Latest Posts

David Bartone wins the Sawtooth Prize!

David Bartone’s manuscript “Practice on Mountains” is the 2013 Sawtooth Poetry Prize winner, selected by Dan Beachy-Quick. “It’s wonderfully self-searching without being narcissistic,” wrote Beachy-Quick in the award statement, “tied into love’s agonies in ways familiar but strikingly honest, deprecating but audacious, learned but humble. It brings to its readers a primary document of the mind reading through the heart’s various damage.” Bartone is the author of Spring Logic, a chapbook with H_NGM_N (2011). His poems have appeared at The Laurel Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Thermos, Verse Online, Mountain Gazette, and others. The next Sawtooth Poetry Prize contest will be held between January 1 and March 1, 2014, and will be judged by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

Galatea Resurrects Reviews 7 Books—and Ahsahta!

When someone around the office reads the words “Ahsahta Press should be showered with money,” we think we might have taken a wrong turn in the middle of grantwriting. But these weren’t our words—they were poet and critic Djelloul Marbrook’s in his article at Galatea Resurrects. “Ahsahta’s books represent the research and development in poetics that will shape our perceptions of poetry in the 21st Century when the next century turns,” Marbrook writes. “Ahsahta is doing just what America isn’t doing enough, research and development.” Take a look at the entire article in Galatea’s Issue 20 and read the essay-reviews of Susan Tichy’s Gallowglass, Dan Beachy-Quick’s Work from Memory, Kate Greenstreet’s The Last 4 Things, Stephanie Strickland’s Zone : Zero, Brian Teare’s Pleasure, Andrew Grace’s Sancta, and Elizabeth Robinson’s Counterpart. It’s so rare to get a review that really gets a book, but I’ve never seen one that got seven at once! Marbrook even pays attention to page width and typesetting in his essay, to the difficulties of marketing avant-garde texts, and to the role poetry can play in society.

Of course I’m delighted by the attention and by his evaluation of how Ahsahta is succeeding. Given our expenses, it’s going to be necessary to write more of those grant applications, funding calls, and such, but having these words of encouragement at hand makes the whole process more do-able.

An open submission period, at last!

For years, the backlog of accepted poetry manuscripts at Ahsahta has prevented us from having an open reading period—we can only afford to produce so many books per year, and have often wanted to do more than one book by our authors. That’s been crowding out authors new to Ahsahta, and we wanted that situation to end. I kept telling people that I’d have a month-long submission period in 2013 and now that day has come. I’m terrified about what I’m in for. With up to 700 manuscripts for the Sawtooth, which has the disincentive (for some) of an entry fee, will I now have thousands of manuscripts to look at? Or will submissions go down without a judge like Dan Beachy-Quick or Rae Armantrout, or without the $1,500 prize? Stay tuned.

If you want to send something, here’s the link: ahsahtapress.org/secure/submissions/

I wish I could say what I’m looking for, but that’s pretty well covered by our motto, “Surprise.” If you don’t know our books, take a look at the sample poems on the website, though frankly the sample poems won’t give you a sense for those books like Julie Carr’s 100 Notes on Violence, which builds as it goes along, or Dan Beachy-Quick and Matthew Goulish’s Work from Memory, which pairs a page of poetry with a page of essay and goes “landscape” when it talks about a landscape. Still, in a world in which poetry-selling bookstores are thin on the ground, our sample poems will at least give you an idea of what we do. Send me something to read.

Sawtooth Deadline Extended!

We’re extending the deadline for the Sawtooth Prize to accommodate poets attending AWP. But everyone gets the benefit!

End of the year sale!

All Ahsahta Press books published in 2012 are 20% off through the end of the year. That’s Andrew Grace’s Sancta, Karen Rigby’s Chinoiserie, Janaka Stucky’s The World Will Deny It for You, Chris Vitiello’s Obedience, Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer, David Mutschlecner’s Enigma and Light, The Arcadia Project (edited by Joshua Corey and G.C. Waldrep), Dan Beachy-Quick and Matthew Goulish’s Work from Memory, and Elizabeth Robinson’s Counterpart.

 

Four Ahsahta books are Best-Sellers!

The October Best-Seller list at Small Press Distribution is home to four of our titles: The Arcadia Project, eds. Joshua Corey and G.C. Waldrep, in the number one position for the second month in a row; Elizabeth Robinson’s Counterpart at #3; Work from Memory by Dan Beachy-Quick and Matthew Goulish at #8, and Karen Rigby’s Chinoiserie at #16—her fourth appearance on the list. Thank you, readers!

 

 

Ahsahta authors read Nov. 8

If you’re in Atlanta, catch Chris Vitiello at Emory University; in Houston, watch for Karen Rigby at Brazos Bookstore.

 

 

Publishers Weekly on Counterpart

“Language, in Robinson’s hands, is unstable, warped, and deceptive. Her poems roll over and over in quickly changing permutations: ‘the frail opening from/ ration to rational.’” Now available!

 

 

Chinoiserie reviewed in Prairie Schooner

Prairie Schooner reviews Karen Rigby’s Chinoiserie: “Our travels through the collection feel like a eerie but somehow familiar blend of Victoriana and the American desert of Georgia O’Keeffe: hints of both delicately and subtly entwine themselves throughout the collection. . . . No word or white space is out of place in any one of her perfectly polished poems.”

The Arcadia Project ships from the printer!

We’ve been waiting to hear that The Arcadia Project is on its way, and now it is! Kickstarter backers, you’ll be getting your copies and premiums shortly. Teachers, it will be in stock at SPD beginning next week! Visit the anthology’s site at arcadiaproject.net for teaching ideas.