"crystal and clay" is a selection of durational ecopoems from the series Interview with a River by multidisciplinary poet and geographer sophie anne edwards. The Blasted Tree presents two parts of her Interview series, each 'co-authored' by the river's natural processes, in a video poem and photo booklet. A numbered edition of one hundred, 5” x 8” hand-bound photo booklets are available now from The Blasted Tree Store, and you can watch the video poem version of “crystal and clay” following the link below.
Poetry Chapbook - gó go gó by Franco Cortese
gó go gó is a kaleidoscopic series of interlocking multilingual and visual poems, each derived from the chapbook’s titular poem, itself a densely multilingual lipogram of two-letter words ending in ‘o.’ By subjecting gó go gó to various methods of manual and automated translation - including verbatim, machine, and text-to-image procedures - experimental poet Franco Cortese pulls a seemingly nonsensical text through a series of sense-making operations, forging surprising new poems with each iteration. A limited edition of sixty 8” x 10.5” hand-bound chapbooks are available now from The Blasted Tree Store, and gó go gó can be read online using the link below.
READ gó go gó
Poetry Broadside - SUSTAINS APPETITE by Kevin Stebner
“SUSTAINS APPETITE" is excerpted from Kevin Stebner’s manuscript of Game Genie poems. Written entirely within the Nintendo peripheral UI, this series draws on a limited set of letters and word lengths to craft poems which very well could be Game Genie cheat codes. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of sixty 13.5” x 11” broadsides featuring “SUSTAINS APPETITE” on white card stock, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
READ SUSTAINS APPETITE
Fiction Chapbook - Mickey the Bricky by Jimmy T. Cahill
Things are looking up for punch-drunk prisoner Mickey the Bricky when he’s transferred from hard labour into The Gallery, a studio where inmates mass produce paintings for sale in department stores, that is, until the prison decides to modernize its operation, putting Mickey in danger of being left behind. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of 50 chapbooks featuring this equally colourful and tragic story by Jimmy T. Cahill, each printed on grey paper and bound in black card stock with an overhead projector transparency. Mickey the Bricky is available to purchase from our online store, and you can read the story online following the link below.
READ MICKEY THE BRICKY
Poetry Chapbook - Anonymous (Widow) Anonymous (Wife) by Natalie Simpson
A hybrid erasure/list poem by Natalie Simpson, Anonymous (Widow) Anonymous (Wife) names the 978 people identified as female in the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, a database listing every person recorded in written sources in England from the sixth to eleventh centuries, nearly 20,000 names in total. By singling out female names and occupations, Simpson highlights how very little we know about historical women relative to their male contemporaries. The Blasted Tree has produced a numbered edition of 4.75” x 3.75” chapbooks featuring the poem, each covered with mixed skin paper-parchement manufactured in Europe over a century ago, rivet-bound, and detailed with a deerskin leather thong, available now in our online Store.
READ ANONYMOUS (WIDOW) ANONYMOUS (WIFE)
FLASH HAIKU - derek beaulieu
The winner of The Blasted Tree's fifth flash haiku contest, held on social media earlier this week, is derek beaulieu! We've published the haiku into 2.5" x 2.5" mini-leaflets in a limited run of 60 copies. derek’s poem was selected for it’s unconventional approach to the form, electing to substitute syllables for Space Invaders descending in haiku formation. As always, selecting a winner was quite a challenge, and reading through the submissions really brightened our week, so thanks very much to everyone who participated in the contest! Copies of the haiku are available from The Blasted Tree Store on metallic grey paper.
BUY FLASH HAIKU: DEREK BEAULIEU MINI-LEAFLET
Poetry Longsheet - A Decision Re: Zurich by Ethan Vilu
Part lyric poem, part used book listing, “A Decision Re: Zurich” journeys through bookstores across Europe and North America, into cluttered basement curios where you’re as likely to find an apparition as an antiquarian treasure. Ethan Vilu hybridizes the personal and the public, one interjecting in the other, as private obsessions and concerns are wont to do. A limited edition of 50 longsheets featuring the poem have been produced on light blue Speckletone paper for the Starry Dynamo Arts Market in March, 2020, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
Read A Decision Re: Zurich
Poetry Artist Print - Book1 by Ramsey Hedayat
After a short conversation regarding visual poetry, asemic writing, and using computers to generate material for art, Ramsey Hedayat, accountant by trade, produced a spreadsheet that generates page-fulls of 8bit-looking lines of pseudotext. Using nothing but a random integer formula and conditional cell formatting, Hedayat’s spreadsheet can spit out a near-infinite number of unique pages. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of 40 signed and numbered artist prints, each featuring a one-of-a-kind visual poem from “Book1,” available now from our online Store.
VIEW book1
Poetry Leaflet - graphing our feelings by Barwin, et al.
A collaborative visual poem by Gary Barwin, derek beaulieu, Erin Brandt-Filliter, Kyle Flemmer, Helen Hajnoczky, and Kate Siklosi made with dry transfer lettering at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity on January 24, 2020. Six poets in arms overcame the Chartpak curse, hunger, and tiredness to graph their feelings in turn around an adult beverage or two. We’ve produced a limited edition of 50 leaflets featuring the visual poem on graph and photographic paper, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
VIEW graphing our feelings
Drama Chapbook - Rat Queen by Tyler Hayden
Our first foray into drama is a crass and cruel script by Calgary-based author Tyler Hayden. In Rat Queen, two lab rats joined at the tail must come to terms with their inevitable death(s)-by-starvation after having been abandoned in their cage. With only a water bottle of LSD left, can the rats’ newfound mental abilities avert disaster, or will they succumb to madness and an ignoble death? Rat Queen is Waiting for Godot beyond the pale, a mammalian romp through lust, boredom, hunger, horror, and hallucination. We’ve produced a limited edition of 40 chapbooks featuring the play, each bound in grey felt with a waxed pink yarn rat tail, available now from our online store.