Coming soon: ‘even if the signal fails’ by Jill Jones

Black Rider presents the fifth installment in the Lyrics chapbook series, even if the signal fails by Jill Jones.

Featuring new work as well as previously collected poems in publications such as Outcrop: radical Australian poetry of land (Black Rider Press, 2013), ETZ, and Southerly, this new chapbook of seventeen poems will be free to download from the Black Rider Press website.

Jill Jones has published eight full-length books of poetry, most recently The Beautiful Anxiety (Puncher and Wattman, 2014) and Ash Is Here, So Are Stars (Walleah Press, 2012).

Thanks to Annette Willis for the beautiful cover art “Heads in Clouds”.

What others have said 

“Jill Jones is uniquely capable of adjusting the speed and magnitude of your awareness. She shepherds the reader away from expectations s/he may have thought absolute. In “A Moon, a Myth, a Feeler,” Jones recasts sensory perception out of zones of occupation, prompting a natural question, “What sport brought you out here?”. Her casual/causal irony demands precision of thought. Even accidents cease being accidental. Jones’s prowess renders the titular signal moot, replacing it with full belief in a transcendence that relieves the concept of itself.” – Sheila E. Murphy

“The precise and provocative poems collected in even if the signal fails deconstruct the binary opposition between realism and experimentalism effortlessly, presenting the reader with a complex and compelling take on modern life. Jill Jones’ poems are undeniably of our world, of its gritty materiality and linguistic sophistication, but they are far more refractive than reflective. She is both an acute observer of the world of things and an active participant in transforming our perceptions through words. According to the poems in this fascinating new chapbook, she seeks to ‘mend constructed things’ and ‘find truth among tension’. Even if the signal fails is a terrific new addition to this important contemporary poet’s body of work.” – Ali Alizadeh

Coming soon: Black Rider presents Lyrics by Jill Jones

The fifth installment of the Black Rider presents Lyrics series is even if the signal fails, a chapbook of new poetry by Jill Jones.

More information coming soon…

What they’re saying

“Jill Jones is uniquely capable of adjusting the speed and magnitude of your awareness. She shepherds the reader away from expectations s/he may have thought absolute. In “A Moon, a Myth, a Feeler,” Jones recasts sensory perception out of zones of occupation, prompting a natural question, “What sport brought you out here?”. Her casual/causal irony demands precision of thought. Even accidents cease being accidental. Jones’s prowess renders the titular signal moot, replacing it with full belief in a transcendence that relieves the concept of itself.” – Sheila E. Murphy

“The precise and provocative poems collected in even if the signal fails deconstruct the binary opposition between realism and experimentalism effortlessly, presenting the reader with a complex and compelling take on modern life. Jill Jones’ poems are undeniably of our world, of its gritty materiality and linguistic sophistication, but they are far more refractive than reflective. She is both an acute observer of the world of things and an active participant in transforming our perceptions through words. According to the poems in this fascinating new chapbook, she seeks to ‘mend constructed things’ and ‘find truth among tension’. Even if the signal fails is a terrific new addition to this important contemporary poet’s body of work.” – Ali Alizadeh

‘enjambment sisters present’ by Michael Farrell – out now

On the last day of 2012 Black Rider Press is proud to announce the release of enjambment sisters present, a new chapbook by Michael Farrell.

You can download the e-chapbook for free from the Black Rider Press website.

Farrell’s enjambment sisters present is a brilliant plaything, it is lithe and agile, it turns and twists and jumps across the room, finally falling in a writhing heap on the rug. It contains all the joys and “sounds [of] the nest”. Reading it will put the melody in you. – Matthew Hall

For M. Hall’s full essay, read the Black Rider Lines post

Black Rider Lines: Matthew Hall on ‘enjambment sisters present’ by Michael Farrell

When reading Michael Farrell’s new collection enjambment sisters present, I find myself casting my mind to the work of Pierre Macherey, whose theory of literary production stressed the inherent incompleteness of the text. That, “the book [or the poem] is not self-sufficient, it is necessarily accompanied by a certain absence, without which it would not exist.”

The collection is, itself, a structure of complexity, demonstrative of both growth and decay; it is at once about the acquisition of words, assembling into the joy of the literary, and at the same time about control, contortion, the finite articulation of syllables, its careful dissection. In Farrell’s collection, then, we find a disarticulation, a pensive joy which attends the simplest utterance.

The challenge of the work is to ascertain the disarticulations of meaning, of a language which is heading in two directions at once, trading the polyvocal utterance, which stresses and strains against the limits of language, for a syntax of response, which dynamically gathers in and infolds relations with other elements.

Farrell’s poems are as set on the acquisition of language as on the construct of the domestic.

