Forces of Attention

How do you want to use yours?

Forces of Attention is a series of objects, inquiries, and experiments designed to help people modulate their use of the Internet to their liking. FOA Series 1, THE WORLD IS NOT IN HERE, was released in 2013. A new edition is available as of December 2024. Preorders will be available through early February 2025; the first orders will ship in December and a second batch in January. Find more details and order at Indiegogo.

BELEAVE

An ongoing exploration of plant communities, and the human communities they support, in the US Southeast and beyond.

“Emerald (a charm for ash),” winner of the 2021 Winter Anthology contest, first published in Colorado Review

“Ovivid (a charm for redbay),” Shenandoah

“Flowere and Are (a charm for chestnut),” Southern Humanities Review online

Charms for Hemlock, an artist’s book featuring two poems and a collograph of hemlock needles.  Created for Asheville Bookworks’ Vandercooked Poetry Nights & part of the exhibit The Art of the Fold at Abecedarian Gallery

“BELEAVE,” in “Of the Relational Local: An Ecopoetics Plenary,” Jacket2, curated by Linda Russo

SEND WORD

A portable letter-writing station

Even if you intend on writing letters, it can be hard to remember to do it. SEND WORD, a correspondence station, offers encouragement to connect with family and friends via our beloved USPS. The pilot version debuted at Penland School of Crafts in January 2013. The station offered letterpress-printed postcards, pens, stamps, letter-writing tips and live support, and a comfy chair in which to sit while writing. SEND WORD has appeared at readings and book launches, via independent bookstores, and at UNC Wilmington’s Writers’ Week, and is available, safety conditions permitting, for both in-person and virtual events.

Some past featured stationers for SEND WORD: Rory Sparks, Lari Gibbons, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Delta Letterpress.

Write a letter today!

Forces of Attention

How do you want to use yours?

Forces of Attention is a series of objects, inquiries, and experiments designed to help people modulate their use of the Internet to their liking. FOA Series 1, THE WORLD IS NOT IN HERE, was released in 2013. A new edition is available as of December 2024. Preorders will be available through early February 2025; the first orders will ship in December and a second batch in January. Find more details and order at Indiegogo. 

Chapbook Contests and Reading Periods 

A big list, created by Anna Lena Phillips Bell and Ryan Bloom

I love the chapbook as a form—it’s the perfect length for a poetry collection, in my view; and prose chapbooks are a delight as well. There has been a proliferation of presses publishing chapbooks of late, everything from letterpress-printed and hand-bound to sleek offset-printed titles. For years I’ve kept an informal list of favorite presses that publish chapbooks, both poetry and prose. In fall 2020 I decided to make it bigger and better—to include lots more presses, as well as information on the kinds of things I look for when imagining a home for a manuscript: not just deadlines and eligibility requirements but trim size, printing methods, distribution, marketing efforts. Ryan Bloom set the spreadsheet up—including helpful filters—and collected most of the data. Updated in fall 2022 by Elliot Gindling. We’ll continue updating the list as we discover new presses and opportunities.

More detail, including how to submit an opportunity for potential inclusion, is here, and you can find the spreadsheet here. 

The Endearments

A series of anagrammatic poems made from the sweet words people call the people and other creatures they love.

“Endearment (ladybug),” Southern Cultures

“Endearments (precious, cinnamon, sweetie pie),” Really System

“Endearment (my little love),” Spiral Orb

A Pocket Book of Forms

“This book is the best reason to go out and buy anything with pockets—especially if you are a poet. Elegantly designed and printed, it is a portable prompt and expander of your repertoire of poetic forms.”
—Thomas Cable, author of A History of the English Language

A Pocket Book of Forms is a letterpress-printed, travel-sized guide to poetic forms. What began as a hand-written foldup minibook, created to help me remember the workings of poetic forms in my travels, is now a pocket-sized, pamphlet-stitched book. It was printed at Penland School of Crafts in winter 2013, using a combination of hand-set type and photopolymer plates. The finished book is in two editions: a standard edition of 225, and a fancy edition of 48, with faux-gold-leaf title type, lokta endpapers, and a cloth slipcase printed with the text never be caught formless.

The standard edition is sold out, though copies may be available for sale at these fine bookstores:

Pomegranate Books, Wilmington, NC
So & So Books, Raleigh, NC
Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC

The fancy edition was part of Abecedarian Gallery’s Artists’ Books Cornucopia VI. It remains available in limited numbers.