Holiday shopping for Children? Teachers? Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children!

Dear Holiday Shoppers,

Not sure what to give your favorite young person this holiday season? Go with Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children.

Kirkus says Kindergarde is inspiring for "Teachers and students willing to take a leap beyond conventionality."

Megan Burns in Rain Taxi writes, "With over eighty contributors ranging from seven years old to poets no longer with us, this collection of playful works and wide-ranging styles of play on language certainly earns the ;most fun anthology to read' award."

And, as another reviewer wrote, "Personally, I love this project a lot because kids are smarter and weirder than many books give them credit for." -- Kickstarter USA

The anthology includes work from over 80 of America's favorite innovative writers and is sure to inspire readers of all ages.

Help everyone in your life get their experiment on! Perfect for educators, young readers, and even adults willing to take a fresh look at literature, Kindergarde invites play with the world of language and ideas!

Kindergarde is available from SPD and at Amazon.

I scream!
You scream!
We all scream for innovative writing!

Happy Holidays from
Black Radish Books


From Kindergarde:

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories and Songs for Children -- SPD Poetry Bestseller AGAIN!

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children is a POETRY BESTSELLER this month at SPD! Up with some terrific company: check it out.

Why not buy a copy while you're there?! 

Chantel Langlinais reviews GAZe by Marthe Reed

Black Radish Book's Gaze by Marthe Reed has just been reviewed at Tarpulin Sky Magazine by Chantel Langlinais.

"Poems will contract and retract between subject matter: politics, the gaze, the female form, the Eastern landscape, a Raqib Shaw painting. When the experimental dance begins, the poetry will bring you into its rhythms....Ever-shifting. Ever-moving. Ever-fluid. After all, 'Texts moves without boundary...Without boundary. Text represents its own illusions.' (199)....get lost in the beauty of the language." 

Kindergarde in the Marin Independent Journal

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs editor Dana Teen Lomax was recently interviewed by the Marin Independent Journal.

Not everyone would want to have his or her book called "weird" or "really far-out." But Dana Tene Lomax of Marin is pretty pleased Kirkus Reviews says it is.

"I'm glad they called it weird because I wouldn't want it to be something that people recognize right away, " says Lomax of Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children, which she believes is the first collaborative avant-garde book for children in the country.

Read the full interview here.

Dear Jack by Jill Stengel

Black Radish Books is pleased to announce the publication of Dear Jack by Jill Stengel, and August  SPD Recommends book.  A writer’s love of writing and an exploration of romantic love combine to take the reader on a poetic journey of questions, observations, fragments, and few answers. Travel with this Baedeker in hand through desire, through absence, presence, self, other, boundaries and the spaces between.

Praise for Dear Jack

Subtle, sly & wry, deeply moving in its deceptive simplicity, its depths unfold unexpectedly & this reader found it hard to put down until the last poignant words. —David Meltzer

In this collection of short poems, some only a few words, Jill Stengel has written a large book in psychological scope and emotional depth. These brief letters express thoughts, feelings and moods that come and go, repeating themselves, while no two are the same in their contexts, like days in a person’s life. Reading, I found myself feeling lighter, the weight of embodiment shifted by Jill, the writer’s, capacity to engage with the endlessness of ambiguity and paradox, desire and seeking. —Patricia Dienstfrey

Obsessive love keeps tumbling down the hill in Jill Stengel’s Dear Jack, an epistolary revelation on the

quotidian anguish of yearning. In brief sketches on the ontology of missed connections, desire becomes a black hole of want. But smuggled here too is a peek-a-boo playfulness about the clumsy impossibility of language-ing away the body’s insistence for connection. Part letters to the unseen, part journal of craving, Dear Jack maps the hunger to quench and the greed of what stays parched. —Samantha Giles

Dear Jack may be purchased through SPD.

Kindergarde news!

Much happening with Kindergarde these days: a new review by Megan Burns is up at Rain Taxi and Kindergarde was featured this week at The Poetry Foundation's Harriet Blog. Meagan Burns writes: "the array of poets stepping up to present avant-garde approaches to writing for young writers is unprecedented; the anthology is a gift to writers of any age."

Copies of Kindergarde are available through SPD, as well as Amazon.  

Kindergarde is a June Bestseller at SPD

Very exciting news: Dana Teen Lomax's anthology Kindergarde: Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children was a June 2013 bestseller at SPD. Number three on the list! Black Radish Books is thrilled and excited by this collection and its success. If you don't have a copy, do get one now while SPD still has them!

KINDERGARDE now available from SPD and Amazon!

Thanks to our FABULOUS, WONDERFUL Kickstarter supporters, Kindergarde is in its second printing. Now available through SPD and Amazon.

