Flood Editions and the New Thing

In the May/June edition of Boston Review, Stephen Burt discusses Flood Editions in the context of what he calls “the New Thing.” As Burt writes, “The new poets pursue compression, compact description, humility, restricted diction, and—despite their frequent skepticism—fidelity to a material and social world.” The poets he addresses include Graham Foust and Ronald Johnson (among others). You can find a full text of the article here.

Reviews of Clampdown

Ange Mlinko has published a thoughtful and extended review of Jennifer Moxley’s Clampdown (Flood Editions, 2009) in The Nation. It concludes, “never tinny, never trivial, her self-dramatizing has yielded poems that spill over with terror and bitterness, high lyricism and lust. (It’s not French experimentalists she should be translating; it’s Antigone.) That she sets her personal theater against the backdrop of the world stage may seem like a grandiose gesture, but it is a necessary one. The figure she cuts is as erect and austere as a gnomon; the shadow she casts will be long.”

Rob Stanton has an enthusiastic review of the book in Jacket. It concludes, “She has long been the most promising poet of her generation, but this new book makes a confident claim that she is its best.”

Michael O’Brien’s Sills

Flood Editions published Sleeping and Waking by Michael O’Brien in 2007. Salt has just released a new edition of his Sills: Selected Poems 1960-1999. It can be ordered here.

Moxley on Poetry and Politics

Jennifer Moxley discusses poetry and politics in the New Haven Advocate. Her most recent book, Clampdown, was published by Flood Editions in April. It is available for mail order from the publisher and from Small Press Distribution.

City Solstice

(counter-tenor solo)

A swollen swell a rushing tide

swept away my cushty bride

amongst the fishes she resides.

(chorus)

River waters deep and wide

where your lady does abide. 

How can you reach the other side?

 

City Solstice, a choral and orchestral work composed by John Harle with words by poet Tom Pickard, will have its world premiere at the City of London Festival on Monday, 22 June 2009. The piece has been commissioned to mark the 800-year anniversary of the completion of the “old” London Bridge in stone. It will feature the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and Harle himself on saxophone. Ticket information can be found here.