ISSUE 17

Brave New Word ISSUE 17 

AKA Taking Care of Business

Editor's note:
If there is an appropriate time to say "Things have changed" - that's it. The last time I was doing a Brave New Word issue - it was at one of the lowest points of my life. My employment for the previous two years, more or less, went down with a whimper due to politics, professional jealousy, greed, and backstabbing. The emotional toll of November and December left me creatively spent and without many career prospects. Ain't going to lie - I felt screwed, but in the end - it is over. That's not my problem anymore. I'm over it - going towards new frontiers. I don't have time to fight the specters of the past.

The downside is that since last September and up until the very end of December, I more or less put aside much of my creative output to focus on the job. As a result - I did a whole lot of what ultimately amassed to nil and not much else of worth.

I snapped out of it in early December because the bullshit got too ridiculous, but the damage was done. Brave New Word Issue 16 was the first step of my rehabilitation, but it wasn't enough to reinvigorate my creative senses. I've spent much of December and January picking up the pieces and slowly getting back to form.

The work on Issue 17 began in earnest around early February. In fact, I've spent a month working on it - the project started on February 5th and is over by March 2nd. The fastest turnaround since 2017.

One thing that I've noticed while analyzing the performance of Issue 16 is that 20 pieces sequence results in some posts getting significantly less attention when the issue is viewed as a whole. The numbers don't lie. Because of that, Issue 17 features only 14 spots - similar to the early issues.

Without further ado - Brave New Word Issue 17.

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Issue Line-up:

1. Jeremy Stewart - bugs groucho 1-5
2. J.I. Kleinberg - Five collage poems
3. Eddie Watkins - from Leap Frogs
4. Janis Butler Holm - queen dregs hand yam
5. James Sanders - Chyrons and Plants
6. Kristine Snodgrass - Six asemic pieces
7. Nils Geylen - Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine
8. Heller Levinson - excerpts from from here goes 
9. Olchar Lindsann - Five poems 
10. Luc Fierens - Baby Doc / Fatale / Fotomodella / Gold
11. Mary Kasimor - Three Poems
12. hiromi suzuki - au bord de la mer
13. Jeremy Hight - Donnie Darko retold as self-help book section
14. Tom Prime / Gary Barwin - collaborative mayhem

Kristine Snodgrass - Six asemic pieces

Kristine Snodgrass is an artist, poet, professor, curator, and publisher living in Tallahassee, Florida.

“Asemics by Kristine Snodgrass offer the possibility of a new way of "reading" that thus far has only been partially mapped; the content of her work is an exploration of new depths of human experience. In this context, asemic writing becomes a new form and practice after the postmodern and into the brave new world of the post-literate. ” -De Villo Sloan

Kristine is the author most recently of, the chapbook, These Burning Fields (Hysterical Books 2019) as well as Out of the World (Hysterical Books 2016) and The War on Pants (JackLeg Press 2013). Her solo poetry has appeared in decomP, Versal, Big Bridge, 5_Trope, Shampoo, 2 River View, Otoliths and South Florida Poetry Journal among others. She is the author of the chapbooks, Put the Pie Away Quietly and Without Fervor (Cy Gist Press 2012) and Fledgling Starlet (Grey Book Press 2009).

Janis Butler Holm - queen dregs hand yam

Janis Butler Holm has served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal. Her prose, poems, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

James Sanders - Chyrons and Plants

James Sanders is a member of the Atlanta Poets Group, a writing and performing collective (http://atlantapoetsgroup.blogspot.com/). He was included in the /2016 BAX: Best American Experimental Writing/ anthology. His most recent book, Self-Portrait in Plants, was published in 2015. The University of New Orleans Press also recently published the group’s An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside.

Jeremy Stewart - bugs groucho 1-5

Jeremy Stewart won the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry for Hidden City (Invisible Publishing). He is also the author of (flood basement (Caitlin Press). His work has appeared in Canadian Literature, Geist, Lemon Hound, Open Letter, and elsewhere. He is a PhD student at Lancaster University, UK.

He once dropped a piano off a building.

Tom Prime / Gary Barwin - collaborative mayhem

Tom Prime is a PhD student in English at Western University. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (Specializing in Poetry). He has a BA at Western University. He has been published in Carousel, Ditch, Fjords Review, The Northern Testicle, The Rusty Toque, and Vallum.

His first chapbook, A Strange Hospital, was published on Proper Tales Press. His latest chapbook, Gravitynipplemilkplanet Anthroposcenesters, was published on above/ground press.

His collaborative collection of poems written with Gary Barwin, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press.

His latest 2 chapbooks have been released on Serif of Nottingham Press. They are collaborations with Gary Barwin entitled Throat Fixtures: an Almanack of Dazzle and Birds are the birthmarks of flight.

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The author of twenty-two books of poetry, fiction and books for children, Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Hamilton, Ontario and the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Penguin Random House Canada) which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award; and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019.)

A finalist for the National Magazine Awards (Poetry), he is a three-time recipient of Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year, has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature and has co-won the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the K.M. Hunter Arts Award. He was one of the judges for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.  Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at Western University, Hillfield Strathallan College and McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library. He will be the Edna Staebler writer-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Winter 2019.

His writing and recordings have been published/released in hundreds of magazines and journals internationally—from Readers Digest to Granta. He is on the organizing committee for Hamilton’s LitLive Series and regularly presents, performs and exhibits in the city.

His collaborative collection of poems written with Tom Prime, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press.

Barwin lives in Hamilton and at garybarwin.com. 

Eddie Watkins - from Leap Frogs

Eddie Watkins is a hard working family man and poet living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He lets language have its way with him.

Mary Kasimor - Three Poems

Mary Kasimor who has been writing poetry for many years, considers her work experimental. Her recent poetry collections are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books 2014), Saint Pink (Moria Books 2015), The Prometheus Collage (Locofo Press 2017), Nature Store (Dancing Girl Press 2017) Drink Me (BlazeVox Books 2019), and Disrobing Iris (above ground press 2019). Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Word For/Word, Touch the Donkey, Posit, Human Repair Kit, Arteidolia (collaboration with Susan Lewis), and Otoliths.