Poets are often taught to “write what they know.” That dictum is supposed to bring comfort and solace, to suggest that poets can draw upon their own existence and that will be enough.
I disagree. Write what you don’t know.
Write what you wish you knew, what you wish you could read, the books that you encounter while dreaming, the manuscript which lies just on the edge of your fingertips.
Imagine the younger you, the you that yearned for the book that was just out of reach, the book that you wished was on the shelf—the book that you imagined would fulfill your fantasies, that would make you feel seen and heard, the book that would be just so cool to read. Write that. Write the book that you wish someone had handed to your teenage self. Be able to dream that you can hand that book to your teenage self and say “you’ll be ok.”
I believe that we don’t write for today; we write for tomorrow. A book is not a head of lettuce.[1] It doesn’t go bad. It stays on that shelf calling to a reader that we can’t even fathom. Imagine writing in terms of apprenticeship: learning takes place over several lifetimes of engaging with a subject; it is passed down intergenerationally from writer to writer. Compose with the next generation in mind: pose questions, offer potential solutions, suggest pathways for the reader-poets who come next.
Writing is not individualism; it’s the dream of community.
Continuously be mentored, and mentor in kind.
Celebrate the authors of the generations before you that have inspired and celebrate the authors of generations after you that are about to inspire.
THE MINUTE REVIEW #15 No Press’ little magazine of poetry, prose, and reviews; this issue includes contributions from Kate Siklosi, Greg Thomas, Steven Ross Smith, Douglas Messerli, Aaron Tucker, Billy Mavreas, Paul Eluard (translated by Ross Belot and Sara Burant), Laura Kerr, Hugh Thomas, Rachel Smith, and Erica Baum. limited edition of 75 handbound copies. $5ea
PENTERACT PRESS 2016-2025: A CONTRIBUTOR’S REFLECTION by Derek Beaulieu [MINUTE BOOK #1] A personal essay reflecting on the history of the UK’s Penteract Press, alongside a retrospective interview with Penteract’s Anthony Etherin, and a full bibliography of the press. limited edition of 50 handbound copies. $5ea.
ANOTHER PIECE OF REASSURING PLASTIC [2nd edition] by Derek Beaulieu A photocopy manipulation of “Another Piece of Reassuring Plastic“, this version treats the language of the original essay itself as plastic, manipulating and swerving the text into abstraction and degeneration. A visual essay. Limited edition of 50 handbound copies. $5ea
My good friend and publisher Joakim Norling has just posted the below on social media:
Timglaset Editions to cease publishing.After long deliberation I have decided to put Timglaset to rest. The press has been under a lot of pressure since the recession in 2022-23. Manufacturing and shipping costs have risen sharply and sales of the books have unfortunately taken a dive. For a press which has always worked with tight margins and relied on unpaid work and financial support from my own pockets this development has been disturbing. About a month ago it all came to a point where continuing with the press, in its present form, became impossible, when my webshop platform announced its intention to raise prices with 110%. I simply cannot pay the new fee, which means that Timglaset will be without an online selling platform April 1st. So what will happen now? Timglaset will stop publishing new books. I will establish a simple new website with a list of available books, which will allow those who still have an interest to order from the backlist. Up until April 1st the current webshop will be active and there will be a 30% discount on all orders. Just apply the coupon code GOODBYE at checkout. Sincerely, Joakim Norling, publisher. **
and as I wrote Joakim via email: It’s been clear over the last year or so that things with shifting and changing at Timglaset — the level of news, of posts, of general gossip, and promotion had shifted — but I remained hopeful that the inevitable wouldn’t happen. I completely understand and respect Joakim’s decision to close Timglaset down in its current form; the realities of small and independent publishing is incredibly difficult — and I know that this decision could not have been easy. The support that Joakim and Timglaset has offered me over the years and through many publications has been invaluable; my writing has become weirder and stronger, more confident and clearer-minded, due to his influence, his publishing support, and his friendship. I wish the best for Joakim and for his publishing; there are few presses in the world with the high quality backlist and mandate that he has created. I’m happy to have been a small part of his press. Thank you Joakim for the hours, the conversations, the tireless efforts, the financial investment — for the optimism and willingness to invest where others feared to tread; for being proprietor of one of the world’s most courageous presses. Thank you for publishing me, for inviting and hosting me in Malmö, for meeting me in London, and for so so much more…and thank you for extending that same generosity to so many other authors.
My involvement with Timglaset extended beyond simply being published by them: I also contributed a contextualizing essay to Joe Devlin’s Marginalia Drawings, an image to Timglaset magazine #4, and back cover blurbs for Danni Storm’s Herbarium, Andrew Brezna’s Automatic Souls, Catherine Vidler’s Lost Sonnets, and Joakim kindly translated my work as Snälla, inte mer poesi. I also proofread Fernando Aguiar’s Poems without Words, and Amanda Earl’s Judith: Women making visual poetry.
New from NO PRESS: THE DEATH OF VOLODYA PUTIN by Moez Surani
7.5″ x 5″, 24 pp., red covers, blue flyleaves, white pages; handbound with white thread.
limited edition of 80 copies
$10 each — order via paypal to derek@housepress.ca
“The Death of Volodya Putin is a documentary fiction whose protagonist is Russian President Vladimir Putin. To build this narrative, I researched worldwide descriptions of his imagined downfall and demise. This assemblage of witnesses and speculations builds an imaginative rendering of the last years of Vladimir Putin’s life. The Death of Volodya Putin functions as a kind of reverse panopticon: instead of the figure of power deploying his centrality to surveil and discipline those on the periphery, the journalists, artists, activists, and citizens I cite focus unrelentingly on the destructive principal at the center.”
— Moez Surani
“Mordantly funny, boldly and originally conceived and brilliantly executed—an unlikely cross, if you will, between The Death of Stalin and the late great Fazil Iskander’s The Feasts Of Belshazzar. Moez Surani is entirely sui generis—one of the most talented and innovative writers out there.”
Huge congrats to Crystal Sikma who received the “The Semi-serious, Semi-annual Bookworm Book Cover Award” from The Literary Review of Canada for her cover design for SOME LINES OF POETRY (as edited by Gregory Betts and I for Coach House Books)
Excerpts from bpNichol’s book Some Lines of Poetry (which i co-edited with Gregory Betts) are now on display at the Hudson Amtrak Station in New York — cool!
derek beaulieu's blog 