UpSet Press

Vocalises – Poems by Jenny Husk

CK — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:13:29 +0000

“In the poems of Jenny Husk the world is a membrane words bounce against and poke into, skating on the scrim then delving below in quick sharp digs of fragment, image, and gut-punch. This work is “river dialogue” and “glare on the surface” all at once, achieving experiment, a sustained rhetoric, intimacy and political weight in one go. If Van Gogh graffitied “The Starry Night” on an urban wall then broke it apart with a mallet, you might get at something resembling the rough and precious texture of a Husk poem. Her register is horizon-wide & she jumps its length in a blink: the same stanza holds “rooms of dust” and “harmony,” then enjoins us to “hack the map” and “tag it city-wide.” This is a skateboard train anyone wishing to journey the sidewalk, desert, star, and cerebellum should hop on, presto. I am still traveling.”
-Ana Božicevic, author of “Stars of the Night Commute” (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)

Author Bio:
Jenny Husk received an MFA in poetry from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2003. She currently teaches in the English department at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven with her husband and two children.

Halal Pork & Other Stories, Get your early review copy

CK — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:47:11 +0000

UpSet Press is glad to announce that Cihan Kaan’s Halal Pork & Other Stories is now available for early birds. Slated for a Spring 2011 release we can offer the book for reviews. Review copies of HP are now available through the UpSet Catalog, to obtain your copy use the links below.

Direct Paypal Purchase from Upset Press Store

Halal Pork & Other Stories By Cihan Kaan

CK — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:05:35 +0000

In Halal Pork and Other Stories, Kaan projects an avant garde, post 9/11 world, from the perspective of a young Muslim New Yorker. It’s a place where Coney Island meets Mars; where hijabi girls are punk rock dervishes; where identity salesmen count pigeons at insane asylums as a cream cheese conspiracy brews in gitmo; where rich boys pay to be Muslim for a day; where the transgendered are holy; and where the bacon is halal. Kaan offers up five urban Sufi tales in the swirling graffiti of Brooklyn.

Authors Website: cihankaan.com
To order from Amazon click here.

Read the official interview with the author at the UpSet Press Blog: Interview with Featured Author of 2011, Cihan Kaan

Born Palestinian, Born Black: The Gaza Suite

CK — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 03:02:49 +0000

UpSet Press has restored to print Suheir Hammad’s first book of poems, Born Palestinian, Born Black, originally published by Harlem River Press in 1996. The new edition is augmented with a new author’s preface, and new poems, under the heading, The Gaza Suite, as well as a new publisher’s note by Zohra Saed, an introduction by Marco Villalobos, and an afterword by Kazim Ali.

“It’s lucky for us to have this new edition of Born Palestinian, Born Black, Suheir’s first book, published more than ten years ago. In the decade since, Hammad has achieved an international reputation as a poet. These poems are the groundswell from which her future work and political commitment springs. Like June Jordan, like Mahmoud Darwish, it is the passion and penchant for lyricism that is the true engine of these poems…” – Kazim Ali, The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions)

Authors Website: suheirhammad.com

Order from Amazon: Link
Direct Paypal Purchase from Upset Press Store

The Comeback’s Exoskeleton, by Matthew Rotando

CK — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 03:01:37 +0000

“Incorporating the density of Spanish surrealism and a sprawling Whitmanesque line, this amazing first book finds Rotando engaged in a poetic biathlon which draws equally from maximal and minimal traditions. There are tight, economical poems, free verse forms derived from the sonnet, poems leaping about the page, but my favorites are the wonderful prose poems tumbling over and under themselves toward gnomish statements that feel both didactic and self-parodying.”
Tim Peterson, Since I Moved In (Chax Press)

Theater of War: The Plot Against the American Mind, by Nicholas Powers

CK — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 03:00:28 +0000

“In this detournement of political statements like the U.S. National Security Strategy Report, a reader will inquire when is “the truth” blurred; conversely, when does Powers’ alternative reading come painfully close to the real? The author’s hard-hitting, farcical longer-form poems might have constituted a part one, dissolving into the more empathetic, injured fragments. But his choreographed admixture embodies how emotions come. Anger interspersed with hurt; a loudly reinterpreted official voice, broken by still louder whispers.”
Bruna Mori, Derive (Meritage Press)

BPBB Has Gone To Press

CK — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:17:29 +0000

It’s taken longer than expected, but Born Palestinian, Born Black is just weeks away from being back in print.

We are excited, and grateful to Ms. Hammad for the opportunity to reprint this title. It will be available for purchase via SPD Books, Amazon, and directly from us. Thanks to all who have supported this project!

Forthcoming Spring 2011

CK — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:13:58 +0000

Halal Pork & Other Stories, by Cihan Kaan

Cihan Kaan is a Texas-born, Brooklyn-raised writer and filmmaker. A multi-talented artist, his first work of video-art premiered as part of an ensemble show at MOMA at age 17. By 21 he had directed several music videos in rotation on MTV. His short film She’s Got An Atomic Bomb (2004) won Best Short Film for the Evil City Festival and toured underground film festivals such as the Coney Island Film Festival, the B-Movie Film Festival (Audience Award), and the Lost Film Festival. His second short film, Shuffle Mode (2006) won Best Short Film at the Sin Cine NYC Erotic Film Festival. Halal Pork is his first book of stories. Click on “Forthcoming” tab (above right) for book description and cover art.

NYSCA Regrant Award

CK — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:12:22 +0000

UpSet Press receives CLMP grant!

UpSet Press is proud to announce that it recently received a regrant award of $2,000 from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, supported by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. The grant will be applied to marketing and event-planning for the forthcoming Halal Pork & Other Stories…

Born Palestinian, Born Black (New Edition)

CK — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:09:54 +0000

Suheir Hammad’s first book of poems back in print! (Spring 2010)

UpSet Press is proud to be releasing a new edition of Suheir Hammad’s first book of poetry, “Born Palestinian, Born Black” (originally published by Harlem River Press in 1996). The new edition is augmented by new poems from “the gaza suite,” a foreword by Marco Villalobos, an afterword by Kazim Ali, and a new preface by the author. The book is scheduled to be published in spring 2010.