PRESS 254, Spoonfuls to host virtual launch for four books, April 26

We invite you to join PRESS 254 and the Publications Unit for a virtual chapbook launch and reading event at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 26. It is also our pleasure to announce the inaugural print publication of Spoonfuls Chapbooks, which will be launching two books during this event.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place virtually via Zoom, and no registration is required. Full Zoom event link: https://illinoisstate.zoom.us/j/92416247694.

This semester we will be celebrating the publication of four new chapbooks published by PRESS 254, the Publications Unit’s teaching press, and the brand new imprint Spoonfuls, including Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath by poet and translator Laura Cesarco Eglin, and Title Nine by Dr. Jenna Goldsmith ’08, M.A. ’10, alumni and current assistant director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Illinois State. The reading will also celebrate the recently published fall 2021 titles from the PRESS 254 Sutherland Series: Knotted by Ph.D. creative writing candidate Phil Spotswood, and small wings by (re)becca meier, M.S. ’21, who graduated from Illinois State with a master’s degree in creative writing.

Copies of the chapbooks are available for sale at the PRESS 254 bookstore where you can choose to have the books delivered to your ISU campus mailbox, mailed to your residence, or available for a no-contact pickup at the Publications Unit in the Williams Hall Annex. Books are now available for purchase for $10 each, and you can use promo code SPOONFULS22 at checkout for 25% off your total order (available through May 15). All proceeds are used to fund current and future Spoonfuls and PRESS 254 projects.

About the Chapbooks

Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Laura Cesarco Eglin knows that there is not just one way to experience time, and in her groundbreaking chapbook Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath she uses poetry as the place to contest commonly accepted ideas on time. Tempo, as well as a particular rhythm, means time in Portuguese: We translate our rhythm and experiences of time in society. Time as breathing, time as pause, time as memory, and how the present is part of the past, death as part of being alive, time as important, time as a factor in relationships, time as a partner, time as language, and time as part and parcel of who we are.

Title Nine by Dr. Jenna Goldsmith

In Dr. Jenna Goldsmith’s radical new collection, the poet investigates a series of interruptions through the constant and petty correspondences that steer our modern lives: email, phone call, university missive, federal statute. But when we need, really rightfully need the institution’s protections and advocacy, the ambulance to arrive, its sirens at full volume, what then of its silences?

small wings by (re)becca meier

small wings is a poetry collection that explores the concepts of gender identity and intimacy. Its lush descriptions and honest words allow the spotlight to shine on queerness, perception of body, feminism, and meaningful relationships. Packed full of vivid and intense expression, small wings may bring comfort to those who seek self-acceptance and love while drawing on the connection between the seraphic and sapphic.

Knotted by Phil Spotswood

Knotted is an innovative poetry collection that rigorously explores the movement of the lingering emotional complexities of shame, fluctuations of one’s sexual identity, and the intricate nature of the human body. In a gripping narrative on shame and how one lives with it, Spotswood’s poetry takes on a unique landscape format that allows the lines to “breathe” and extend out or become dense and clustered. Packed with intrinsically chaotic imagery of the gnarled roots and burls of one’s own thoughts, Knotted invites the reader to reorient and ensconce oneself with the tongue-lashing thorns of ignominy.

About PRESS 254

PRESS 254 is made up of a student staff of publishing studies or English studies students enrolled in English 254: Introduction to Professional Publishing, under the direction of Holms Troelstrup in the spring semesters and Steve Halle in the fall semesters. The students gain professional publishing experience by working through the entire production process to publish these chapbooks—from copy editing, designing, and typesetting, all the way to hand-stitching the binding, preparing marketing materials, and setting up the launch reading.

Fall semester students completed production for and published the Sutherland Series chapbooks Knotted and small wings. Spring semester students collaborated with Spoonfuls Chapbooks to produce and publish Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath and Title Nine.

Here are this year’s Spoonfuls and PRESS 254 editorial and production assistants:

About Spoonfuls: A New imprint from SRPR

Spoonfuls is a contest-driven poetry chapbook imprint featuring two print and eight open access e-chapbooks published throughout the year. The imprint is a collaboration between the literary journal SRPR (Spoon River Poetry Review) and PRESS 254 that seeks to publish poetry and hybrid chapbooks in English and in translation. Spoonfuls Chapbooks will be selected through a contest model, and a total of ten will be selected for publication annually—eight Editors’ Selections that will be published as e-chapbooks and two Grand Prize Winners whose works will be produced in handmade editions by publishing studies students working on PRESS 254 during the spring semesters. More information about the Spoonfuls Chapbook Contest will be available soon.

The event is sponsored by a Teaching Innovations Grant from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Illinois State University, the English Department’s Publications Unit, and PRESS 254. For more information about the event or for accommodations, please contact Holms Troelstrup, assistant director of the Publications Unit, at jhtroel@IllinoisState.edu or (309) 438-3025.