We will be hosting an event in the crawl this year on Saturday, July 27, 2024 in Leg 2. Please see our Collapse Press IG posts and event on Facebook (Events, Collapse Press Page) Paul Corman-Roberts will MC, with poets LaMar Mitchell, Heather Flescher, Han Raschka, E. Lynn Alexander, and Lee Foust.
We are excited to be part of the annual Beast Lit Crawl, in Oakland. If you are looking for the latest in fest events, please check out the Beast Lit Crawl website and SM at www.beastcrawl.org. We have a lot of event information shared on our pages as well and you can reach out if needed, Collapse Press IG. We have been a part of this festival in some way since it started, with Paul as a founding organizer. I have been coming out most years since year one, curating events for various small presses including our current- Collapse Press. The festival has changed over the years, with different organizers and curating presses, organizations, and series hosts. Many of the core organizers are still involved and the group have pressed on despite the challenges of covid. This has become an annual gathering and meet up of writers from all over the country, about much more than a festival and celebration- it is a community. (Photos- Previous Beasting in the Bay) This year, we have the “unofficial kickoff” reading on 7/25 at Oakland’s First Edition upstairs stage, a great outdoor space to meet up. There are readings from there, spanning Friday evening until the after party on Saturday night. Collapse Press will be hosting another BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSE in Leg 2 at The Good Hop at 2421 Telegraph Avenue Oakland from 5:30-6:30. Paul will be the MC, with featured poets Heather Flescher, Han Raschka, E. Lynn Alexander, LaMar Mitchell, and Lee Foust. Our “sibling press” Naked Bulb will be at the same venue, in Leg 3 from 7:00-8:00. Missy Church will be hosting with featured poets G. Macias Gusman, Gary Turchin, Rhea Melina, and Andrew Thomas. We will have bios and more on our Facebook page and Instagram, and of…
The Friday Collapse reading series is back after summer hiatus. We are in the middle of year three of this monthly series, with a break in July for travel and in-person events. We had a special edition of the show with the contributors to the anthology, released in July 2023. (See previous posts for more on that) You can check out that show and all of the others archived on our facebook page at Collapse Press, because we do livestream them to that platform. The next Friday Collapse will be special for us because we will be featuring long time friend of the press Nathan Tompkins and Heather Flescher – who we got to know in Oakland this summer. We also have open mic spots, subject to availability. We usually post an event on Facebook (check events on the Collapse Press page) and have information about signing up for the open mic for those who want to reserve ahead. Hosted by Paul Corman-Roberts and E. Lynn Alexander. Zoom platform/FB live. The Friday Collapse featuring Nathan Tompkins and Heather Flescher will be on Friday, October 27, 2023 at 9:30 PM EST, 6:30 PST.
October 21, 2023 at 6:00 PM. International Fusionism MUseum, 107 N. 4th Street in Easton. Art, Poetry, and Festival Reception at the International Fusionism Museum. Join the Unbearables Poetry Collective and Collapse Press [East] for an evening of community. Hosted by Ron Kolm, Arthur Kaye, and E. Lynn Alexander. The Unbearables Collective are a confederation of poets and writers who came of age in the 1980’s and 90’s New York, infamous for their high minded aesthetics and low barroom manners. Collapse Press is an independent publisher and producer of events on both the East coast locally and the West coast in the bay area with a focus on writing that speaks to the challenges of our times; the goal of Collapse Press is to create space and amplify voices that refuse to be silenced. The Easton Book Festival has an online program with all of the events and descriptions, at www.eastonbookfestival.com or here.
Collapse Press [East] will have a table and reading slots at the Easton Book Festival Author and Small Press Expo on Sunday, October 22, 2023 at the Easton Public Market. There will be books, authors, zines, performances, and more for a full day of activities. Collapse will feature poets Bryan Franco and Ann Michael joining E. Lynn Alexander at the expo. Bryan and Ann will be reading in the Collapse slots. Copies of some of the Collapse titles will be available, including the new anthology “Letters for the End Times”. Find the full schedule of events at www.eastonbookfestival.com or here.
The first volume of the Letters for The End Times Anthology is here, and we are doing a launch party event on Friday, July 21 in Oakland. You can order this book online here. You can also get it at an upcoming event or from us directly, just reach out. We will try to make it easy! The launch event will be at the Oakland Photo Workshop and we will have information on our FB and Instagram pages.
