Poetry Poster - night demo IV (tear gas) by Tara McGowan-Ross

In celebration of our 100th print publication, The Blasted Tree is pleased to reissue our very favourite poem, “night demo IV (tear gas)” by Tara McGowan-Ross. Part protest chant, part concrete poem, “night demo IV”—which originally appeared in McGowan-Ross’ 2016 collection Girth—has be redesigned using collage and photocopier techniques to resemble a demonstration advancing down a street. The Blasted Tree has produced an edition of one hundred 11” x 17” posters, available by donation in our online store.

Read Night Demo iv (tear gas)

100% of the proceeds from posters sales will be donated to Lambda Literary, an organization supporting LGBTQ books and authors.

Poetry Longsheet - SAINTLYLIMB by Jun-long Lee

A four-part poem by Jun-long Lee on illness, compassion, and the body as a vessel, “SAINTLYLIMB” works at the painful hinge of flesh and spirit. “I look at the sinless,” Lee declares; “pure watching makes the hands clear (the hands fat with light).” The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of 60 longsheets on cream linen paper, available now from The Blasted Tree store, and “SAINTLYLIMB” can be read online by following the link below.

Read saintlylimb

Poetry Chapbook - UMO by Sacha Archer

A sound poem based on an erasure, UMO is Sacha Archer’s third chapbook published by The Blasted Tree. After treating a children’s book about an elephant to the prisoner’s constraint via a process of selective erasure (an artist’s book project undertaken in 2018), Archer was left with a long poem entirely composed of words without ascenders or descenders. This sound poem has been printed on grey paper and bound into tall and skinny chapbooks (4.5” x 11.5”) in circus red cover stock. A limited edition of 60 chapbooks is now available from The Blasted Tree Store, and you can read the poem online following the link below.

READ UMO

Poetry Leaflet - Common Stock by Tom Prime

“Common Stock” is a selection of three visual poems by Tom Prime, each with an MS Paint-meets-early-internet aesthetic belying their serious meditations on personal worth, calculation, and sexual trauma. This selection has been produced as a set of three leaflets, each printed on white card stock and bound in a 9” x 6” black envelope with a metal clasp closure. A limited edition of 50 copies of “Common Stock” is available in The Blasted Tree’s online store, and you can read each of the three poems using the link below.

Read Common Stock

Poetry Chapbook - Without Form by Ben Robinson

Without Form is a meticulous erasure of the Holy Bible, only its chapter and verse notation spared by repeat Blasted Tree contributor Ben Robinson. This ambitious visual poetry project encompasses all sixty-six books of the Bible—over one thousand pages—published in print in its entirety and animated for easy online viewing. The Blasted Tree has made each biblical book (“Genesis,” “Exodus,” etc.) into its own chapbook, some upwards of fifty pages long, others just a single page, all bound into white card stock and a tissue paper flyleaf with white thread and an ultra-minimal dust jacket, every cover unique, and only one of each chapbook produced. View the animated poem as an amorphous field of numerals by following the link below, and copies of our limited edition chapbooks are in The Blasted Tree Store.

VIEW Without form

Objet Littéraire - Purple Rain: 100 petals for Kate Siklosi by Kyle Flemmer

An unconventional objet littéraire celebrating the creative kinships fostered between like-minded visual poets and publishers. Over the summer of 2020, The Blasted Tree's Kyle Flemmer collected and pressed 100 petals as they fell from the vines of his Clematis Etiole Violette. Each petal is numbered with archival gold ink, preserved in a small plastic sleeve, and accompanied by a letter printed on ivory linen paper. The resulting objet is presented in a dark purple envelope, itself numbered in gold, available now in The Blasted Tree Store.

View Purple Rain: 100 petals for Kate Siklosi

Poetry Leaflet - The Hostage Tells a Love Story by Shane Neilson

A lyric poem exploring the inter-generational legacy of mental illness, and how it colours relationships both within and exterior to the family. Shane Neilson handles this troubling inheritance with an aching tenderness and clear-eyed grace, telling a story of love in the face of frightening unpredictability. The Blasted Tree has released a limited edition of fifty 9” x 6” leaflets on ivory linen paper bound in black string-and-button closure envelopes. You can read “The Hostage Tells a Love Story” online, and copies of the leaflet are available for purchase from The Blasted Tree Store.

READ THE HOSTAGE TELLS A LOVE STORY

Poetry leaflet - oleander 7 by Catherine Vidler

Zigzagging lines draw your eye through this kaleidoscope visual poem of natural and diagrammatic imagery. One of her many experiments with symmetry and synecdoche, "oleander 7" is by repeat Blasted Tree contributor Catherine Vidler. An edition of sixty 4.75” x 4.25” leaflets featuring the floral poem have been produced on glossy photo paper set into card stock covers. “oleander 7” can be viewed online and copies of the leaflet are in The Blasted Tree Store.

view oleander 7

FLASH HAIKU - Rob Taylor

The winner of The Blasted Tree's sixth flash haiku contest, held on social media over Labour Day long weekend, is Rob Taylor! We've published the haiku into 2.5" x 2.5" mini-leaflets in a limited run of 75 copies. Rob’s poem was selected for it’s simple, domestic imagery, unfolding across generations through currents of life, death, and primordial language. Copies of the haiku are available from The Blasted Tree Store on granite-grey paper.

BUY FLASH HAIKU: ROB TAYLOR MINI-LEAFLET

Quite a few exceptional entries came in this time, so we are awarding two runner up prizes and a bunch of honourable mentions. Congrats to Mark Laliberte and Catherine Vidler, whose visual haiku entries earned them Blasted Tree book bundle prizes! You can see their kick-ass poems on our Instagram story for the next 24 hours. Shout-outs also to Mandy Alzner, Gary Barwin, Amanda Earl, Khashayar Mohammadi, and mwpm, who also entered stand-out poems. Honestly, we could go on and on, so thank you to everybody who participated in the contest!

Poetry Chapbook - What the Barn Can't Kill by Jerrod Schwarz

Within a body of agribusiness texts — abattoir equipment manuals, butchery textbooks, and rancher’s almanacs — lie the bones of a slaughterhouse poetics. In What the Barn Can’t Kill, Jerrod Schwarz extracts those bones through a process of digital erasure, revealing a haunting collection of visual poems, hidden until now behind a locked barn door. The Blasted Tree has published a limited edition of sixty chapbooks printed on recycled newsprint paper and bound in hand-stamped covers, each one unique. View the collection in the gallery below, chapbooks can be found in our online store.

VIEW WHAT THE BARN CAN’T KILL