Canarium Books Feature: Lynn Xu, Joshua Edwards, Robert Fernandez, Mary Hickman, February 20, 2014

On Thursday, February 20, at 7 p.m. Canarium family and friends Robert Fernandez, Lynn Xu, Mary Hickman, and Joshua Edwards read from recently published and new work in an event that promises to be shocking and magisterial. Death will be present, as will Texas and the Apocalypse in addition to near-death experiences and cuts of blood-soaked meat, Rimbaud, LaForge, Baudelaire. Colored lozenges will melt to blouses and all debts will, jubilee, be forgiven. Lesson. Visit then the horn of the Spirit pushing itself through mouths and love, void-rock smoked in void-stems. Beauty smeared and deregulated senses. IMF, INRI, VIP, JPG, PIG.

Established in 2008 and sponsored in part by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Canarium Books is an independent press dedicated to publishing poetry by established and emerging authors from the United States and abroad. Its recent titles include Paul Killebrew’s Ethical Consciousness, Farnoosh Fathi’s Great Guns, and Robert Fernandez’s Pink Reef.

Lynn Xu was born in Shanghai. She’s the author of Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and a chapbook, June (Corollary Press, 2006). Her poems have also appeared in 6×6, 1913, Best American Poetry, Boston Review, Critical Quarterly, Octopus, Poor Claudia, and elsewhere. She’s currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at UC-Berkeley and co-edits Canarium Books.

Joshua Edwards directs Canarium Books. He’s the author of two collections of poetry, Imperial Nostalgias and Campeche, and the translator of Mexican poet María Baranda’s Ficticia. Another book, Photographs Taken at One-Hour Intervals During a Walk from Galveston Island to the West Texas Town of Marfa, was just published by Edition Solitude, which will also publish his next book of poems, Architecture for Travelers, in October.

Robert Fernandez is the author of the poetry books We Are Pharaoh and Pink Reef, both from Canarium Books, and of a book of images, Pearls Before Swine. Poems from his third book, Crowns, have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, A Public Space, Court Green, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. With Blake Bronson-Bartlett, he has concluded work on a book of Mallarmé translations, some of which have appeared in Lana Turner. With the poet Mary Hickman, he edits Black Rainbow Editions.

Mary Hickman’s poems have appeared in jubilat, Colorado Review, Sonora Review, Action Yes, as a Poet’s Sampler feature in Boston Review, and featured on the Pen America website. Her first book, Wildlife, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press.