CLR 12 is now on sale

CLR 12—themed on Script as Identity—is now on sale! We’re hugely pleased with the issue, which features work by William Melvin Kelley, Ray Crump, Harry Josephine Giles, Shivanee Ramlochan, G. C. Waldrep, Renos Apostolidis, Vahni Capildeo, Peter Gizzi, and Rhys Trimble, among others. Take a look at the cover art and the contents, and order a copy using the menu above.

If you’re in the UK, there is also a time-limited special offer of  issue 10: Marginalia,  issue 11: Manifestos, and issue 12, for just £15. Order here.

We sadly haven’t been able to have a launch event thanks to lockdown, but we do have some really great video readings from our authors, appearing in the posts below…

 

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Spencer Thomas Campbell, ‘Chroma Key’

The first and last scenes of Chroma Key, a play by Spencer Thomas Campbell, as published in issue 12 of the CLR.

This video is excerpted from a Title:Point production at The Brick, Brooklyn, NY, January 2017, directed by Theresa Buchheister and Spencer Thomas Campbell. These scenes star Ryan William Downey as Man and Kate Hurley as Girl. Recording by Jon Burklund for ZANNI Productions.

With our thanks to Spencer for providing and editing the video.

From the Archive: Audre Lorde, ‘Race and the Urban Situation’, and ‘Proposal for Faculty Seminar at Hunter on Race’

In CLR 11: Manifestos, with the help of Lost & Found : The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, we printed two texts by Audre Lorde: ‘Race and the Urban Situation’, and ‘Proposal for Faculty Seminar at Hunter on Race’. We’re now pleased to make these available online.

Learn more about the Lost & Found project at their website. Here you will find unknown archival works from, amongst many others, Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Ted Joans, Helene Johnson, and June Jordan.

‘Race and the Urban Situation’ and ‘Proposal for Faculty Seminar at Hunter on Race’ are excerpted from “I Teach Myself in Outline,” Notes, Journals, Syllabi, & An Excerpt from Deotha, edited by Miriam Atkin and Iemanjá Brown (PhD candidates in the English Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY), and appeared as part of Lost & Found, Series VII (Fall, 2017). This project focuses on Lorde’s time as an instructor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Hunter College from 1975–1985, with a mix of primarily pedagogical materials that have never been published before.

You can view the full contents of CLR 11 and other material from the issue here.

Read Online from Issue 12: Harvey James, ‘Saturday’

Issue 12 of the CLR contains the debut short story by Harvey James, ‘Saturday’. The story is written in HTML, and we are pleased to share one version of the story as a WordPress page, and the original text as printed in the CLR. Please note that the two versions differ, and using the original text to create a webpage is also recommended.

Please take a look at the contents of CLR 12, and order a copy using the menu above.

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Peter Gizzi reads ‘Speech Acts for a Dying World’

In this instalment of the online launch for CLR 12, Peter Gizzi reads ‘Speech Acts for a Dying World’, which appears in the issue alongside two further poems: ‘Archival Light’, and ‘the face is a political animal’.

Peter Gizzi’s recent books include Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems, out since February 2020 with Carcanet Press, and Archeophonics, which was a Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award in the US.

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Raymond Geuss reads ‘Fiebertraum/=baum’

Continuing the online launch of CLR 12, Raymond Geuss reads ‘Fiebertraum/=baum’.

Raymond Geuss is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cambridge. His latest book, Who needs a world view? was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Alice Hiller reads ‘twice told’ and ‘quadrant’

Trigger Warning: this video makes reference to sexual abuse in childhood.

In the fifth reading for the online launch of CLR 12, Alice Hiller reads ‘twice told’, and ‘quadrant’, from the issue.

Alice Hiller published The T-shirt Book with Ebury Press. She has written for magazines including The Observer supplement and has reviewed for the TLS, FT, Poetry Review, and Poetry London, amongst others. She is the Reviews Editor for harana poetry and interviews poets about ‘saying the difficult thing’ on her WordPress blog. Deriving from her own experience, her current poems work to change awareness around sexual abuse in childhood and document the long shadows it casts.

 

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Rosie Šnajdr reads ‘[Untitled]’

In this video for our online launch of CLR 12, Rosie Šnajdr reads an untitled work that appears in the issue. This piece was composed for Writing Utopia 2020, edited by Sally-Shakti Willow and Sarer Scotthorne, due from Hesterglock Press on 21st June.

Rosie Šnajdr is an experimental writer, editor, and academic. Book A Hypocritical Reader (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018) out now. Pamphlets of concrete prose works We Are Cosmonauts and Body Text are available online for free download. One of 34 contributors to forthcoming novel Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (1111 Press, 2020). Currently finishing a second book, working title Adult Colouring Book, and co-editing a collection of experimental literature, working title Praxis. Rosie co-edits the Cambridge Literary Review and teaches creative writing at the University of Greenwich.

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Patrick Coyle reads ‘Amalgamalgam!’

In the third reading for our online launch, artist Patrick Coyle reads ‘Amalgamalgam!’ — four introductions to guided tours of imaginary future bottling stations, delivered at various locations around the UK. The texts of ‘Amalgamalgam!’ appear in CLR 12. See the contents and cover art for the issue here, and order a copy using the menu above.

http://www.patrickcoyle.info/

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Vahni Capildeo reads ‘Holy Island’ and ‘Spindrift Silences’

 

In this second instalment of readings for the online launch of CLR 12, Vahni Capildeo reads ‘Holy Island’ and ‘Spindrift Silences’, both of which appear in the issue. Order a copy using the menu above.

Vahni Capildeo’s seven books include Venus as a Bear (Carcanet, 2018), and Skin Can Hold (Carcanet, 2019), both completed while a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds. Odyssey Calling, a pamphlet written partly during a stormy night on Lindisfarne, was published by Sad Press in January 2020.

 

CLR 12 Virtual Launch: Aiki Kelley reads from William Melvin Kelley’s ‘Dunfords Travels Everywheres’, and Jesi Kelley reads from ‘Words about Dunfords’

In 2018 the New Yorker described William Melvin Kelley as “The lost giant of American literature”. His fourth novel—Dunfords Travels Everywheres—was first published in 1970, but it appeared without the illustrations that he had commissioned from his wife Aiki to accompany the text, and has since remained out of print. We’re incredibly pleased that CLR 12 contains an extract from Dunfords, alongside two of Aiki’s illustrations, and also an essay by Jesi Kelley, William and Aiki’s daughter, on her father’s writing. Here, Aiki Kelley reads from Dunfords Travels Everywheres, and Jesi reads from ‘Words about Dunfords, because the words in Dunfords are work’. Our thanks go to Noxie Studio for providing the video. Dunfords Travels Everywheres is due to be republished by Anchor Books in September 2020.