(Oedipus the King, Hoicking)

Which, playing with the notions of containment, punishment and the territorial, of the notion of home for one who argues, in ‘Schopenhauer , Ford’:

makes the compossible claim that the lyrical ‘I’, the eyes of the poet, are tied both to the “mouth” as well as to “youth”. That the claims of articulation are tied to the past, to that which might only exist in fragmented utterances, in glimpses, in an uncertain, testing, and experiential wholeness, that allows an apprehension and renewal in retrospect.

The necessary incompleteness of the text means that the reader is a constant in the flux of the collection, a constant brace to its stutter and pulsing language. The forms and patterns break with an unceasing, teasing velocity, to which Farrell’s voice adds a sense of calm lucidity.

The repetitive patterns of ‘Some Enchanted Odding’ and ‘Schopenhauer , Ford’ are reminiscent of Marinetti or Hugo Ball, but the real treasure of Farrell’s work is in casting the world through the eyes of a child. In that, I am reminded of Hejinian’s line: “ I cannot separate lucidity from undressing” which makes a riddle out of a grammatical proposition, characteristic of her work in ‘The Composition of the Cell’.

Farrell’s fantasmic and creative imagining have the whimsy of childhood, “try this donut made out of doll rubber, tarpaper , and seaweed”; “I want to climb ha / lf an a / lpa / ca”; “If I could r / each the star / s”, which strikes me particularly as playing Wittgensteinian language games, to which children render a language malleable, mold it, create with it, stretch it over the world, and hand it back to you. As Gertrude Stein asked in ‘Arthur a Grammar’: “What is the difference between resemblance and grammar. There is none. Grammar is at best an oval ostrich egg and grammar is far better.”

Farrell’s enjambment sisters present is a brilliant plaything, it is lithe and agile, it turns and twists and jumps across the room, finally falling in a writhing heap on the rug. It contains all the joys and “sounds [of] the nest”. Reading it will put the melody in you.

– Matthew Hall

______________________________

enajambment sisters present by Michael Farrell will publish as a free download on Monday 31 December 2012. It is the fourth instalment of the Black Rider presents Lyrics series.

Coming soon: ‘enjambment sisters present’ by Michael Farrell

On the last day of 2012, Black Rider Press will publish Michael Farrell’s new chapbook ‘enjambment sisters present’.

This is the fourth instalment of the Black Rider presents Lyrics series. This chapbook will be offered as a free ebook download.

“Farrell’s ‘enjambment sisters present’ is a brilliant plaything, it is lithe and agile, it turns and twists and jumps across the room, finally falling in a writhing heap on the rug. It contains all the joys and “sounds [of] the nest”. Reading it will put the melody in you.” – Matthew Hall

Black Rider says thanks for the 25,000 listens

After putting out the recently brilliant BRP podcast 05, a live recording of Marcus Roloff’s German spoken word with the swooningly bright-eyed sounds played by Christian Löffler, and while I was setting up to record Corey Wakeling all lofi over the phone for BRP podcast 06, a quick tally showed:

The Sound of the Black Rider has had over 25,000 downloads and streams. (It’s closer to 27,000 but I rounded down.)

Ok, so, it’s irrelevant that compared with internet standards and stories of trillions of views on YouTube, this is a miniscule amount. We’re talking about lofi recordings of authors and poets reading their work. It’s poetry and fiction, you guys!

Also, we’re a micropress from Fremantle, Western Australia – publishing like thieves in the night. 25,000? 25,000!

For that, I say thank you.

To all of you who are reading, streaming, downloading, buying, and telling your friends about the Black Rider, thank you.

You’re the sweethearts who keep this all going. Thank you for having Black Rider in your life. Your kindness abounds.

The Sound of the Black Rider is made up of the Black Rider podcast, the Lyrics audio book series, the Garage Sessions and poets and authors reading their work at Official.fm and PoetrySpeaks.

Look homeward, angels!

Jeremy
The Black Rider

BRP ebooks out now: Scott-Patrick Mitchell and Matthew Hall

The Black Rider presents Lyrics poetry chapbook series follows on from AS Patric’s coolhand-luke 2010 collection Music for Broken Instruments with volumes 2 & 3.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell – . the tricking post . (Lyrics2)

Matthew Hall – Royal Jelly (Lyrics3)

The e-chapbooks are each $1.99 from the Black Rider Press website.

You can also download a audio album of Matthew Hall reading Royal Jelly. Download it for free (or name your price) at The Sound of the Black Rider.

 

Matthew Hall’s Royal Jelly – coming soon

After SPM’s . the tricking post . comes Matthew Hall’s Royal Jelly in the Black Rider present Lyrics series. More info to come.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s . the tricking post . – coming soon

The Black Rider presents Lyrics series continues with Scott- Patrick Mitchell’s collection of poetry . the tricking post . featuring a foreword by Tomas Ford.

Coming soon