Phil Gounis Chapbook in the Works!

Phil Gounis Chapbook in the Works!


I am super excited to announce that Saint Louis Projects and JKPublishing will be releasing the newest chapbook from longtime poetry guru and culture enthusiast Phil Gounis. Titled Upgrading the Allusions, this book will probably hit the shelves in late January 2011.



Speaking of shelves, Left Bank Books has agreed to carry Bad Shoe! We are bringing them issues tomorrow, so do a little local Christmas shopping and bestow some awesome ladies' lit upon your loved ones. If this goes well, hopefully other SLP and JKP titles will appear there soon. Also, many thanks to Vintage Vinyl for having carried Bad Shoe for the past several months.

Getting back to Phil, here is a preview of the work that will appear in his forthcoming chapbooks. Several other poems are on his website:


http://philipgounis.com/




Jonah



all that screaming bombastic splatter & gaiety
at the municipal swimming pool
the afternoon before Independence Day
him outside the fence
just observing not partaking
in all the fun & frivolity
hoping to come upon at least one
magnanimous,gargantuan mouth
that can swallow whole
to take him all the way down
into the depths of the all time
aquatic delight

and then that tingling realization
that the owner of that lugubrious expanse
just might be you




We are super excited about this opportunity. Stay tuned!

Ellen and Erin read "A Kick Ass Poem" (Mature content)

Written by Ellen Herget and Erin Wiles, performed at the 2010 Kick-Ass Awards in St. Louis, MO.

Better not bring yo' kids. Please enjoy.

Bad Shoe Issue 4 Release this Tuesday!

Come celebrate the release of Bad Shoe #4!

Authors include Erin Goss, Anna Ross, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Colleen McKee, and many more. Artwork for this issue is by Mary Phillips. Her work is fantastic; here's a little preview:







Our authors will read their selections from the book, and local band The Jump Starts will close out the evening with some good ole rock-n-roll.


Foam (@ Cherokee and Jefferson) is hosting us, which means coffee, beer, pizza and snacks at the bar!

We'll see you at 7 PM, on Tuesday, December 7th.

Saint Louis Kick Ass Awards This Sunday!

Please join us this Sunday at the Kick Ass Awards to celebrate Bad Shoe and the other 2010 winners. This is our first award and Ellen and I are quite pleased that it is profane. We can't wait to get our horse-ass-karate-guy trophy. Joe's Cafe is an amazing place: the scenery alone will be worth the trip!



Sunday, November 7, 7:00 p.m.
Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury, 63112
Free, BYO, limited seating, doors at 6:00 p.m.

About the Kick Ass Awards:

The Kick Ass Awards was begun in January of 2004, in Austin, TX, and was founded by writer Spike Gillespie. It was adapted for St. Louis that fall by Thomas Crone and Stefene Russell. In the next two years, KAA winners Andrea Avery, Brandyn Jones and Ann Haubrich have joined the core group of organizers for the event, which is held in interesting St. Louis venues every fall/early winter. Between 2005-08, the effort was part of the late culture and literature magazine 52nd City.

While it’s not an official not-for-profit entity, it is a completely grassroots, self-funded effort. All winners are determined by an ad hoc series of discussions during the latter portion of each year, with winners determined as individuals, businesses, organizations and projects that contribute to the health and vitality of the St. Louis region, especially the City of St. Louis. We have also aimed to recognize those who’ve gone without public notice for their work; in some cases, we’ve identified those who’ve gone on to much-greater, continued acclaim in the area, at early stage in their existence or residence in St. Louis. Each year, at least one Mystery Award is given out to a member of the audience, selected that night.

Current Projects

Heya folks,

I hope you've (you? or you over there? any of you?) noticed that the website has gotten a bit of a makeover in recent days. Expect more updates! All-new! With actual information! One of my eternal resolutions is to keep the website current. In the past, I've spent more time thinking about this than actually doing it. Thanks to CJ for implementing all the changes.

And now for actual news!

BAD SHOE: I know it seems (it certainly does to us!) like Ellen and I just put out an issue of Bad Shoe. Well we did. However, our production schedule has been slightly behind, and we're going to try to release the magazine at the beginning or middle of a season like responsible folks, rather than at the very last day of the season like the lazy procrastinators that we are. Soooo if you please, we are once again seeking submissions, this time for our year-anniversary issue. A year? you say. My, how time flies! TELL US ABOUT IT!!

This will be a single issue featuring the delightful artwork of Mary Philips. Our last issue was so freaking fantastic, we can't wait to see the stuff you ladies have been writing lately. So show us, please, pretty please? And send your words this way.(submissions@saintlouisprojects.org, include "Bad Shoe" in subject line).

REDBRICK OMNIBUS: I am also collecting submissions for Redbrick Omnibus, an anthology of art and writing about Saint Louis. I am editing this (perhaps yearly) journal with Nicole Rainey, a supreme wordstress and zine maven. The idea of the collection is to celebrate St. Louis for all its assets and aspects, but not blindly or in bias. While this would not be a good place for your "Fuck St. Louis" rant, nor would it be ideal for trite odes. We are looking for the complex and the gritty, that which captures the ironic trash-ful beauty of this landscape. There are no length or format requirements, only that it be reproducible in a smallish 2D format.

We are also looking for an art editor to help us with the project. You will receive a token monetary stipend but mostly will just fulfill your innate desire to do something beautiful for this city. Your responsibilities would be pretty straightforward: help collect visual representations of the above mission statement for the collection.

If you are interested in either contributing or editing please e-mail with the subject heading "Redbrick Omnibus":
submissions@saintlouisprojects.org.

LITERATURE FOR THE HALIBUT: And finally, I am very pleased to be speaking about poetry, reading my own or favorite poems, and answering questions about local publishing once again on KDHX's Literature for the Halibut this November 15th, this time with host Anne Haubrich, whom I admire greatly. Ellen Herget will be joining me for a portion of the show. It is always great fun and wonderful chance to interact with the STL literary community.



See ya then, thanks for reading. Later gators.

The New SLP Blog!

As some of you may (or maybe not!) have noticed, saintlouisprojects.org gets updated rather infrequently. This is mostly due to me being a complete moron when it comes to web design and therefore saddling CJ with much of the work (and providing him little to no information to do such updating). Ergo, here is the new, easily-update-able source for the most current information about SLP, the Bad Shoe women's lit magazine, our newest publications, and links to special lit-events in greater St. Louis.

I'll try to keep up.

What's next on our plate?

Issue 4 of Bad Shoe, our one-year-anniversary-issue, will be released hopefully by the end of October. So please, ladies, send your writing to submissions@saintlouisprojects.org. We are also looking for featured female artists for upcoming issues, so please submit a brief portfolio if you are interested in being the visual focal point of a lovely verbal panorama.

I am also working on putting together a fun book of comics and musings by the lovely Miss Rose Bland (see above), featured artist in Bad Shoe Issue 1. This book has been a long-time-coming, and I am sure it will be one of our most successful chapbooks to date.

Finally, I am working on an opus with Nicky Rainey. We are looking for submissions to Redbrick Omnibus, an anthology of works in praise/defiance/hatred of our fair St. Louis. We are accepting art, prose, poetry, essays... anything reproducible in small paper format! Entries for this as well should be sent to submissions@saintlouisprojects.org.

Also, if anyone out there has an idea for a printed work, be it poetry chapbook, art-book, anthology, etc., pass it along to me at poor.metaphor@gmail.com. We'll see what we can do to make your print-wet-dream a hand-bound, crispy-new-paper reality.

Until then.