Pavement Saw Press

Best Poetry Chapbooks of 2011

2012-01-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

These were my favorite chapbooks of 2011

Brian Teare: {upward arrow}
Mairead Byrne: Lucky (Little Red Leaves)
Tyrone Williams: Pink Tie (Hooke Press)
Patrick Culliton: Hornet Homily (Octopus Books)
George Kalamaras: Symposium on the Body's Left side (Shivastan Publishing)
Micah Ballard & Sunnylyn Thibodeaux (Auguste Press)
Bob Arnold: Forever (Longhouse)
Anne Bauer: Fine Absence (PSP)
Amy O'Neill: Rhymes with Fever (self published)
Juliet Cook: Post Stroke (Dusie Kollectiv)

Writers on this list are openly invited to submit a manuscript for publication (unless one was previously published by us). So far I have read manuscripts from two of these authors. Pavement Saw Press will publish a collection by Patrick Culliton, Horse Ballast, in 2012.

For the next "best of" chapbook list (2012), if you are an author or publisher and want to send a published chapbook for review, all will be read.

Pavement Saw
c/o David Baratier
321 Empire Street
Montpelier OH 43543

Those selected for the "best of" list will be considered for chapbook publication by Pavement Saw. Mailing a physical publication is necessary for inclusion on this list.

Chapbook Deadline Saturday 12/31/11

2011-12-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

Pavement Saw Chapbook Contest: Postmark Deadline 12/31 (or midnight PCT for electronic submissions)

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Submit electronically, save the hassle of printing out a manuscript and have your funds support poetry not the post office! Directly enter by using our website http://www.pavementsaw.org/pages/chapcontest.htm

$500 and 50 copies of the winning chapbook will be awarded to the winner. In addition to the prize winner, at least one other manuscript will be published under a standard royalty contract (author paid 10% of press run). Everyone is allowed to submit regardless of previous publication history. Every entrant will receive the equivalent cost of the entry fee in Pavement Saw Press titles.

Unlike many publishers whose collections are printed one copy at a time and therefore lack a large circulation, our chapbooks are published in a first edition of 400 copies plus overage. While chapbooks rarely receive exposure, ours have been reviewed in Poets and Writers, Publishers Weekly, The Georgia Review, Small Press Review and many others. Our previous winners have had subsequent full length books appear from a bevy of publishers including Ahsahta Press, Curbstone Press, Cleveland State University Press, Birds llc, Bear Star Press, BlazeVOX, Shearsman Books, Futurepoem Books, University of Georgia, Tupelo Press, Hanging Loose Press and so on.

Submit up to 32 pages of poetry. Include a signed cover letter with your name, address, phone number, e-mail, publication credits, a brief biography and the title of the chapbook. Include a cover page with your contact information and the chapbook title. Include a second page with the chapbook title only. Do not include your name on any pages inside the manuscript except for the first title page. No need for a contents page. All chapbooks are selected blindly / anonymously. Manuscripts will be considered until December 31st, 2011. Entry fee: $15 for US entries, $18 overseas, $21 electronic (world wide).

If you wish to submit electronically, send $21.00 via paypal to info(AT)pavementsaw.org. Then e-mail the manuscript as an attachment to the same address and we will send you an e-mail confirmation that your entry is all set. Electronic submissions need to be sent as PDF files or as word (.doc or .docx) files. Other formats are not accepted. The extra cost is to cover the paypal fees as well as the time, labor, ink, and so on, to print out your manuscript. Or use our website http://www.pavementsaw.org/pages/chapcontest.htm

If you wish to send via regular mail, have your envelope postmarked by December 31st and accompany your manuscript with a check in the amount of $15.00 payable to Pavement Saw Press. All contributors to the contest will receive books, chapbooks and journals equal to, or more than, the entry fee. Add $3 (US) for other countries to cover the extra postal charge. Do not include an SASE for notification of results. Do not send the only copy of your work. All manuscripts are recycled and individual comments on the manuscripts cannot be made. This year the editor will be the judge and, as it should be, he promises not to chose former students, former or potential sexual partners, press interns, or people that can make him famous. A decision will be reached in March. Entries should be sent to our address at the bottom of the page.

Previous Winners
Anne Bauer, Fine Absence
j/j hastain, extant shamanisms
Martin Arnold, A Million Distant Glittering Catastrophes
Brian Teare, >
Noah Eli Gordon, Acoustic Experience
Susan Terris, Marriage License
Dan Boehl, Work
Joshua Corey, Compostition Marble
Knute Skinner, The Other Shoe
Lisa Samuels, War Holdings
F. J. Bergmann, Sauce Robert
John Bradley, Add Musk Here
Amy King, The People Instruments
Will Nixon, The Fish are Laughing
Shelley Stenhouse, Pants
David Brooks, Right Livelihood
Douglas Goetsch, Wherever You Want
Joshua Mc Kinney, Permutations of the Gallery

Pavement Saw Press
Chapbook Contest
321 Empire Street
Montpelier, OH 43543
http://www.pavementsaw.org/pages/chapcontest.htm

Winner chosen: 2011 Transcontinental Award for first or second books

2011-11-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

Electrical Theories of Femininity by Sarah Mangold (Edmonds, WA) was chosen by David Baratier as the winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award. Poems from this collection appeared in a Little Red Leaves chapbook and in journals such as Action Yes, American Letters & Commentary, Aufgabe, Court Green, Handsome, No Tell Hotel, Puerto del Sol, Rattapallax, Slope, Web Conjunctions and others. Mangold will be given $1000 and 5% of the 1000 copy press run. This book will be released in a paperback trade edition in the Fall/Winter of 2012.

