Slate Petals, Untravelling, and the Kazimir Effect
Penteract Press is a publisher of formal poetry. Our focus is on exploring the structural properties of poetry, and we aim to promote innovative constraint-based and visual poetry, as well as works that explore traditional verse forms. We love form in all its forms.
The press was founded in 2016 by poets Anthony Etherin and Clara Daneri. We began by publishing single-fold leaflets, before taking the plunge into full-length books in 2018. Penteract now has over twenty books to its name — the majority of which are full-colour, something which enables us to explore everything visual poetry has to offer.
In addition to the Press, we operate The Penteract Podcast, a culture podcast with a particular focus on poetry. The podcast began in early 2020 — the first episode airing just before the pandemic hit. At present, we have published 28 episodes. Some episodes focus on individual poets, while others feature panels, discussing such topics as the relationship between poetry and the visual arts, science-poetry, and poetic subcultures.
Penteract believes that the form of a poem is every bit as important as its semantic content. Further, by embracing “form in all its forms”, we hope to counteract the tension, dismissiveness, and sneering that goes on between traditionalist poets and the avant-garde, as we happily host both the most traditional approaches to form and the most innovative and experimental.
The work below showcases three summer publications from three Penteract authors: Anthony Etherin, Mary Frances, and Christian Bök.
Slate Petals (and Other Wordscapes) – Anthony Etherin
Through a series of forms both old and new, Anthony Etherin explores the range of poetic formalism, from its simplest structures to its most complex — thereby following the path from lucid, lyrical scenes that learn to breathe despite their binds, to geometric ideals that tease the breaking point of meaning.
untravelling – mary frances
anything is possible nothing is clear there are many miles to go and no map to follow
departure - the ghost lands - the burning - mirror - the fading
through five sequences of miniature landscapes found in stone, metal, wood and tarpaulin, each paired with a cut-up poem created from viewers’ responses to the images, mary frances invites us to find our way through a mysterious dark and dreamlike world, both beautiful and unsettling
the air has the feel and smell of dawn a distant shiver of lost magic
we are on unknown land anything is something to aim for we sharpen our eyes
untravelling
You can pick up your copy of untravelling here.
The Kazimir Effect – Christian Bök
‘The square is a vital, regal infant.’ —Kazimir Malevich
Christian Bök, the fabled author of Eunoia, has turned his attention to Art, taking inspiration from a simple, iconic square: Suprematist Composition: White on White by the artist Kazimir Malevich. Bök has written a series of sixteen, minimal poems, each one a kanji haiku, composed by juxtaposing two names for varied brands of ‘white,’ sold by the manufacturer British Paints. Bök has then used these brands of house paint to create both collaged maquettes and abstract paintings, all modelled upon the aesthetic precedent set by Malevich himself — each artwork, a palimpsest of squares, becoming an icon for the poem that supplies their minimal palette.
Bök has created a genre of simple, visual poetry, whose sequence evolves from the concrete, pastoral image of “Gentle wind/ on Tokyo snow” to the abstract, supernal motif of “Infinity white/ on infinity white.”
Enjoy the austere beauty, if not the elegant rigour, of this deluxe volume, written by a master of the avant-garde.
You can get your copy of The Kazimir Effect here.
Biographies
Anthony Etherin is a formalist poet, musician, and publisher, best known for his work with alphabetical and metrical constraints. His books include Cellar (Penteract Press, 2018) and Stray Arts (and Other Inventions) (Penteract Press, 2019), and Slate Petals (and Other Wordscapes) (Penteract Press 2021). He tweets @Anthony_Etherin and archives his work online at anthonyetherin.wordpress.com.
Mary Frances works with found art, collage, and cut-up text, always curious about alternative ways of looking and the rearrangement of things. She is interested in creating work which is relatively empty, a series of backdrops or stage sets perhaps, where meaning remains open and unsettled. She walks a lot, with a pocket camera, drawn to small, hidden, or neglected places where she takes pictures of things which may or may not be there. She tweets @maryfrancesness.
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001) – a work of unorthodox literature, which has won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök has received worldwide attention for his ongoing project, The Xenotext (which requires him to encode poetry into the genome of a deathless bacterium). Bök has exhibited his artworks at more than fifty galleries around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Power Plant in Toronto, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. Bök is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he works, as an artist, in Melbourne. He tweets @christianbok.