“Joanne Kyger: Post-Life” is excerpted from an alphabet book of post avant glosa by Canadian poet Stephen Bett. Broken Glosa takes the “glosa,” a Renaissance Spanish Court form, and breaks it down to its contemporary essentials―fractured forms for fractured times and alternate realities―riffing on postmodernist and post-postmodernist poets. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of 50 longsheets on pewter Skytone paper, available now from our online Store, and you can read Bett’s gloss on Kyger’s “Post Extinction” by following the link below.
Fiction Chapbook - The Weight of Skin by Brandon Teigland
A former poet laureate reads her most controversial poem yet at a protest for the removal of a colonial statue deemed racist, but the demonstration takes a turn for the worse when the Proud Boys arrive. The Weight of Skin is the gripping and (tragically) urgent story of home-grown Canadian xenophobia as told from three different perspectives. The Blasted Tree has published a limited edition of 50 hand-bound chapbooks featuring The Weight of Skin, each produced using three types of paper (one for each narrator: granite-grey stationary, red card stock, and white onionskin) and bound in black fabric. Brandon Teigland’s story can be read by following the link below, and copies of the chapbook can be purchased from our online store.
READ THE WEIGHT OF SKIN
Poetry Chapbook - squared by andrew topel
squared is a kaleidoscopic sampling of abstract visual poetry by the prolific andrew topel. These poems riff on, challenge, even embrace the square frames they live within. Typography spills, explodes, and realigns on every page, giving form to expression through gesture and weight, communicating in composition what cannot be said aloud. squared has been published in a limited edition of 50 numbered and hand-bound chapbooks, each bearing its own unique cover made with dry transfer lettering. The collection can be viewed online in the image gallery using the link below, and one-of-a-kind copies of the chapbook can be purchased from The Blasted Tree Store.
VIEW SQUARED
Poetry Scroll - A Good Man is Hard to Find by Katerina Sevelka
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a lyric poem that shifts though perspectives like reflections in a mirror. This publication marks Katerina Sevelka’s third with The Blasted Tree, and has been produced in a limited run of 60 scrolls, 4.25” x 0.5” bound up in electrical tape, and 4.25” x 14” unfurled. 10% of the edition is bound in red tape, symbolizing the rare man reflected in the poem. Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” online, then purchase the scroll from our online Store.
READ A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
Poetry Broadsides - O/Ô by Aaron Tucker
Visual poetry by Aaron Tucker, O/Ô uses the Google translate camera function to translate the French and English Hansard proceedings for the day that O Canada/Ô Canada was officially adopted as the Canadian national anthem. As concrete poetry, as photographs, as computer layering, language layering, these pieces reflect the quest to form a national identity through the languages spoken and not spoken or translated. O/Ô has been produced in a limited edition of 40 sets of two 11” x 17” broadsides, and each individual broadside features a pair of images translated from the Hansard in either of our two official languages.
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Poetry Chapbook - The Landscape We Left on Each Other by Lauren Elle DeGaine
At once familiar and foreign, intimate and distant, this collection of poems by Lauren Elle DeGaine follows the ebb and flow of a romantic relationship full of quiet, tender moments and sudden, frightening conflict. DeGaine employs recurring images, feelings, and impressions to reveal the spiraling circuits we all travel with those we hold most dear, exploring the poetics of love, loss, trajectory, and intersection; “the tear — an ache — not an explanation.” A limited edition of 40 chapbooks have been produced, each bound in hand-made, sage green paper, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
READ THE LANDSCAPE WE LEFT ON EACH OTHER
Black Square #1 by derek beaulieu
Constructed from layered up Letraset transfers, Black Square #1 is typographic topography, an exploration of texture and shade, and the geometry of precision and error. The Blasted Tree has produced three limited editions of this visual poem by derek beaulieu at various sizes, each highlighting particular aspects of the work - 50 leaflets printed at scale show how the square looks to the unassisted eye, 10 numbered and signed artist prints magnify and reveal surprising details, and 100 mini-leaflets reduce the image to its superficial geometry. Black Square #1 can be viewed at a high resolution using the link below, and each of the three printed formats are available from our online Store.
View Black Square #1
Poetry Leaflet - The Crows by Anthony Etherin
Often considered portents of doom, three crows can also signal change, transformation, and rebirth. These three poems (a murder of sorts) transition from one constraint to another; a palindrome, a monometer sonnet, and a perfect anagram by line. The Crows is Anthony Etherin's second outing with The Blasted Tree, and we've produced a limited edition of 50 leaflets to mark the occasion. Read the trio online, then stop by our Store for your copy of the 4" x 9" leaflet, printed black on black with a bright yellow interior.
Read The Crows
Poetry Booklet - Sovereignty by Franco Cortese
"Sovereignty" is one of those magic words packed full of anagrammatic possibility. Each of the poems in this six-part series by Franco Cortese are line-by-line anagrams of the titular noun. All six are also subject to additional constraints: they must begin in the form of "ye ___ ___", and refer at least once to each of the following topics/themes: sex, death/decay, vegetation and language/text, in one form or another. Sixty 3" x 4" purple and gold booklets featuring the series have been produced, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
Read Sovereignty
Poetry Broadside - Surround Sound by Nathan Austin
A suite of glitch poems by Nathan Austin sampling bits of failed optical character recognition from Google’s search results. OCR is meant to identify printed characters using a scanner and computer software, which proves more difficult in practice than in principle. The poems that comprise “Surround Sound” come from an article about composer Eliane Radigue, originally published in frieze magazine in 2011. The suite as presented by the author appears in the online gallery, and a limited edition of 11" x 17" broadsides featuring the series can be purchased from The Blasted Tree's store.