My Alberta Beef, Ice Cream, & Haiku in the Winter

Paul and I made chapbooks to give as presents this year. (Sorry the photo's kind of crummy-- I am still having some trouble uploading photos sometimes and I couldn't upload the edited cropped and enhanced photo that I so carefully prepared. Grr.) I am also teaching a chapbook workshop on March 18th at the Alexandra Writers' Centre:

Whoever said small press was small potatoes? Sure, a chapbook rarely nets you more than beer-and-nacho money when you sell a few after a reading, but chapbooks can serve as impressive calling cards, literary ephemera to trade for other books or chapbooks, and a valuable textual link between you and a potential reader.

Bring 1-5 poems or a short short story (postcard) and we’ll use paper, scissors, glue, string, staples, typewriters, stamps and paper cutters in assembly-line-production-style to produce chapbooks under the imprint Alexandrite Press in editions of 30. Lots of examples of chapbooks will be provided for inspiration, and you’ll leave with 20 copies of your own chapbook and 10 different chapbooks from each of the participants (based on a 10 person class size)- an instant collection! While we’re working, you’ll learn lots of handy small press skills as well as tidbits and tips about being part of the small press community.

So, I guess I am back at it-- the next semi-precious press chapbook (or precious city press, as the My Alberta Beef and Ice Cream chappies were printed as-- a combo of my imprint and Paul's One Great City Press) will be a poem of Trevor Speller's that I've been meaning to do since the filling Station Blow-out in the summer.

Look for it here in the next little while!

P.S.-- anyone who has been wanting to borrow my long-arm stapler or paper-cutter, why not sign up for the chapbook workshop? I promise it will be fun. C'mon, fifty bucks is nothing for a collection of ten chapbooks! How else are you gonna spend your Saturday afternoon and your $50.00-- on the Ship & Anchor patio? Ya lushes.