Blake Butler

Blake Butler edits Lamination Colony, an online journal of surrealist/bizarre/multiform texts. He lives in Atlanta and blogs at blakebutler.blogspot.com.

Interview


What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

I've been trying to focus lately on doing some new things, expanding the e-issue format into some different kinds of projects. Right now we have two HTML-based ebooks forthcoming, the first of which will be Lily Hoang's THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL, which is a series of fairy tale-ish meets Eraserhead scenes that I am very excited about. Another ebook by Matthew Simmons will follow later in the year. In the meantime I'm still doing an issue every other month or so, with each kind of pushing in their own strange directions.

I've also teamed up with Ken Baumann of the ejournal NO POSIT to do a print based journal called NO COLONY, the first issue of which will debut in September and will include new fiction by an incredible roster of young genius including Brian Evenson, Miranda Mellis, Tao Lin, Michael Kimball, Robert Loepz and many others, as well as cover art by Julie Speed.

I have vague-ish plans on starting a press for full length print work, but funding on that at the moment is being searched out.

What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

I haven't felt overwhelmed by any aspect of it, to be honest. I constantly receive wonderful work, I have a blast putting the issues together, I am always thinking of new ways to push the limit, and it seems like at least a small group of readers have amassed. If there's any challenge, it's finding new ways to get the readers to the work, which I try to do by forcing new ways into the field. That's probably the major thing I'd ask of a new journal: what do you do that no one else does? What do you publish that no one else would have? If you can't answer that question, I'm confused as to why you are around. Fortunately right now there are a nice number of new and old school journals that consistently put out work that demands attention, though there always can be more.

Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

There's not enough time in this for regret.

Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

I wish more people would send stuff by people who don't realize they are writing or being published, ie: I would love to get transcriptions of someone's mom yelling at them, or a bunch of notes scribbled by somebody's grandma with the steel heart, or like a dog's crying? I don't know, I want some things that aren't things, I want Aase Berg's lungs to send me photos of what she ate for lunch, I want Joe Wenderoth's neighbor to mail the noises he hears in the walls at night. Lots.

Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

I design everything. I couldn't let someone else do it, I am too detail-oriented and like to operate on a quick schedule when I get it in mind. I like work done on impulse. If I have a co-conspirator, it is google, who I use to fund the images that often accompany the texts.

What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

I think I was recognized by my grandmother when she was off her rocker? I feel recognized by myself, in that I enjoy the weird shits I am allowed to put on the internet made by many smart people. I received Gaddis's novel in the mail a long time ago when I ordered it but haven't read it yet. I don't know what recognitions I would ever want except for people to keep sending good work, which they do, which is more than enough for me.

What are some of your other interests?

Ginger ale, running, thinking about babies' knees, jumping, laughing, eating, having hands, dropping my cell phone over and over again until it breaks, laughing more, looking at people, not talking, looking at Juggalos on the internet, talking shit about music, folding my hands into pressure, being irritating, waking up and looking at email, having dinner, reading, reading some more, procrastinating, talking gibberish to my father and watching him ignore me, Three 6 Mafia, something?

What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

Today my favorite poem was running past that house and seeing the six kids come out of the house and get into one car and the three boys standing with their heads through the sun roof and one of them yelled at me and they were laughing and I ran in my mind like I could catch them though if I caught them I'd just like put a sweaty finger on the youngest girl's chin.

Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

Keith Montesano's GHOST LIGHTS. This as yet unpublished ms has almost won several contests, and when someone realizes they are going to publish it their whole face is going to fall out. Keith's ms absolutely crushed my skull, it is one of the most bleak and yet most powerful poetry books I have read in years, I could not stop looking at it, I read it in the dark on my glowing laptop and felt like I was being strangled, it is absolutely massive. People need to read this book. Publishers, talk to Keith.

What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

I honestly feel huge transfers of energy into me from the work I read/publish. It always excited me and makes me amped to show the world, and also to write more myself. People talk about publishing as a 'labor of love' but for me it is no kind of labor, it is a privilege and a source of light.

Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Go into public and stand with your face against something that belongs to someone else and stand there with your head against that thing until the owner returns or until you become appended to it, or you feel it copied in your skin. Go home and sit in the bathtub and fill it up until it overflows and pretend like you are part of the water and roll out of the tub and roll along inside the house with the dirt all sticking to you, till it is clothes. Go back outside and keep walking until someone has something to you to say.