“2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10” Reprinted in What We Did during the Apocalypse: The Archive of “The Babel Tower Notice Board”

What We Did During the Apocalypse--The Babel Tower Notice Board_Page_001The Babel Tower Notice Board, a pandemic project that existed between August 2020 and December 2021 edited by Richard Capener, was just collected in What We Did during the Apocalypse: The Archive of “The Babel Tower Notice Board” (Hem Press, 2024). I was thrilled then and continue to be thrilled that three sonnets of mine, “2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10,” are part of that project. Thanks again to Capener for his amazing work on The Babel Tower Notice Board, for his monthly Babel Parish Newsletter–a welcome dispatch during those difficult months–and for his continued great work with Hem Press.

(And “2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10” will all be collected in my third book of poems, 2013–2017: Sonnets, forthcoming in July from LJMcD Communications.)

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.

“2020.07,” “2020.08,” “2020.09,” “2020.10,” and “2020.11” in Version (9) Magazine

The most recent sonnets in my ongoing sequence will appear across two issues of Version (9) Magazine, a journal “fostering . . . space for . . . texts that relate to the world of theory” (they previously published some other poems of mine).[1] “2020.07,” “2020.08,” “2020.09,” “2020.10,” and “2020.11” are in volume 1, issue 2. “2020.12,” “2021.01,” “2021.02,” “2021.03,” and “2021.04” will appear in early 2022 in the magazine’s third issue.

[1] Editors, foreword to Version (9) Magazine 1, no. 2 (Autumn 2021): 6, https://version9magazine.com/e-book-autumn-2021/.