Second and third place were tied between
Mark Taksa from Albany, California
and
Matt W. Miller from Exeter, New Hampshire.

The remaining top five finalists:

Elizabeth Anne Socolow from Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Ryan Daley from Brooklyn, New York
Daniel Zimmerman from North Brunswick, New Jersey

Books were sent by November 12th, 2011 to all participants. Thanks to all who submitted!

Pavement Saw 2010-11 Chapbook decision

2011-03-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Here is the info on the Pavement Saw 2010-11 Chapbook Award

This year was a split decision, the winners are

Anne Bauer from Helena, MT for Fine Absence
(her first collection ever!)
and
j/j hastain from Lafayette, CO, for extant shamanisms

these collections will both be published in a run of 400 copies plus overage later in 2011.

In order, the three finalists are

1. Matt Schumacher from Rhododendron, OR
2. Chris D'Errico from Las Vegas, NV
3. Alexander Dickow from France

Books were sent to all participants back in February. Thanks to all who entered!

2010 Pavement Saw Transcontinental Award results

2011-02-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

The winner of the Pavement Saw Transcontinental Award for 2010 is Troy Bigelow's manuscript Resuscitivity. In addition to winning $1000, he will be given 50 copies of the collection. His book will be published by Pavement Saw Press in a run of 1000 plus overage.

Troy Bigelow was a blue-collar autoworker for decades and during a prolonged layoff from an auto parts manufacturing plant he pursued an interest in literature. He now teaches English Composition and Literature at Ivy Tech Community College and lives with his wife and children in Auburn, Indiana.

The three finalists are

Jaimee Kuperman from Falls Church, VA
Lorene Delany-Ullman from Irvine, CA
Casey Charles from Missoula, MT

Thanks to all who submitted. Books were sent back in late January to all participants. Enjoy--

2009 Transcontinental Award chosen

2010-03-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

The winner of this year's Transcontinental Poetry Award is Shannon Hamann, a former resident of Brooklyn, New York.

Shannon Hamann (1966-2004) received an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. His poetry appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Colorado Review, The New York Quarterly, Zyzzyva and many others. A chapbook of his early poems was bilingually published in Italy under the title, L’immaginazione violenta, in a limited edition. Recognition of his work included a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Steinbeck Fellows Grant, and shortly before his death a travel grant to Japan from the NEA.

His collection will be published in 2011 in an edition of 1000 copies plus overage.

Be well

David Baratier, Editor

Pavement Saw Press
321 Empire Street
Montpelier OH 43543
http://pavementsaw.org

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Pavement Saw 2008-09 Chapbook decision

2009-03-14T06:49:00.000-07:00

The info on this years chapbook contest and finalists--

The four finalists (in no particular order were):

Martin Arnold from Greensboro, NC
Andrew Zawacki from Athens, GA
Farid Matuk from Dallas Texas
Adrianne Kalfopoulou from Athens Greece

Second Place was Elizabeth Robinson whose chapbook will be published by Pavement Saw Press.

Elizabeth Robinson has been the recipient of grants from the Fund for Poetry and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her book Pure Descent won the National Poetry Series in 2002, and Apprehend won the Fence Modern Poets Prize in 2003. Her most recent collection of poems is The Orphan & its Relations. Robinson co-edits EtherDome Chapbooks with Colleen Lookingbill and Instance Press with Beth Anderson and Laura Sims. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and teaches at Naropa University.

The winner of the Pavement Saw Chapbook Contest for 2008-09 was Brian Teare. In addition to winning $500, he will be given 50 copies of the collection. His chapbook will be published by Pavement Saw Press in a run of 435 copies by the end of 2009.

Brian Teare is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell Colony. He has published poetry and criticism in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, as well as in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. His first book, The Room Where I Was Born, won the 2003 Brittingham Prize and the 2004 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His second book, Sight Map, is out from University of California Press; his third, Pleasure, will be published in 2010 by Ahsahta Press. He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches and makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Pavement Saw 2007-08 Chapbook decision

2008-04-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

For all of you who sent to the Pavement Saw Chapbook contest, thanks for entering; just pulling together a manuscript and sending it out makes you a winner in my experience. Books were sent in early May and the winner will be published in June. Here are the results, congratulate any of them you know--

The semi-finalists are
Joel Lewis from Hoboken, NJ
Christopher Chambers from New Orleans, LA
Adam Cornford from San Francisco, CA
Page Starzinger from New York City

The finalists are
Andrew Zawacki -- Athens, GA
Adrianne Kalfopoulou -- Athens Greece
William Ford -- Iowa City, IA

And the winner is
Noah Eli Gordon from Denver, CO for his collection Acoustic Experience. The press run will be 400 plus overage. The author receives fifty copies and a five hundred dollar prize. Acoustic Experience will be available from Pavement Saw Press in June.

Noah Eli Gordon is the author of six collections, three of which were published in 2007: Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial; selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series), Figures for a Darkroom Voice (Tarpaulin Sky Press; in collaboration with poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson and artist Noah Saterstrom) and A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow (New Issues 2007). His reviews and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including: Review of Contemporary Fiction, The Denver Quarterly, Jacket, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Talisman, and the book Burning Interiors: David Shapiro's Poetry and Poetics. He writes a column on chapbooks for Rain Taxi and teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver.

News

2007-02-05T09:01:00.001-08:00

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