Gunpowder Press

22/07/2024

Congratulations, KELLAM AYRES and IN THE CATHEDRAL OF MY UNDOING!

15/07/2024

SAD ANIMAL by Joshua McKinney, winner of the first John Ridland Poetry Prize, is now available! Via Bookshop.org, Amazon, bn, etc...

“Joshua McKinney is a visionary of the intervals and of the interstices. His eye magnifies those last, fleeting splendors of our perishing earth and perishing republic with genuine love and with the grace notes of regret. In Sad Animal, clarity becomes consolation and candor a true companionship. I’m not quite sure that we deserve these beautiful poems, but I am infinitely grateful for them.”

—Donald Revell, author of White Campion and Canandaigua

“A citizen of our perplexed world and its ‘brightest dark revelation,’ Joshua McKinney opens to all that he encounters—whether grief, environmental devastation, love, or even the absurdity of a faculty meeting—with a steadfast attention leavened with humor and, yes, sometimes irreverence.”

—Elizabeth Robinson, author of Excursive and Thirst & Surfeit

10/07/2024

Next Monday, in Sacramento--Susan Kelly-DeWitt reading from her new book, FRANGIBLE OPERAS (and if you're lucky, poems from GATHERER'S ALPHABET, too!)

On Monday, July 15, please join us in welcoming Susan Kelly-DeWitt and help celebrate the release of her new book, Frangible Operas.

01/07/2024

What a beautiful way to welcome July! THREE-DAY WEEKEND is a gem. Thank you, Chris Blackman for your poems, and Tyler Truman Julian for an insightful reading: "From its opening poem, Three-Day Weekend asserts itself as a collection of highly contemporary and universally relatable poetry. The age-old question, who am I, moves between the lines as the speaker establishes himself, and the reader is expected to wrestle with it alongside the speaker." https://www.theshorepoetry.org/shore-things

01/07/2024

The new issue of ANACAPA REVIEW is online now!
With new poems by Amy Acre • Paul Willis • Catherine Hamrick • Gary Young • Elizabeth Rae Bullmer • Alyx Chandler • Emily Bernhardt • Cal Freeman • John Peter Beck • Susan Cohen • Amanda Chiado •
Thank you, poets!

01/07/2024

Thank you, RHINO and Emily Peréz for a thoughtful review of Florencia Milito's SOR JUANA! Published in English/Spanish as part of Gunpowder's Alta California Chapbook Series.
https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/florencia-milito-reviewed-by-emily-prez

18/06/2024

New, from Susan Kelly-DeWitt: FRANGIBLE OPERAS! Gunpowder Press is honored to publish Frangible Operas by Susan Kelly-DeWitt, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow. Her 2022 collection, Gatherers’ Alphabet, was the inaugural title in the Gunpowder Press California Poets Series. Available at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. Welcome, Frangible Operas!

“‘Tonight the bells of the flowers ring out,’ begins the title poem in Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s exquisite new collection, and you will want to stop and listen. Frangible Operas is a book of honed astonishments. I love the way each line pays attention and makes you attend, the way each poem lets you breathe before its ending takes away your breath. When Kelly-DeWitt describes a woman’s arms in a painting by Raphael as forming ‘a perfect basketry,’ she might as well be describing her own poems and the impeccably artful way they contain whole worlds.”

— Susan Cohen, author of Democracy of Fire

30/05/2024

A great last minute GET! Kellam Ayres is the featured author in the VBS/IPL Vermont Authors Series, Tuesday, June 4 at 6pm at Ilsley Public Library.

Kellam's debut poetry collection, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF MY UNDOING (Gunpowder Press, 2024), was chosen by Gary Soto as the winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New England Review, Ploughshares, Guernica, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Her work has received support with grants and residencies from the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Studio Center. She works for the Middlebury College Library and serves as the liaison to the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. She’s a graduate of both the School of English and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and lives with her husband, daughter, and son in East Middlebury.

About CATHEDRAL, Soto says, “Is this smalltown America? A place where the air doesn’t move, love is thin, beer fails nightly to do its trick, and hope rides a cloud to the edge of town, then disappears? These poems are located further east than Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, but they offer the same story of lives where the dramas are small, their significance large, the outcome of disappointments seemingly permanent. Here is art, here is truth, poems as portraits.”

Please join us!

