Often considered portents of doom, three crows can also signal change, transformation, and rebirth. These three poems (a murder of sorts) transition from one constraint to another; a palindrome, a monometer sonnet, and a perfect anagram by line. The Crows is Anthony Etherin's second outing with The Blasted Tree, and we've produced a limited edition of 50 leaflets to mark the occasion. Read the trio online, then stop by our Store for your copy of the 4" x 9" leaflet, printed black on black with a bright yellow interior.
Poetry Booklet - Sovereignty by Franco Cortese
"Sovereignty" is one of those magic words packed full of anagrammatic possibility. Each of the poems in this six-part series by Franco Cortese are line-by-line anagrams of the titular noun. All six are also subject to additional constraints: they must begin in the form of "ye ___ ___", and refer at least once to each of the following topics/themes: sex, death/decay, vegetation and language/text, in one form or another. Sixty 3" x 4" purple and gold booklets featuring the series have been produced, available now from The Blasted Tree Store.
Read Sovereignty
Poetry Broadside - Surround Sound by Nathan Austin
A suite of glitch poems by Nathan Austin sampling bits of failed optical character recognition from Google’s search results. OCR is meant to identify printed characters using a scanner and computer software, which proves more difficult in practice than in principle. The poems that comprise “Surround Sound” come from an article about composer Eliane Radigue, originally published in frieze magazine in 2011. The suite as presented by the author appears in the online gallery, and a limited edition of 11" x 17" broadsides featuring the series can be purchased from The Blasted Tree's store.
READ SURROUND SOUND
Poetry Leaflet - University of the Air by Billy Mavreas
University of the Air is an asemic exploration of rubber stamps of the Varsity typeface primarily. The initial message encoded has now been forgotten, as per sigil work. Three images from Billy Mavreas' exploration can be viewed on The Blasted Tree, and we've made a limited edition of folded leaflets from his triptych of visual poetry. Each of the fifty leaflets comes in a decorative envelopewith a descriptive card, available now from The Blasted Tree's Store.
View University of the Air
Poetry Chapbook - job site by Zane Koss
A long poem simulating the tear-out and replacement of an old deck, or a celebration of manual labour, process, and materials. Zane Koss' verse demands work on behalf of his readers, requiring they repair his disjointed lines as they move through the poem, and rewarding us with satisfaction in a job well done. Filled with the language of labour, job site has been made to look like the invoices and packing slips which accumulate on a foreman's clipboard, all bound in familiar construction site materials like vapour barrier, sheathing tape, and house paint. A limited edition of forty numbered chapbooks is available for purchase from The Blasted Tree Store.
READ JOB SITE
Poetry Leaflet - Spoiled Milk + Wet Specimen by Erin Emily Ann Vance
Two witchy poems by Calgary-based author Erin Emily Ann Vance. Spellbinding, incantatory, and downright creepy, these poems invoke candlelit rituals read in the dead of night, "blossoming / worship at the alter of your own skin." Vance's work can be read online (if you dare), and 4" x 6.25" fold-out leaflets featuring the pair of poems have been produced in a limited run of 50, available now from The Blasted Tree's Store.
READ SPOILED MILK + WET SPECIMEN
Poetry Chapbook - con/tig/u/us by Kevin Heslop
Selected from a series of brief poems well over one hundred parts long, con/tig/u/us strings together ephemeral, non sequitur thoughts into a fragmentary and ever-shifting stream of poetic consciousness. With only a handful of words, Kevin Heslop writes tiny poems opening upon a world of possibility, and with that in mind we've produced a limited edition of tiny hand-bound chapbooks, a mere 2" by 5.25", opening a window into Helsop's larger poetic practice. Fifty copies of con/tig/u/us have been published, now available from The Blasted Tree Store, and you can preview the collection in the online gallery.
READ CON/TIG/U/US
Poetry Chapbook - ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶ by Kate Siklosi
̶c̶o̶u̶p̶ is a collection of visual poems made from the destruction of a vintage book, The Famous Men and Great Events of the 19th Century (1899). Using a variety of techniques and materials, Toronto-based author Kate Siklosi dismantles and reconstructs the narratives propping up the 'great man' theory and European patriarchal ascendancy, documenting each experiment in historical revisionism with colour photographs. The Blasted Tree has produced a limited edition of 40 hand-bound chapbooks incorporating the materials used in the making of ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶ : torn up maps, pages from a book, red string, and transparent tape. ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶ can be viewed online, and copies of the chapbook, each one unique, can be purchased from The Blasted Tree Store.
READ ̶C̶O̶U̶P̶
Poetry Chapbook - CRYPTOPOEMS by mwpm
Encoded within unique and structurally challenging forms lie mwpm's "cryptopoems," puzzle-like arrangements of letters concealing lines of poetic meaning that unfold to careful readers. These poems function like a riddle or a joke, comical little brain-teasers which require you to read in unfamiliar ways, to use memory and pattern recognition in deciphering the message, but which reward those who get it. Surveying a variety of mwpm's signature forms, each built on a simple set of constraints, CRYPTOPOEMS can by read online, and a limited edition of hand-bound chapbooks are available from The Blasted Tree Store.
READ CRYPTOPOEMS
Poetry Leaflet - -19° 54’ · 12h 53m by Kyle Flemmer
-19° 54’ · 12h 53m, a new visual poem by Blasted Tree editor Kyle Flemmer, uses randomly generated celestial coordinates to form a composite view of the night sky. Each poem is made from grid spaces excerpted from star charts enclosing the set of 14 coordinates, substituting lines of text for sightlines in the sonnet. A limited edition of fifty 4.25" x 9" folded leaflets have been produced on metallic silver paper, get yours today from The Blasted Tree's Store.
VIEW -19° 54’ · 12h 53m
-19° 54’ · 12h 53m is The Blasted Tree's 50th print publication in just under four years of operation! Thank you to our readers and contributors for all the love and support so far, we look forward to publishing more boundary-pushing Canadian content in the coming years. For a comprehensive list of our publications in print, please see our Publication History.