online
This is an unscheduled flash project—when we heard this piece needed a home we jumped at the chance & completed the editing/design in about ten hours. Preorder to reserve a copy if you want the printed chapbook. (The digital releases are free.) We don't know how many of these there will be. Right now we're not putting a cap on the print run.
The Library of Congress* Censored Interview
CAConrad interviewed by Jasmine Platt
*Not published by the Library of Congress
Prose / Poetics
Bloof Books Process Pamphlets #1
May 2016
5 x 6 inches, hand trimmed
Mohawk i-Cream Eco Tone Cover
Inkjet-printed with Avery label** & Sharpie
Laser-printed Mohawk Natural Smooth 70lb Text interior
Saddle stapled
16 pages | $3*
THIS CHAPBOOK IS SOLD OUT, but the free ebook versions are linked below.
*$1 from each printed copy sold will be donated to LAMBDA LEGAL (www.lambdalegal.org) for their tireless battle to protect LGBTQ people in the United States. (They are not affiliated with the press or this project, except as our designated beneficiary for donations.) The other $2 covers materials & postage.
**Cover label may vary in color across the print run
FREE SHIPPING is for US/Canada only. Additional shipping is required for international orders. Place international orders via PayPal (Square will not accept them), and we will email you with details (and if you don't like them, we will refund). The extra postage would eat into what we're able to donate to Lambda Legal.
EXCERPTS:
"This is a call to poets to stand together and vow to never change what we write and what we say when any part of the government body asks this of us."
"No matter how many poems I write I cannot undo my complicity, I cannot reverse the sea of gravestones, and my poems will never be an apology worth a single life taken by our collective national ignorance, greed and irrational fear."
"We need as many people being creative right now as possible because it is the creative people who will solve the problems facing the survival of our species."
BLURBS/REVIEWS
"It appears that the Library of Congress asked CAConrad to participate in a new interview series with poets, only to turn around afterward and decline to run the piece! Lucky for us, and not so much for LOC, Shanna Compton at Bloof Books as published
The Library of Congress* CENSORED INTERVIEW, as it is now titled, as a full printed chapbook. Compton has also made the publication available as a free download.
"Conrad’s conversation with Platt is unsurprisingly straightforward about the realities of being a citizen–much less a poet–in a climate of injustice, war, and unrest. Conrad also speaks to how somatic practice affects his poetry, what it means to speak through character (as in
The Book of Frank), what a vision for queer poetry might look like, and more."
AUTHOR BIOS
CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for their mother and helping her shoplift. They are the author of eight books of poetry and essays. The latest,
ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books), is the winner of the 2015
Believer Magazine Book Award. They are a Pew Fellow and have also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, and Ucross. For their books and details on the documentary
The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2016), please visit
CAConrad.blogspot.com.
Jasmine Platt lives in the melodic belly of the word. She is an English Writing graduate of Boise State University, with previous membership to both the University of Maryland’s MFA program and to the Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congress. At present, she is a librarian pursuing a career in public arts administration. She also pursues bones, aspen leaves, and the cynical crashing of the waves. She lives in Idaho.
COLOPHON
The Library of Congress Censored Interview is the inaugural volume in a new (and probably irregular) Bloof Books handmade series called Process Pamphlets.
This chapbook is being simultaneously released in free e-book & PDF formats. You may SHARE, COPY & REDISTRIBUTE this pamphlet for *noncommercial purposes* with attribution to the authors and bloofbooks.com.
DIGITAL VERSIONS AVAILABLE AT GOOGLE DRIVE
PDF print (as pages)
PDF print (as spreads)
PDF interactive (clickable links, as pages)
PDF interactive (clickable links, as spreads)
ePub (reflowable)
(I'm not putting up a .mobi file since they have not been widely used in the past. However, if you read on a Kindle and want it that way, comment or send me a note. If I get a lot of requests I will. —SC)