16/05/2024

Looking forward to an amazing event!

Looking forward to celebrating the 15th season of the Mission Poetry Series on Saturday, May 25th, at 1 pm PT (4 pm ET). I'll have the pleasure of reading with the co-winners of this year's Alta California Chapbook Prize from Gunpowder Press --professor & author Fred Arroyo and associate editor of San Diego Magazine Amelia Rodriguez. It's free and no registration is required. Join us via the Zoom link. ➡️ https://santabarbaraca-gov.zoom.us/j/85794095023 ⬅️ Thank you to the Santa Barbara Public Library for facilitating this event!

10/05/2024

Wow! You poets did not hold back on sending some amazing manuscripts for the first JOHN RIDLAND POETRY PRIZE:
The inaugural winner is JOSHUA McKINNEY of Sacramento, California, selected by the editors of Gunpowder Press for his manuscript SAD ANIMAL. We'll see you soon, Sad Animal!
Manuscripts selected as finalists include:
Li Po, Li Hua, and the Sophist by Peter Bethanis
Thanksgiving Dinner in a Rich Zip Code by Stephanie Brown
Sprung Loose by Sarah Carleton
Awake, Breathing by Albert Garcia
Requiem in Wide Open Minor by Justin Hunt
Standard of Care by Lynette Lamp
The Art of Skipping Stones by James Scruton
Preparing to Teach the Lesson by Barry Seller
Thank you all for your poems.

07/05/2024

Looks like WordDaily is paving the way for Gunpowder's next book! FRANGIBLE OPERAS by Susan Kelly-DeWitt will be available in June 🥳

Susan Kelly-DeWitt

02/05/2024

Yes! We're hearing whispers of summer here in Santa Barbara, and celebrating with a new issue of ANACAPA REVIEW featuring poems by Lauren Camp • Sandra Hosking • Jenny Lewis • Seth Hagen • William Aarnes • George Young • George Drew • Betsy Martin • Fran Davis • Keith Ekiss

02/05/2024

Zoom in from anywhere! Three amazing poets hosted by Mission Poetry Series:

23/04/2024

Congratulations to Fred Arroyo ALBA AND OTHER SONGS and Amelia Rodriguez THE FIRST AMELIA, winners of this year's Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize! Their books are available now at Bookshop.org, Amazon, and local booksellers.

23/03/2024

See you in Camarillo!

Ventura County Poetry festival info and lots of links

The following link takes you to the poetry tab page for Studio Channel Islands, which now has links to reserve tickets online for all eight of the festival events (including the free ones):

https://studiochannelislands.org/poetry/

Ventura County Poetry Festival
March 22 - March 24
Studio Channel Islands Art Center
2222 Ventura Boulevard - Camarillo
host Sean Colletti, Studio Channel Islands
& the Ventura County Poetry Project

Friday, March 22
5pm Jennifer L. Knox & Luke Kennard

Jennifer L. Knox – Crushing It
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVXyIq9jwrQ
www.jenniferlknox.com

Luke Kennard
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVZ_FvGZHSg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezH3e4W51nU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Kennard_(poet)

Saturday, March 23
11am – 12:30pm workshop
Getting Your Poems Published – Gunpowder Press

1 – 2:30 Gunpowder Press showcase; Perie Longo,’/
Enid Osborn, Crystal AC Salas, David Starkey, Paul Willis,
George Yatchisin and Chryss Yost

Perie Longo – Species of Concern
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5hMaI0lYBo

Enid Osborn – Lost Shoe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM0C-amR72w

Crystal AC Salas - Poseia Para la Gente
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hypfSNhOkcI

David Starkey - Christmas Eve 2018
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc7jrlnXOnw

Paul Willis - Peer Editing in Santa Barbara
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv4dorQ5uag

George Yatchisin – EP Foster Library
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjcwe3QegqU

Chryss Yost - California Poem
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6HBFAdP6cQ

3 – 4:30 open mic – Phil Taggart

5 - Laure-Anne Bosselaar & Tim Seibles

Laure-Anne Bosselaar – Chanel #5
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY96TnTTYSo
https://laureanne.net

Tim Seibles – Poem at 64
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0xatfpHCm0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Seibles

