’s POEMS DESCRIPTIVE OF RURAL LIFE AND SCENERY, Christopher Margolin’s review of Jenny Drai’s :: BODY WOLF ::, and Dave Wheeler’s review of John Duvernoy’s SOMETHING IN THE WAY // OBSTRUCTION BLUES. Thanks, y’all! We’re happy to send out review copies to interested parties, and we’d especially love to see more reviews by women. Be in touch with jen.tynes@gmail.com if you’re interested!

We’ve finally gotten the bulk of our pre-orders in the mail, and John Duvernoy’s fabulous new book SOMETHING IN THE WAY // OBSTRUCTION BLUES is now available from our website! If you’d rather, you can also pick up a copy via SPD! Hallelujah!

Horse Less author Scott Hammer has a new chapbook, BRUTE SPHINX, forthcoming from SOLAR LUXURIANCE next month. You can see the trailer he made for it here. Hammer’s horse less press chapbook, SOME BODY SOME HOLLOW, is still available from our catalog!

New to the catalog: DILLINGER ON THE BEACH by Kris Hall! You can order it via Paypal.

Timothy Liu reviewed Tim Earley’s Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery at Coldfront today, and some of Nikki Wallschlaeger’s new sonnets are featured at THEthe Poetry Blog. We love alla this.

Friends, we are so happy to announce our full-length print book catalog for 2015. From our open reading period, we chose two manuscripts:

The Jitters by Anne Cecelia Holmes

Here You Are by Sara Peck and Jared Joseph

In 2015 we will also be publishing two manuscripts we solicited from two favorite writers already known to us:

Houses by Nikki Wallschlaeger

Every Living One by Nathan Hauke

I am happy to say that our Kickstarter campaign has broken the $2400 mark which means, as promised, we will also be releasing a full-length e-book next year; I will update you on that as soon as we’ve made a final decision! There are still 36 more hours left for our Kickstarter campaign; if you want to pre-order Jessica Comola’s chapbook What Kind of Howly Divine, pick up a subscription, or generally show your love, you can still do that! We appreciate you all so very very much and are so excited by all the poetry we have gotten to read and are going to get to help share with the world.

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent us work and supported our press by buying books and making contributions through Kickstarter. We have chosen four full-length books to publish in 2015, which we will be announcing shortly. We would REALLY like to publish a fifth book as an e-book, but that depends on you. We can only make that happen if our Kickstarter earns $2400. We’re only $202 short, and we’ve got 55 hours left to go. If you haven’t gotten a subscription yet, please buy some fabulous poetry and help us expand our 2015 catalog! We are so excited to make as much poetry happen as possible!

Did you know that Kate Schapira is talking with us about the changing world?

Did you know that Kate Schapira is thinking about sentences? In the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter, she writes:

At home, I try to make some words do what I want. Then I try to let the words do what they want. Both feel strange, maybe because only one of us can “want” anything. But words do demonstrably have both their own meanings—resonances, echoes, histories, possibilities and waveforms proper to each—and the meanings they generate in their interactions with each other, the buzzing and yearning set up as their forms overlap, pushing and pulling on one another.

Where does a sentence lead?

Did you know that you can still get a copy of Kate Schapira’s fabulous book THE SOFT PLACE for $15 via our Kickstarter campaign? Just choose the first $15 reward, “Receive one copy of any full-length book in our current catalog.”