issue twenty-one : Castle Guestskull : guest-edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #21
produced also as CASTLE GRAYSKULL 1.5
directed by Skeletor
edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples

see here for Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples’ introduction and biographies 

featuring new work by:

Colter Jacobsen (as Teela)
Anne Waldman
Brian Lucas
Carrie Hunter
Roberto Harrison
Neeli Cherkovski
Raymond Foye and Bob Flanagan
Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta
Tamas Panitz
Gregory Corso

$5 + postage / + $1 for Canadian orders; + $2 for US; + $6 outside of North America

Canadian/American/International rates (including shipping

Canadian orders $6.00 CAD American orders $7.00 CAD International orders $11.00 CAD

Author biographies:

Neeli Cherkovski lives in San Francisco and has published many books of poetry and prose. His most recent poetry collection is ABC (Spuyten Duvyil).

Gregory Corso (1930–2002) was a revolutionary poet of the spirit. He was the author of over a dozen books of poetry and one novel, in addition to posthumously published collections of plays, interviews, and correspondence.

Bob Flanagan (1952–1996) was a poet, musician, and performance artist, famous for exploring themes of sado-masochism. He was published by Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar magazine, David Trinidad’s Sherwood Press, and Hanuman Books.

Raymond Foye is a curator, publisher, writer and editor. He is currently editing the Collected Poems of Rene Ricard.

Roberto Harrison’s most recent book of poetry is Tropical Lung: exi(s)t(s) (Omnidawn, 2021). He was Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2017–2019 and is also a visual artist.

Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, was on the editorial board of Black Radish Books, and for 11 years, edited the chapbook press, ypolita press. She has published around 15 chapbooks and has two books out with Black Radish Books, The Incompossible and Orphan Machines, and a third full-length, Vibratory Milieu, out with Nightboat Books. She lives in San Francisco and teaches ESL.

Colter Jacobsen splits his time between Ukiah (Haiku spelled backwards) and Surprise Valley, both in California. Besides being an artist and musician and living with 16 animals (30,016 if you count the bees), he DJs as Coco, once a month for Nomadic Nightcap, KZYX community radio.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is a Nicaragüense Jewish Californian artist and poet. They are the author of The Easy Body (Timeless, Infinite Light) & the forthcoming La Movida (Nightboat Books). Tatiana grew up east of the Los Angeles River, and has lived in the Ramaytush Ohlone village of Yelamu for the past decade.

Brian Lucas’s most recent publications are Lost Comets (Two-Way Mirror Books, 2021) and Eclipse Babel (Impart Ink/Bootstrap Press, 2015). He lives in Oakland, CA where he also paints and makes music under the Old Million Eye moniker.

Tamas Panitz is the author of Toad’s Sanctuary (Ornithopter Press, 2021), and The House of the Devil (Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2020). A book of poems, The Country Passing By, is forthcoming from Model City, as is a book of his interviews with Peter Lamborn Wilson, called Conversazione, from Autonomedia. Tamas Panitz is also a painter, whose paintings and stray poems can be found on instagram, @tamaspanitz.

Anne Waldman: Recent projects include album SCIAMACHY. Levy-Gorvy & Fast Speaking Music (with William Parker, Laurie Anderson, Guru Moe & others) 2020, Goslings to Prophecy with Emma Gomis (Lune, 2021), Perdu Podcast: HAFEZ .2021, I Wanted To Tell You About My Meditations on Jupiter, Fast Speaking Music, Mexico City 2022. The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program at Naropa opening in June 2022. Forthcoming: New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive, Nightboat 2022 and BARD,KINETIC, Essays, Poems, Memoir, Coffee House Press 2022.

G U E S T #21 : Castle Guestskull : Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples : Introduction

 

What Is Castle Guestskull?

Is it an airb&b in Toronto, where it’s subbing onscreen for San Francisco? No! It might be a supplement to an underground one-shot many poets received by post instead of accursed email. Unheard of, you say? But it’s existed for centuries, like when you had to submit your poems over a payphone before the Xerox. Or you submitted to interview by postcard so it took twenty years. What Eternia got right about technology was the role of magick in making it serve its creators instead of transforming them, adapting it to a suitable pace and duration.

Castle Grayskull took three or four months to make, mid-June to late September 2021, but it also took more than twenty years of knocking around poetry. Some of our contributors had died but they still gave us new work. There’s at least one debut. A few giants thrown in, but pretty much everyone is a friend or an esteemed colleague.

Our desires were simple: a good line up of poets, a few artist friends, an uncluttered but attractive design, and a small dash of personality specific to the publication. Stapled magazines like this, once plentiful, have grown rare, but they are the lifeblood of poetry. Please make one yourself. No one was more surprised at how well received Castle Grayskull was than we were.

Many thanks to the Havoc Staff, some of whom, uncredited, helped us assemble it in a driveway in Berkeley: Julien Poirier, Dan Owen, Brian Lucas, Kit Schluter, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Suzanne Kleid. Interns: Rod Roland, Patrick James Dunagan. Many thanks to rob mclennan for offering us this venue to supplement the original. There were many more poets we would have liked to include in Castle Grayskull, but we ran out of space; some of them are here.

 

 

 

 

 

Garrett Caples is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Lovers of Today (Wave Books, 2021), and a book of essays, Retrievals (Wave, 2014). He is an editor at City Lights Publishers, where he curates the Spotlight poetry series. He has edited or co-edited books by poets such as Philip Lamantia, Frank Lima, Stephen Jonas, Samuel Greenberg, Michael McClure, etc. He lives in San Francisco.

Micah Ballard [photo credit: Lorca Ballard] is the author of over a dozen books of poetry including Waifs and Strays (City Lights Books), Afterlives (Bootstrap Press), The Michaux Notebook (FMSBW), Parish Krewes (Bootstrap Press), Selected Prose, 2008-19 (Blue Press), Evangeline Downs (Ugly Duckling Presse), Daily Vigs (Bird & Beckett Books), Vesper Chimes (Gas Meter), and Negative Capability in the Verse of John Wieners (Bootstrap Press). He lives in San Francisco with poet Sunnylyn Thibodeaux and their daughter Lorca.