Cleaver Issue 49 Contributors Reading

To make up for missing the issue 48 Contributors Reading because I was sick, Cleaver has kindly asked me to read for their issue 49 Contributors Reading.

On Sunday, April 27, 2025 from 7:00–8:30 p.m. (EST) via Zoom, I’ll be reading “2023.32,” recently published in issue 48 of Cleaver, along with other contributors to issue 49: Sarah C. Baldwin, Brian Benson, Andrea Bishop, Lisa K. Buchanan, John Calderazzo, Jocelyn Jane Cox, Adam Doniger, Jeff Friedman, Vicki Mayk, Ess Pokornowski, Rachel Talbot, Matt Thomas, Gretta Trafficante, and Robyn Wheelock.

You can register for the reading here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/r3sThAH-R7K8aLsV_SNYEw.

Update June 2, 2025

A recording of the reading is now available on YouTube. I’m the first reader:

Cleaver Issue 48 Contributors Reading

UPDATE: I’m recovering from a nasty flu and won’t be able to make the reading tonight.

On Sunday, February 2 from 7:00–8:30 p.m. (EST) via Zoom, I’ll be reading “2023.32,” recently published in issue 48 of Cleaver, along with other contributors to the issue: David Lydon-Staley, Christopher David Rosales, Tracie Adams, Sinclair Cabocel, Eden Royce, Connor Fisher, Jeff Gabel, Coleman Bigelow, Jeffrey G. Moss, Krista Puttler, Herman Beavers, and Kiely Todd Roska.

You can register for the reading here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/mSovtLTCRmmjkSMqEZkqFg#/registration.

Reading at CANO’s Writers Salon

I recently published a book, 2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024), the first in an ongoing sonnet sequence. I have written the next book in the sequence, 2018–2024: Sonnets, and I’ve started the third, 2024–20XX: Sonnets, and I will be reading poems from these two most recent projects at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO)’s Writers Salon at the Wilber Mansion on 11 Ford Ave. I promise a poem about the election (writing it right now).

2013–2017: Sonnets Will Be Published by LJMcD Communications in July 2024

Fest, Bradley J--Cover for 2013-2017--600 resolution--coverI am absolutely thrilled to announce that 2013–2017: Sonnets, the first volume of my ongoing sonnet sequence, will be published by LJMcD Communications in July 2024. I’ll update this page with more information when I have it, but for now, here’s a description of the book:

2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.

Also, thanks much to my very good friend Taylor Baldwin for the amazing cover image: The Interpreter (2010).

“2021.05,” “2022.03,” and “2022.04” in The Kitchen Sink

As I mentioned in my last post, my work appeared in two different publications today. The second: More sonnets from my ongoing sequence, “2021.05,” “2022.03,” and “2022.04,” are in The Kitchen Sink, a brand-new publication based in Oneonta, New York (where I currently reside) run by recent graduates of the State University of New York at Oneonta. Thanks to Alexis Ochi and the other editors for accepting my work. I’m also thrilled to have these poems published alongside work from one of my students at Hartwick College.

“2021.06,” “2022.01,” and “2022.05” in IceFloe Press

My work appeared in two different publications today. First, I’m thrilled to have more recent sonnets from my ongoing series, “2021.06,” “2022.01,” and “2022.05,” as part of a series of pandemic “Dispatches” at IceFloe Press. Thanks especially to Robert Frede Kenter for championing these poems and for the amazing visual poem collage he made to accompany my work.