Washington D.C. doesn’t know what’s coming—we are!
Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. Books will be exhibiting with Henry Miller Memorial Library at the AWP Conference & Bookfair next week in Washington DC. You can find us at table 733-T. We feel like it’s kismet the conference takes place in Washington D.C. Writers and intellectuals have always been on the frontline of resistance. We are not the voice of the voiceless, they have a voice: we are merely the conduit from which these varied and disparate voices can be heard. We are committed to the writings of refugees, immigrants, women, and many under-represented groups, oh yeah, men too, we love men. We are committed to resistance to fascism in all its forms.
River and Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, AWP 2016
Our newest books from Ping-Pong Free Press tells the story of that proto-feminist Medea, in Jameson O’Hara Laurens’ Medeaum. We also have A Small Suitcase of Russian Poetry featuring those writers who were persecuted, imprisoned and killed for their writings against the state, timely no? Forthicoming publication of Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts’ poetry collection, White Fire.
Poet Republik Ltd. is proud to publish Kate Lutzner’s Invitation to a Rescue, a delicate tale of lovers.
We’re super proud to release J. Hope Stein’s collection, Occasionally, I Remove your Brain through Your Nose, an experiential and experimental collection of poems in the land of chaos. Official release in April. Advance copies will be available at AWP and here.
Forthcoming from Poet Republik Ltd:
Haunted by Waters, by River Atwood Tabor
Cock, Love poems from a radical feminist, with the micro-fiction collection: A Small Book of Porn for my Husband, by Maria Garcia Teutsch
Back by popular demand: Pussy T-shirts from Maria Garcia Teutsch’s eponymous collection, get yours in hot pink or black!
Henry Miller Memorial Library announces “Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary: Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial”
Friday, November 7th at Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles
Henry Miller is responsible for — to quote scholar James Decker — “the free speech that we now take for granted in literature.” It began fifty years ago when Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” was deemed not obscene by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur and its literary magazine, Ping-Pong, will be throwing a party at the Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles to honor this landmark event while ruefully acknowledging that free speech is once again under siege.
“Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary of the Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial” will celebrate this historic win for free speech by bringing together writers, poets, and authors who will read or display a piece of art/prose/poem/song that was banned and that effected them in a transformative way. Participants will also read or sing an original piece.
The event also doubles as an opening party for the latest installment of Ping Pong, the Henry Miller Memorial Library’s literary magazine. The newest edition builds upon this theme of pervasive and seemingly universal censorship by featuring banned Russian writers and poets both past and present. Poets such as Anna Akhmatova, whose work was banned from 1925-1953 as a threat to the social order. Akhmatova was labeled “alien to the Soviet people” for her “eroticism, mysticism, and political impartiality.”
In fact, a recurring theme of this event and of the newest Ping-Pong installment is that for all our advancements, speech is still not free, as contemporary Russian poet Ilya Kaminsky reminds us of this in his poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” featured in the current issue of Ping-Pong.
Complacency is the enemy and vigilance is key.
Our world is again in a period of censorship. From perhaps the most absurd act being a push to do a kind of color coding of college books in an effort to be ‘sensitive,’ to the more pervasive evil of state censorship. I say, fuck all that.
Toni Morrison says it is the job of the free to free others. We can do this by supporting other artists and those others working for change. We need to do this now more than ever, we need to do it today.
Performance Artist Tim Youd has undertakien the task of retyping one hundred classic novels, staging his durational perfomrances at locations relevant to the author’s life and/or the plot of the novel.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet, film producer, editor and world wanderer. She is editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong journal of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California, where she also serves as president of the board. www.marialoveswords.com
Mark Lamoureux lives in New Haven, CT. He is the author of thee full-length collections of poetry: Spectre (Black Radish Books 2010), Astrometry Orgonon (BlazeVOX Books 2008), and 29 Cheeseburgers / 39 Years (Pressed Wafer, 2013). His work has been published in print and online in Fence, miPoesias, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Jacket, Fourteen Hills and many others.
Claire Cottrell works as a film director / creative director/ editor/ and photographer. She is the founder of Book Stand. She is the Los Angeles editor of Berlin-based Freunde von Freunden. She has contributed to The Atlantic, the Paris Review, VICE and Wilder Quarterly on the subjects of art, fashion, design and plant life. Her work has been featured in Vogue, T: The New York Times Style Magazine and purple FASHION, to name a few.
Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 20 years. He’s also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. His most recent books are the novel Atomik Aztex and World Ball Notebook. Atomik Aztex won a 2006 Believer Magazine Annual Book Prize and World Ball Notebook won the 2009 Asian American Writers Workshop Poetry Prize.
Melissa Broder is the author of three poetry collections, Scarecrone, Meat Heart, and When you Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother. By day, she is Director of Media and Special Projects at NewHive. Broder received her BA from Tufts University and her MFA from City College of New York.
Henry Miller Memorial Library announces “Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary: Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial”
Friday, November 7th at Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles
Henry Miller is responsible for — to quote scholar James Decker — “the free speech that we now take for granted in literature.” It began fifty years ago when Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” was deemed not obscene by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur and its literary magazine Ping-Pong, will be throwing a party at the Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles to honor this landmark event while ruefully acknowledging that free speech is once again under siege.
“Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary of the Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial” will celebrate this historic win for free speech by bringing together writers, poets, and authors who will read or display a piece of art/prose/poem/song that was banned and that effected them in a transformative way. Participants will also read or sing an original piece. Read More >
Dear Reader,
Once again you’re doing that thing that’s most important, reading this literary journal. Some smart people say that print journals are a thing of the past, but I say–as I listen to a blue vinyl Radiohead album–not so mon frère. Those of us who love paper, who love words, who love the crack of a spine will always reach for a book. Not to disparage all the multimedia at our fingertips. I have a teenage son, I know what’s up with all that stuff, and I love being able to slip a tiny electronic device into my carry-on when I’m flying all over this blue marble. Sometimes all I need is to read a poem by someone whose voice I need to hear that day on that island or on that train. Read More >
Thank you for picking up this magazine. Inside you will find a world of wonders. If you are like most people you will flick through and look at the art first. We are proud to feature gallery prints from iconic photographer Kim Weston. The art editor and I met Kim a few years ago at the Henry Miller Library over dinner, and have been trying to get his beautiful photographs in our magazine ever since. It is thanks to the dogged tenacity of River Tabor that we are able to feature work by an astounding member of the Weston dynasty. Read More >