We are honored to be curating at this year’s Beast Crawl in Oakland, CA on July 22, 2023. We have participated in some form each year since the beginning (Full of Crow, Kiss This Missile, Red Crow, Audrey’s Coffee, etc.) and this is a community building event that is dear to our hearts. Our event this year will be Leg 3 at Oaklandish. We have posted information on Facebook and Instagram and the details are also on the Beast Crawl website here. For this year’s 2023 information, here. Below is our event listing with performers and bios: COLLAPSE PRESS: BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSE Collapse Press is a small literary publisher specializing in poetry and prose by authors, established and new, whose work addresses the current social atmosphere of a society in turmoil and on the verge of transformation. Hey everyone, let’s shudder together! Armageddon’s a comin’ and Collapse Press has got the writers and poets to make it all go down easier. Or harder. Or whatever you want. Because it doesn’t matter! Join us as Juba Kalamka, Richard Loranger, Missy Church, Taneesh Kaur, The Propaganda Poet and Lynn Alexander ride roughshod over the terrain of the End Times. Performers: Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer and all-around squeaky wheel currently residing in Oakland. His upcoming collection of poetry and flash prose, Mammal, is due out from Roof Books in the fall of 2023. You can find more about his work and scandals at his website. E. Lynn Alexander is a poet, artist, and zine/book maker. She cohosts The Friday Collapse and the Lehigh Valley Poetry Virtual Salon and Open Mic. Her recent books include Find Me In The Iris (Collapse Press) and The Shouldspeak Disease, published by Naked Bulb Press, exploring themes of shame language. Website here. Taneesh Kaur is a teaching artist of East Indian descent based in San Francisco, a social justice advocate who uses nature to…
Collapse Press and Paper Press have teamed up for a live (in person!) poetry event in Oakland on Thursday, July 20, 2023. “Identity Crisis” involves the pairing of poets to read each other’s work, in rapid rounds. Organizers Paul Corman Roberts and Youssef Alaoui have done this format before and have revived it as a collaborative venture. Reading for this event will be Richard Loranger, Missy Church, Youssef Alaoui, K.R. Morrison, William Taylor Jr. Joel Landmine, E. Lynn Alexander, and Paul Corman Roberts. Music by Tuz. This event will be held at First Edition in Oakland, at 1915 Broadway. 7:00 PM. We have an event page on Facebook (Collapse Press–> Events tab) and information is always posted on our Instagram account.
Please join us at Collapse Press for a special virtual poetry event to launch the release of “Splinters”, by Han Raschka. We are scheduled to release this title on September 23, 2022. Please check out the Collapse Press Facebook page for the event to RSVP and share. (Thank you!) Han will be reading from their new book of poetry and will be joined by additional featured poets to celebrate. We will be adding more details about the features and their bios soon.
Please join us for a virtual launch reading on Friday, July 1, 2022 for Find Me in the Iris, by E. Lynn Alexander. This event will be hosted on zoom and streamed/archived on the Collapse Press Facebook page. This reading will feature poets K.R. Morrison, Taneesh Kaur, Chansonette Buck, Karen Lillis, and E. Lynn Alexander. Please see the Facebook/Instagram posts for more details and links. This is the second book of poetry by E. Lynn Alexander, from Collapse Press. In Find Me in the Iris, she continues to explore the themes of The Shouldspeak Disease on the language of shame and internalized expectations, conditioning, regulating norms and binaries as effacing and modern measurements that are increasingly toxic to both individual and nature. The destructive relationships between reduction and disrespect vs honoring and co-validity have modern consequences. Increasingly disconnected from a silenced but ancient maternal psyche, the modern contrasts of hierarchy and individualism pull us away from our roots and exploring the natural, mystical, and spiritual can be restorative acts of reclaiming. “Mother” in this case is origin, generational and collective, where a consciousness of legacies tapped affirms the past and honors the future. The state of the world is in front of us. Why are we destroying everything at such an alarming rate, turning the corner on so much that is irreversible? Our path is one that rewards extremes: self centered, immediate and empty gratification, consumption, competition, exhibitionism, self interest. To commune and cooperate is to be “weak”, to share knowledge is to lose “advantage”. Where shame is the tool, coerced participation is the result. The desire to diminish and destroy pushes us to channel our energies defensively and we are depleted. We feel hopeless and powerless because we are surrounded by that message. But it was not the message of our mothers. “In…
