ZOETROPE by Kevin Latimer
release date: 8 . 8 . 20
cover: Angelo Maneage
ISBN: 978-1-7353527-0-1
digital edition available here
excerpts:
jubilat
wax nine records
poetry northwest
"[ black ] boy in space is all the rage
on the evening news.
in space, your body means
your body & that’s it.
in space, i am stuffing a comet
into my mouth, look at that!"
Kevin Latimer’s ZOETROPE is a frantic protest set in a grieving and illogical world. These poems and poemplays examine what it is to be black and grieving in America. At the end: some place, no disasters exist.
praise for ZOETROPE:
"Kevin Latimer’s ZOETROPE is a vividly grieving machine, but “this is not a disaster story.” “Am I alive now?” the poems ask, knowing that “a boy in space is all the rage,” while landing means inhabiting a world where “capital punishments” abut “weird edges.” “Hellions / everywhere.” Helium too. It’s the atmosphere. Violence *is* the cosmology, Neptune says. And then: “No one / is shooting & that / is not a mistake.” It’s bad optics for the authorities. “And then the marches begin.” It’s good to be on the move. Look around: just a little darker now past the turn of days.” -- Bill Carty, author of HUGE CLOUDY
"...when I read Kevin’s work, I’m reminded of that feeling that, I think transcends any other feeling while reading poetry — I’m reminded of what a poem can do. To be reminded of that is such a beautiful thing. It’s that feeling when you read a poet break a line mid-word, or deliver in 5 lines what you’ve tried to do in 100, or deliver in 100 lines what you thought could only be 5, or refuse punctuation, or re-use punctuation, or shift perspective, tone, dialogue, anything, I don’t care — to read poetry is to have the potential to be reminded of what a poem can do. And to read Kevin Latimer’s poetry is to always be reminded of what a poem can do." - Devin Gael Kelly on VERTIGO.
"In Latimer’s ZOETROPE, “joy & grief are dancing on every sidewalk,” and there’s a sky, pink and filled with balloons, and there’s a boy dancing into and through a world where a black boy “run[s] from the police,” where “Tamir rips dandelions from the street,” and where daisies grow in grounds drenched in death. And even so, Latimer creates a world where black boys fly & dream & live & become astronauts that “dance around the sun.” “I want to speak to all this bigness” asserts Latimer. And he does..." - Noor Hindi
*
Kevin Latimer is a poet and playwright. He is the co-editor-in-chief of BARNHOUSE, a writing collective. His poems can be found in jubilat, Poetry Northwest, Passages North, Storm Cellar, & elsewhere. His plays have been produced by convergence-continuum. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Love & Solidarity by Brendan Joyce
full length book of poetry — 6 x 9
release date: 9. 3. 20
cover: Matt Mitchell
digital version here
Originally released digitally as “Unemployment Insurance” on International Labor Day, Brendan Joyce’s full-length Love & Solidarity arrives on 9/3/2020 with reworked poems from the original release & a third section, exit strategies, which explores the summer of insurrection, mass death & love.
“If we’re going to have this conversation
it’s going to be in politicians on fire.”
Bio: Brendan Joyce is a poet from Cleveland, Ohio. His poems have appeared in Johannesburg Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail & Pandemic Publications & on Twitter.
Character Limit by Brendan Joyce
digital edition available here
full length book of poetry — 6 x 9 | 72 pp.
release date: 9. 3. 20
cover: Vin Tanner
Brendan Joyce’s Character Limit, 67 poems originally written live in a single thread on Twitter over three weeks.
*
Praise for Character Limit:
Brendan Joyce’s Character Limit makes excellent use of Twitter as both method of composition and constraint in poems that slap against the limits of wage slavery & the sprawling, gentrified city:
“Come on, this isn’t a city
it’s just a fight we’ve been refusing to have.” -Nikki Reimer, author of MY HEART IS A ROSE MANHATTAN
"Character Limit catalogues what I can only describe as recognizable ruins. School supply lines, childhood cafeterias, freight turbines, neighborhood blocks & church basements etc. This sprawling “Sewer main under god’s house,” as evoked in no. 13. There is no exaggeration here. These are familiar spaces for any among us who’ve weathered & been weathered by the exploitative cycles of office labor or the food service industry, the expectations of obtaining a college degree & burdens of student loan debt, or simply (is it really that simple? was it ever?) staying alive each day with a positive number in the bank account." -Constantine Jones in Glass Poetry Journal
*
Bio: Brendan Joyce is a poet & busboy from Cleveland, Ohio. His poems have appeared in
Johannesburg Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail & Pandemic Publications & on Twitter.