Sunday, March 24
11am – 12:30pm workshop
Generating New Work – Sean Colletti

1 Poetry Contest winners – Marsha de la O

3pm Ventura County Poets Showcase – Mary Kay Rummel

******************************************************

it’s new The Arts in Exile #18
featuring Christine Penko and Laura Joy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POWEt8QW0vA

Ventura County Poetry Project
www.vcpoetryproject.org

AskewPoetryJournal… over 1000 videos
www.youtube.com/user/AskewPoetryJournal

Phil Taggart
www.PhilTaggartPoet.com

22/03/2024

Thank you to Tinderbox Poetry and Sarah Carey for their review of Catherine Esposito Prescott's ACCIDENTAL GARDEN: "Prescott has a knack for conveying both the unsayable and the unknowable when it comes to familial love, the divine, wonder, rapture and pain, yet she is determined to voice her truth, even if that truth means acknowledging uncertainty about what it means to believe in anything."

https://tinderboxpoetry.com/review-of-accidental-garden-by-catherine-esposito-prescott

20/03/2024

Welcome THREE-DAY WEEKEND! Christopher Blackman's fantastic collection is the first winner of the Dryden-Vreeland Prize, selected by Nan Cohen. The prize honors poets who work in education--as teachers, aides, administrators, support---and is named to honor two teachers who made a difference in our lives. Available via Amazon, Bookshop.org, or at your local bookseller via Ingram Publishing Group! Here's some of the praise for this collection:

"The poems in this book reframe the daily and habitual to reveal the strange, rich interiors of ordinary moments: sitting in a traffic jam, tilted back in a dentist’s chair, thinking of an old joke while looking at a famous painting. Christopher Blackman is alert to the ironies that link the comedy and tragedy of existence, yet his poems are never arch or brittle. They start, as so many unforgettable poems do, by welcoming us with lucidity and candor into the particulars of someone else’s life; they end by handing us back our own lives, transformed."
—Nan Cohen

Additional praise for Three-Day Weekend:

"The poems of Christopher Blackman’s poignant Three-Day Weekend search for authenticity beneath the fluorescent glow of late capitalism. Who might we be free of our jobs and shorn of limiting social norms? What might we turn our attention to before it’s too late? Blackman’s candid—and often funny—poems reach out from a 'stretch of time that precedes the pageant’s end' to grab the reader by the shoulders and shake them awake."
—Keith Leonard

"I really like these Chaplinesque lyrics, the prat-fall wisdom of their lines, the stumbling beauty of their turns, the charm of the speaker’s ill-timed realizations…. The book is more than a snack-pak of pop pleasure; it is secretly a solemn buffet. These passages begin in the intoxications of bars and radios and movie theaters, but lead into the enduring, sober territories of interior history, the fantods and grace of love and death, and they end questioningly, wisely befuddled, standing beside the reader, saying 'I’m the last one left in the poem, and I’m a little afraid / to be here without anything else to distract me.'"
—Ed Skoog

We are so happy to welcome THREE-DAY WEEKEND!

07/03/2024

Our latest Spacks Prize winner, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF MY UNDOING, is gorgeous, lush and lucid. Congratulations, Kellam Ayres!
As Gary Soto, who selected this winner, says "Here is art, here is truth, poems as portraits.”
Available now from you favorite online retailers. Enjoy!

29/02/2024

NEW ISSUE online now: The March/April issue of ANACAPA REVIEW includes poems by Wayne Miller, SM Stubbs, Joseph Powell, Mirande Bissell, Catherine French, Annamaria Formichella, Kurt Olsson, Christien Gholson, Madina Tuhbatullina, Barbara Miner, Carmen Fought, Rebecca Pyle, and Carine Topal. Happy Leap Year, poets! 🐸🍀🦎

13/02/2024

Learn from one of our amazing Spacks Prize winners!

Michelle Bonczek is running our 5-week Poetry Workshop in March. She is an award winner poet, professor, and editor. Sign up and talk about , , & . We welcome poets of any skill level who want to join our online community.

https://thepoetsbillow.org/workshops/
Open SUNY Textbooks

31/01/2024

Take a look at the latest publishing opportunities currently available to writers from the many literary magazines and presses that are members of CLMP. Before submitting your work, be sure to check the publisher’s website for any updates.

