Through a short series of lyric verse and prose poems, Al-Hashashin chronicles how the legendary Hashish Eaters militants filled their young recruits with religious fervour and intoxicants before sending them on suicide missions. Yusra Usmani reveals how closely akin the beauty of spiritual language is with its terrible power to enrapture and exploit: “One hand bible, one hand gun / Thy will be done, Thy will be done.” The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty hand-bound chapbooks printed on linen paper and bound into ivory parchment cover stock.
Visual Poetry Broadside - Punctuation Panorama by Michael Betancourt
With vector design software and a keen eye for typographic form, Michael Betancourt crafts intricate, interlocking visual poems composed of elements of letters and punctuation marks. Punctuation Panorama is a new typoem in the tradition of designers like Hansjorg Mayer and Norman Ives, a lineage founded in physical media and honed by contemporary computer application. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty 11” x 16” broadsides featuring the typoem, and copies can be purchased from our online store.
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Poetry Chapbook - Act 3: Vegetable Love by Tom Prime
A new chapbook of visual poetry by Tom Prime, Act 3: Vegetable Love delves deeper into the materials and processes of collage established in earlier iterations of Prime’s work. These mixed-media poems combine office supplies and printouts into chaotic, overlapping compositions of text, paper, and ink. The Blasted Tree has produced 9” x 8.5” hand-bound chapbooks, each with a unique front cover and randomized thread and back cover colors, released in a limited edition of fifty copies.
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Previous versions of some of these visual poems appeared in Common Stock, published in 2020 by The Blasted Tree.
Nonfiction Chapbook - 36 Answers to Questions That Generate Interpersonal Closeness Between Strangers by kevin mcpherson eckhoff
Grounded in research developed by psychologist Arthur Aron (et alia) on how meaningful inter-personal relationships are formed, kevin mcpherson eckhoff’s 36 Answers… blends conceptual and confessional writing practices to gently complicate the poetics of intimacy. Both prose poem and essayistic memoir, eckhoff’s responses to the “36 Love Questions” meditate on the entanglement of love and one’s personal narrative. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty chapbooks printed on white linen paper and hand-bound with gold thread into dark olive green linen cardstock covers, available now in our online store.
Read 36 Answers to Questions That Generate Interpersonal Closeness Between Strangers
Poetry Leaflet - Behold the Dead by Ben Berman Ghan
Behold the Dead is a poem that traces the tension between built and natural environments, a dance of life and death weaving together all our bodies. Ben Berman Ghan’s flowing poetic form is complimented by an original watercolour painting of a stream applied to each leaflet by Blasted Tree publisher Kyle Flemmer. Behold the Dead is printed and painted on heavy weight, cold press watercolour paper in a numbered edition of fifty 5.25” x 8.5” leaflets, available now from The Blasted Tree’s online store.
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Poetry Card Set - Some Formal Notes on Language by Steacy Easton
A collection of sentence diagrams handwritten on index cards examining the relationships between language, the body, and control. In Some Formal Notes on Language, Steacy Easton re-contextualizes lines selected from over 800 pages of transcripts documenting the trial and conviction of Easton’s former boarding school teacher for “sexual interference of a child.” Part visual poetry, part conceptual writing exercise, these handwritten notes push against the legible, the formal, and the quantifiable. Each set of index cards comes in an envelope folded down from an 11” x 17” poster of a sentence diagram and is accompanied by a title card and expository text. The Blasted Tree has produced a numbered edition of 50 card sets, available now in our online store.
Poetry Chapbook - Recoveringly by Andrew McEwan
Since 2017, Andrew McEwan has only written one poem, but has re-written it many times. Recoveringly discusses hospitalization and the ongoingness of repeated recovery from acute periods of mental disability, first in a poem, then in a poetic essay/coda that meditates on repetition, ideation, and the language of sanity and insanity. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty 5.5” x 8.5” chapbooks bound into a series of coloured covers torn to reveal the layers beneath.
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Poetry Photo Set - from So went the hour in its makeshift dress by Michelle Lynne Dyrness
Two hybrid poems from So went the hour in its makeshift dress by Michelle Lynn Dyrness, a series combining typewritten text with minimal collage, created in an automatic, intuitive manner. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty 5” x 7” photo sets presented in white paper sleeves, each with a slightly-different collage element. Our selection from So went the hour in its makeshift dress can be viewed following the link below, and print copies are available now from The Blasted Tree’s online store.
View From So went the hour in its makeshift dress
Poetry booklet - from GRAMTAN by Jason Ly
Four visual poems from GRAMTAN by Jason Ly, a series that explores new and old solutions to the classic tangram puzzle by allowing pieces to intersect and overlap. Ly uses the triangular tangram pieces to create familiar objects and abstract shapes by circumventing the traditional limitations on their arrangement. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of fifty 4” x 4” booklets hand-bound into grey cardstock covers with black thread. Copies of from GRAMTAN are available from The Blasted Tree’s online store, and you can view our selection from the series following the link below.
View From GRAMTAN
Poetry Chapbook - Ditto by Nick Montfort
Ditto by Nick Montfort is a short poetry collection consisting of three poems all composed using a similar method (something akin to transcription) whereby text is meticulously copied from a hyper-specific locale or context. From the kitchen to the public urinal, Ditto combines a keen eye for text with a wry appreciation for its many mundane uses. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of sixty 5” x 3.5” chapbooks, each bound into black cover stock with an iridescent film flyleaf. You can read the collection online following the link below, and copies of the chapbook are available now in our online store.