The Dredge Cycle

If you're reading this, thanks

It’s been four months of broad­sides, and I’m find­ing I really enjoy the rit­ual of prepar­ing and releas­ing them. Not to men­tion giv­ing one or two away every month. They give some of the Fresh­wa­ter poems new life, set to an image or tex­ture. So a full 6 hours before you were expect­ing it (you were totally expect­ing it) I’m post­ing July’s broad­side, right here. For you. Thanks for read­ing about my lit­tle bizarro home­town. Every day the Cycle creeps a lit­tle closer to publication,…

This Month's Broadside Winners

Because it makes me sad to choose among peo­ple mak­ing the dis­cus­sion hap­pen, and inter­est­ing, I’m gonna choose up to two peo­ple every month. This month’s win­ners are listed on the face­book page. Mean­while, you can grab a copy of “Hun­newell Field Base­ball Dia­mond” just as soon as you like, by click­ing on the image above. Happy May Day!

All the Books You Meant to Read

A month back I promised myself I’d read every­thing I’ve col­lected so far for the this project. I’ve top­pled The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger Man­u­scripts, I’m halfway into Sin­clair Lewis’s Main Street, Cary Nelson’s Repres­sion and Recov­ery and Karyna McGlynn’s I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl. The first isn’t grab­bing me yet, the second’s like shav­ing with a cheese grater, and the latter’s giv­ing me more trou­ble than I antic­i­pated. It’s a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing. These two weeks are the pre-​​​​press crunch for…

AWP2010 Photos

About 50 of ‘em, includ­ing a bunch of my favorite tables. These were pre­vi­ously on Face­book, but fuck facebook.

Interdimensional

First, a new broad­side is up at Face­book. Head over and grab your free poem! Sec­ond, I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about the broth­ers of Fresh­wa­ter Dredge and Well­wa­ter Dredge. I tend to think of them not only as real peo­ple, but liv­ing in a dimen­sion par­al­lel to ours. Though they’re the same age, one grows up in the 80s, the other in the 60s. Of course it hap­pened by what we might call the Clarke-​​​​Twain Prin­ci­ple of revi­sion. Beside all their other uncon­ven­tional inter­ac­tion with…

The First Broadside is up at Facebook

Just a lit­tle FYI for those of you not yet fol­low­ing mat­ters on Face­book: If you’re a fan, you can go ahead and down­load this guy right now from the Broad­sides tab at the top of the page. Oth­er­wise, join up and claim your loot! Monthly draw­ings for a free signed print, deliv­ered right to your door, will begin April 2. Be sure you’re pay­ing attention!

Drawings!

I appre­ci­ate you. Yes, sin­gu­larly you. You’re read­ing this post, aren’t you? You’re curi­ous about the book, fol­low­ing some of my thoughts about it, and I want to say thanks. Begin­ning Mon­day I’ll be post­ing occa­sional broad­sides of poems from Fresh­wa­ter Dredge on the Face­book fan page. If you’re a fan, you can down­load them imme­di­ately from a box on the left; oth­er­wise, fan the page and pick it up. From me to you, as a token of appre­ci­a­tion for your inter­est and sup­port. Once…

Updates

I’m find­ing myself swamped with design work, so light fare tonight. Real post soon. · AWP is a go. High prob­a­bil­ity of rolling up with more Albu­querque folks than I’d thought, which’d be awe­some. Any of you be in atten­dance? · Almost done with The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger Man­u­scripts. Once I’ve col­lected my first batch of thoughts, this is the first place I’ll unload ‘em. Twain’s a badass. It’s been a real plea­sure. · Cos­metic improve­ments around here, includ­ing a new ban­ner and rearranged side­bar. Do let…

To AWP or not to AWP?

An oppor­tu­nity has appeared to hop a wagon to AWP in Den­ver. The trip would be far from cheap, and would delay the sub­mis­sion of the man­u­script another two months  –  but could put me in touch with the edi­tors who’d be read­ing it ini­tially. Seems a gam­ble, and where it may not pay off in the short term, it’s hard to gauge how far the net­work­ing effect could reach. The pro-​​​​column: The poten­tial to grease the rails for pub­li­ca­tion. I could use another six weeks to begin…

First Readers' Copies in the Mail

There’s lit­tle more ter­ri­fy­ing than putting your money where you’re mouth is. That is, if you’ve printed your own cur­rency and believe so strongly in its worth you’re con­vinced oth­ers will, too. Yes­ter­day I mailed four copies of the book to four spe­cial peo­ple. Today I col­lect another six from the book press, jet­ti­son them into the cur­rents of the postal sys­tem, begin wrap­ping the final eleven. In all, I hope for four­teen read­ers; I expect more like ten. It’s been fun find­ing peo­ple both demo­graph­i­cally unrelated…