31/01/2024

We've got new releases from Gunpowder Press coming your way! We're also accepting poems for Anacapa Review until February 1--send your poems
https://anacapareview.com

01/01/2024

2023 was a great year for Gunpowder Press. We were honored to be recognized as Local Heroes by the the Santa Barbara Independent and we are already looking forward to 2024. For a preview, we're sharing "January One" by Christopher Blackman, whose book THREE-DAY WEEKEND is forthcoming. Happy New Year!

JANUARY ONE
Dream of Jeannie. Dream of Dion
and Bo Diddley. Of high and tights,
Hugo Boss, plimsolls and the VFW parking lot
where my mother roller skated as a girl.
At night I dream of Dayton—of oxidized bridges
harboring graffiti like regretful tattoos
in intimate places. Of fireworks over the river.
Of endless ranch houses with egg cream
vinyl siding and backyard basketball courts.
I dream a horde of Catholic boys named things
like Tom and Drew to occupy those courts,
then I funnel them all to Jesuit schools.
I dream I buy four ranch houses in Dayton
and they become a hotel. I dream I pass Go
and inherit two hundred dollars. This morning,
when I woke, I resolved to be more proactive,
so I left you to sleep. Last year’s newspapers
are flattened on the sidewalk by footprints,
stained by road salt: tell me, why is it I always
tell someone I love them for the first time
on a Sunday, and do I always mean it as an apology?
Today is the biggest Sunday if the week was a year
and I am still sorry. I believe this year will be different.
I take a walk while the world is hungover,
everyone stirring sauerkraut at their stoves. I tell myself
I feel better already and this time I believe it.

(Poem first published in Rust & Moth (Spring 2021) and reprinted with the poet’s permission)

https://gunpowderpress.com/happy-new-year/

01/01/2024

Happy New Year, Poets!

New issue and new bimonthly format for ANACAPA REVIEW online now, with poems from Gabriella Klein, Nancy Murphy, Joseph Buck, Lois Levinson, Mark Jackley, Robert Estes, Arvilla Fee, Lisa Sewell, and Michael Daniels.

Cheers to an inspiring 2024,
Gunpowder Press

25/12/2023

Final days! The inaugural John Ridland Poetry Prize closes December 31.
Open to poets 55. Full details at Gunpowder Press:
https://gunpowderpress.com/poetry-prizes/john-ridland-poetry-prize/

19/12/2023

CONGRATULATIONS! Judge Alexandra Lytton Regalado and series editor Emma Trelles have chosen the winners of this year’s Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize: AMELIA RODRIGUEZ for "The First Amelia" and FRED ARROYO
for "Selections from Emigrant Creek and Other Songs." The winning chapbooks will be available from Gunpowder Press in Spring 2024. Read the full announcement with honorable mention and the full list of finalists on our website.

07/12/2023

We have a winner! Final judge Nan Cohen has selected the winner of the Dryden-Vreeland Book Prize: Christopher Blackman for his manuscript Three-Day Weekend. His book will be forthcoming from Gunpowder Press in 2024.
Seven other poets were selected as finalists:
-Jasmine Marshall Armstrong, The School Custodian’s Daughter
-Kirsten Casey, Grieving Birds
-Nicelle Davis, Ars/Ours
-James Dickson, Hoping to Embrace the Moon
-Alicia Hoffman, You Are Browsing as a Guest
-Barry Peters, The Cohesion of Fizz
-Jessica Purdy, Lung Hours
Christopher Blackman is a poet from Columbus, Ohio. His poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, Cleaver Magazine, Southeast Review, Booth, and Epiphany, among other publications. Former co-host of the podcast Poem Party, he received his MFA from Columbia University, and has been an instructor for the Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop. He was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and a semi-finalist for the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. He currently lives outside of Boston and is the Admission and Financial Aid Database Manager at Dana Hall School, a 5-12 Day and Boarding Girls School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Congratulations, Christopher, and thank you to all the K-12 teachers and support staff for their commitment to students and to poetry! Thank you especially to Nan Cohen for all her work and keen eye.

30/11/2023

December! Celebrate with ANACAPA REVIEW poems by Shirley Geok-lin Lim • Jo Angela Edwins • Rod Val Moore • Isabella Mead • Timothy Geiger • George Yatchisin • Margot Myers • Joseph Powell • Rusty Morrison • Shaun R. Pankoski • Mary Kay Rummel

https://anacapareview.com

We'll be switching to a bimonthly format starting with our January/February issue--send your poems!