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children, edited by Dana Teen Lomax. This Small Press Traffic-sponsored project features avant-garde writers from across the country who submitted work especially for children: an award-winning anthology that offers young children new ideas about what poetry, song, story, and performance can be. Kindergarde America's first avant-garde anthology for children of all ages. I scream! You scream! We all scream for experimental poetry!

Read the review at KIRKUS.

If you would like a review copy, contact us at blackradishbooks@gmail.com.

To find out more about Black Radish Books and Kindergarde, visit our website!

Kirkus review KINDERGARDE!

Now online, the Kirkus review of Black Radish Book's new anthology Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories and Songs for Children edited by Dana Teen Martin:  please check it out!

And thank you to ALL our FABULOUS supporters in our recent Kickstarter campaign: you rock! THe books at at the printer and will soon be in the post to you. And postcards, CDs, and a hat!  Thank you all for your tremendous support.

Kickstarter for Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children -- new video

Black Radish Books has posted a new video to the Kickstarter page for Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Chidlren:  children reading from and talking about our book! Check it out and please consider supporting this very cool project.

Kickstarter campaign for Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children

Black Radish Books is proud to announce our Kickstarter campaign to fund the 2^nd run of Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children! After selling our a smaller press run of Kindergarde at this year’s AWP Conference in Boston, Black Radish Books is preparing for a much larger print run of the anthology. Our goal is to make the book as widely accessible to kids as possible. And since we are an independent, collective press, we need additional support to fund this project thoroughly. We’re hoping that at least 100 people will purchase books though this Kickstarter campaign so we can fully fund a large print run of the Kindergarde anthology.  Please support Kindergarde!

Dana Teen Lomax's Kindergarde is The Next Big Thing

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children 
Dana Teen Lomax, Editor
Wayne Smith, Book Design
Cliff Hengst, Drawings and Watercolors

Thanks for inviting me Marthe Reed!
My self-interview for The Next Big Thing:

1. What is the working title of the book?

Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I have an amazing 11-year-old daughter and while I was the Interim Director for Small Press Traffic, I had the idea to write a grant and solicit my favorite experimental writers to see what they might have to say to children. Small Press Traffic sponsored the project, the Creative Work Fund offered us a generous grant, and writers from all over the Bay Area and beyond submitted their work.

When my brother-in-law died suddenly at 46, his son said something like, There was so much he didn’t tell me about what to do, how to live. I need to know what those things are... I wish he’d just left me a list. So what do I have to tell my daughter? Why would I write anything else? What would my community, the experimental writing community, have to say to younger people about this life? What would some of my favorite innovative writers want kids to know?
Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs begins to answer these questions.


3. What genre does your book fall under?

Children’s Literature


4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The original writers of the pieces in Kindergarde would have to play themselves. They are extraordinary creatures. The cast list would look something like this:

Kindergarde!

Starring:

Anne Waldman as herself
Beverly Dahlen as herself
Cathy Park Hong as herself
Charles Bernstein as himself
Christian Bök as himself
Douglas Kearney as himself
Eileen Myles as herself
Evie Shockley as herself
Harryette Mullen as herself
Jaime Cortez as himself
Johanna Drucker as herself
Joan Retallack as herself
Juan Felipe Herrera as himself
Kevin Killian as himself
Leslie Scalapino as herself
Lyn Hejinian as herself
Robin Blaser as himself
Sarah Anne Cox as herself
Vanessa Place as herself
Wanda Coleman as herself

(and this is not even ¼ of the writers…)


5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

            Q:  What do avant-garde writers have to say to children?

            A:  Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

This book has been many years in the making and has had many facets, including theater productions at California College of the Arts, the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Although the anthology has been years in the making, I think the finished collection is well worth the wait!


7. Who or what inspired you to make this book?

The writers in this book have inspired me with their absolute commitment to their ideas—no matter what. In their creative work over the past few decades, they have each taken the risk to put their realities honestly and unapologetically into words. My life is richer for each of these writers, and their creative work makes the world better for everyone. The idea of children learning to read and understand the world through their eyes is thrilling and profound.

8. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The anthology offers a story by Jaime Cortez called Jesus Donut, a song by Rosmarie Waldrop named Apricot Madness, a play by Camille Roy entitled Throat Bird, and a poem by Rachel Zolf called done.  This anthology is sure to change children’s ideas of what can happen on the page of a book.

9. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Kindergarde is being published by Black Radish Books in April, 2013.

Black Radish Books announces a reading and book launch for KINDERGARDE: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children, an AWP Off0Site event. Saturday, March 9th, 5-7 pm at The OUTPOST: 186 1/2 Hampshire St., Cambridge, MA 02139. Featuring:

Lee Ann Brown

Evie Shockley

Eileen Myles

Dana Teen Lomax

Maria Damon

Elise Ficarra

Elizabeth Treadwell

Jennifer Firestone

Jill Stengel

Joan Larkin

Marthe Reed

Sarah Anne Cox

Sarah Rosenthal

Susana Gardner