Schomburg Tour Dates

Black Ocean author Zachary Schomburg will be touring the midwest during September (and beyond for a few dates in October) with some great readers--Jenny Zhang, Nate Slawson, Jesse Malmed, Joyelle McSweeney! The tour dates from his blog are listed below, and you can also visit his Tumblr for updates.

9/18. Iowa City, IA. Prairie Lights Bookstore. w/Jenny Zhang. 7pm.

9/19. Minneapolis, MN. Our Flow is Hard Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang. Harriet Brewing. 3036 Minnehaha Ave. 7pm.

9/20. Racine, WI. Bonk! Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang & Nate Slawson. Black Eyed Press. 312 Sixth Street. 7pm.

9/21. Madison, WI. The Project Lodge. 817 E. Johnson. w/Jenny Zhang, Anna Vitale, & Adam Fell. 7:30pm

9/22. Chicago, IL. Dollhouse Reading Series w/Jenny Zhang & Jesse Malmed.7pm

And a few October readings:

10/4. Portland, OR. Marylhurst University. 7:30pm.

10/11. Tucson, AZ. University of Arizona Poetry Center. Next Word Reading Series. w/Joyelle McSweeney.

10/18. Seattle, WA. Seattle Lit Crawl. Comet Tavern.

FJORDS reviewed in Bookslut

Read the latest review of Fjords vol. 1 by Elizabeth Cantwell on Bookslut: click HERE.

'The world is always as it is, and always as it seems,' as Schomburg notes in "The Animal Spell." There will always be black swans and refrigerators and fists and eyes everywhere we look. What can you really do about that but write it down and note the page numbers and try not to let it swallow you up? That is the only honest option.

 

And if you haven't seen the trailer, you can view it here on our Youtube channel.

 

Schomburg in Boise

Black Ocean's own Zachary Schomburg will spend the weekend in Boise, ID, home of our managing editor Ms. A. Minetta Gould. While in Boise Schomburg will conduct two writing workshops, visit Idaho's natural wonders, read alongside local poetry band The True Wheel (a duo consisting and the poet Karena Youtz & her husband Doug Martsch), read with poem films created by local artist John Shinn, and sleep in a swanky hotel. The first reading is at 6PM on Saturday, May 5 and the second is at 8PM on Sunday, May 6. Both readings will take place at The Crux Coffee House and are free and open to the public. 

We will post videos from each reading on our youtube page when they become available. 

FJORDS News

After his thoughtful and generous review of Butcher's Tree, Justin Helms is at it again with a review of Fjords Vol. 1 for his Poets and Prophets series. Read it here.

So maybe we must swallow these poems without chewing. They are (already) tessellations of memory, fantasy, and fear that re-discover the missing beauty of the quotidian.

Verse daily posted a poem from Fjords this week.

And over on the Rumpus, a poem from Scary, No Scary is featured as part of the Last Poem I Loved series.

It was like me. I was the poem already; my own limbs had been torn off when I moved to a farm in the Oregon woods, where I became a sort of tree. 

 

 

FJORDS!

Four poems from Zachary Schomburg's Fjords, forthcoming from Black Ocean in 2012 are featured in the most recent issue of iO: A Journal of New American Poetry. 

                                        ...Everyone  looked
at me with a face that said let’s never speak of
this.  Let’s  not  look  directly  at what  is meant
to   be   loved   in   secret.

from "BUILDING OF UNSEEN CATS"

If you like what you see, you may be interested in a 2012 subscription. For $50 you'll receive Fjords, along with four other choice selections. August subscribers also receive Julie Doxsee's  first two books, Undersleep (Octopus Books) and Objects for a Fog Death (Black Ocean). 

Oregon Book Award Finalists

Scary No Scary by Zachary Schomburg is a finalist for the Stafford/Hall Award For Poetry as part of the Oregon Book Awards. Congratulations to Zachary! Follow the link and check out some of the other great finalists. Octopus Books, the press Zachary co-edits with Mathias Svalina, won an a Oregon Literary Fellowship.

 I like to imagine the conversation for deciding these nominations went like this. Did you read all those books from Black Ocean? I did. Did you read that book called Scary No Scary? Beginning to end. 

Black Ocean 4 Life

It's recently come to our attention that our books are very popular with the kids these days. So popular in fact that they're getting tattoos to show their love. Tattoos!? Yes...

Following are three body modifications:

 

From top to bottom: Rebecca H. with a tattoo inspired by "The Center of Worthwhile Things" from The Man Suit; Kimberly D. with a tattoo inspired by the black telephone / white telephone section of The Man Suit; Brittany D. with a similarly excellent inspiration. I'm so moved by their devotion that I'm giving all three LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTIONS to Black Ocean. 

Below is some dude who got a henna "tattoo" of the Scary, No Scary cover. But like a summer fling it is impermanent, and so he receives nothing more than our well wishes and fond memories...

 

If you'd like to get a tattoo inspired by a Black Ocean title, you too can receive a lifetime subscription and become a Black Oceanographer for life! Just send us a picture of you getting your tattoo (so we know it's not simply a magic marker), or find one of us in person and expose yourself to us (with fair warning). If only Persea Books had a deal like this going when I got my Paul Celan tattoo... *le sigh*... Thanks to the above individuals for being so particularly great!

Day 6 of Lit Love

Today Zachary Schomburg puts on the man suit to deliver his recommendation: Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey (Ugly Duckling Presse).



Reading this book is like smearing dead leaves onto my wet face so that it makes a paste, like a pastey mask before bedtime. It confuses me. I mean, I'm perplexed, stunned. I mean, all the words seem impossible. Remember what David Cameron did to Baudelaire? Christian Hawkey is one of our most fascinating poets, heaving George Trakl's dead body up into the dead trees. 

If you haven't, be sure to check out Zachary's books Scary, No Scary and The Man Suit, both available on Black Ocean's website.