The Walls of Academia Are Surely Shuddering

Ho-lee cow. Amazing news! Thanks to the kind efforts of Archival Assistant Gay Acompañado, the first three issues of Makeout Creek have been added to the Special Collections and Archives of the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

What does this mean? Simple: if you've contributed work to Makeout Creek numbers 1-3, then that work of yours is archived and shall be preserved in published form at the Cabell Library. Forever. Or until society collapses, whichever comes first. It's the kind of honor not often bestowed on a young magazine, and it pretty much blows our minds. Rest assured that, now that we're hooked up, we'll certainly attempt to force future issues of this thing into their hands.

Say, want to know more about the Richmond author for whom the library is named? He was a pretty racy fellow. Special Collections and Archives has an extensive overview of his career here.

Makeout at Zine Fest RVA

Again, one of those things we should have told you before it happened. (What, we've probably done that ten times now?) In any case: your scatterbrained friend Makeout Creek spent yesterday livin' it up and making friends at the 2009 Richmond Zine Fest. Above, the proof: our table covered in glorious shining issues of Makeout Creek. Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by to take a look, and especially to those folks who picked up copies—our supply was nearly depleted by the time we rolled out of there!

Below, our friend Oura and family at his table, plus Zine Fest organizer/angel Liz Canfield. When not making some fantastic something every day, Mr. Oura assures us he's hard at work on the cover for Makeout Creek 4. Then (hold onto your hats!) find Eric Miller at his table hawkin' Mark of the Damned, which, if you haven't seen it... oh, man, y'all. You better just check it out.

LaForge's Voices Now Available

Our congratulations to Makeout Creek contributor Jane Rosenberg LaForge, whose chapbook After Voices has just been published by Burning River Press! Jane's poem "Allenwood" appeared in Makeout Creek #2 and can now be found in After Voices, which is available for purchase or download here.

Poteat's Machine: Now "On Sale"

Makeout Creek editor Joshua Poteat's second book of poetry won't officially be released until Nov. 1st. That's the official word. The good news is you can go ahead and consider it on sale, as it's available for purchase right now through the University of Georgia Press and ol' Amazon.

So get out your shekels, y'all, and get ready for Illustrating the Machine That Makes the World: From J. G. Heck's 1851 Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science. Some early praise for the book:

"I find Joshua Poteat's poetry as moving as any being written today. His first collection, Ornithologies, was wise and piercing and beautiful, and Illustrating the Machine That Makes the World is every bit its equal. From the illustrations and inquiries of the book's opening pages, haunted by change and loss and the mysterious enterprises of every living creature, to the playful vanishing act of its final section, Poteat pays heed to literature's oldest and greatest calling: to tell the truth about things."

—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The View from the Seventh Layer

"Joshua Poteat’s new collection is a brilliant, unsettling, unclassifiable, and consummately strange sequence. Poteat possesses something of Joseph Cornell’s zeal to reconfigure but enshrine the ephemeral, and to make from the odd detritus of the past works that are at once exhilarating and elegiac. When we open Poteat’s Cabinet of Wonders, we encounter the work of a true original."

—David Wojahn, author of Interrogation Palace

Congratulations, JP! Now get back to work.

McLennan In New York

Makeout Creek no. 3 cover artist Ryan McLennan has a solo show called The Strain of Inheritance opening at the Joshua Liner Gallery this Saturday, October 17. The show will remain up through November 14, 2009 and features all new works. There'll be an opening shindig from 6-9 pm on the 17th. Have you seen his stuff? It's great! New Yorkers, get over there!

Poteat & Ventura Take Best In Show

Or took Best in Show, that is, at InLight Richmond, for the installation For Gabriel. Congratulations, good fellows! Pictures follow.









(Photos by Heidi Hess, Eric Saylor, Tim Brown)

Poteat Lights Up History

Makeout Creek editor Joshua Poteat will be participating in tomorrow (i.e., Friday) night's InLight Richmond, which will feature installations of light-based artwork throughout downtown Richmond, VA. Joshua's storefront piece with designer Roberto Ventura will be located at 521 E Grace St, one block up from the new Carpenter Center/CenterStage, and is designed to honor Gabriel Prosser, the leader of one of the United States' few large-scale slave revolts whose unmarked grave today sits beneath a VCU parking lot. If you've glanced at our blog before, you might know that Joshua is quite handy at crafting light boxes, so it'll be exciting to see him translate his work to this larger scale. Richmonders, come out if you can!

Above: a detail from Poteat and Ventura's larger work, entitled "For Gabriel." Richmond's Style Weekly has posted nice little article on the event here.