The silence of grammar. The silence of morning fog. The silence of a tiger’s paw. Wandering silence. The I told you so silence. The silence of violence. The silence of the catacombs contained in a sheet of paper. The shimmer of summer night stillness silence. The ruins of love silence. The silence of God.
“I make collages in small sketchbooks every night before I sleep.
I call them ‘collage logbooks.’
They are diaries and also the place of creation for
my art and visual poetry.” Continue reading “Collage Logbooks: hiromi suzuki”
On the release of her latest poetry collection – blud – Adrianna Robertson interviewed Rachel McKibbens for Burning House Press.
I first contacted Rachel McKibbens because I had been—as I often am—considering what it means to write about mental illness. I wanted to have more conversation about why it matters to write poems about mental health, how it factors into one’s identity as a human and a writer, and what it is to attempt to put the experience of it into words. At the same time, I was reading more and more of Rachel’s work (I picked up Pink Elephant and couldn’t put it down) and I felt like I had to tell someone—or as many people as possible, that these poems were opening a door. The new poems in blud left me with that same breathless feeling. Again, I found myself reading them aloud, handing them to friends and my students. Yet, when I sat down to type my questions for this interview, I knew it was impossible to say all I wanted to say—how to describe all that these poems bring forth in me: sorrow, heartbreak, awe, kinship…and always surprise. Finally, I settled on some questions and what follows are Rachel’s eloquent and evocative answers, though they would have been this regardless of what I had asked. And, perhaps more important than any perfect word I could come up with to describe this collection, is this: we need these poems and I am so grateful to Rachel for writing them.
All we misfits, weirdos, black sheep, outcasts and witches who have managed to crawl out of the mud and hold our faces up to the light are family.
“Liz Zumin is an artist whose practice stems from an interest in contagion, suggestion and imitation. Through visual metaphor and physical experience she explores the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group, the forming of relations, and how affect is transmitted between bodies and becomes enacted at a neurological, chemical and anatomical level.”
Earlier this year Liz Zumin answered some questions for BHP, an edited version of her interview was featured in The Arsonist magazine, which was published by Burning House Press a few months ago. We now make the full transcript of the interview available for BHP online.
Firstly, why make art?
I find it difficult to define and delineate what is art, perhaps because what art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable. I suppose that for me there has always been a fascination with the way that artists have the capacity to transform and alter things, to reverse the meaning of a sign, an object or a cultural form. For my part, I find that I am constantly collecting things; texts, fragments, images, ideas from all around, so in that sense, going back to the question why make art? It’s about sharing the way I experience the world and a way that I have of trying to make sense of it all. Continue reading “Liz Zumin Interview”
“London was cloaked in a strange orange glow after Storm Ophelia caused a dust phenomenon and turned the sun red.”
* * *
“Keep a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.” – from ‘Haze’ by Carl Sandburg
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.” – from ‘Haze’ by Carl Sandburg
Continue reading “‘Strange Light’ – London 16th October 2017 – photo-essay by Miggy Angel”
Hi-Vis Press interviewed Burning House Press’ chief Arsonist Miggy Angel – Covering the subjects of art, recovery, class, mental health and addiction, and his journey from South London to become a writer and poet – check it out here! Xx
By Fredric Nord
I realize how this obsession has gone too far. I’m on a bus cutting through Stockholm, it’s a smug city but easy on the eyes. I’ve dressed up for this. I’m on my way to see Morandi at Artipelag, beautifully situated in the archipelago. My expectations are high, feeling a bit too happy for paintings, a bit nervous. I’ve seen so few of his works in real life, only once before, and they affected me so profoundly that the big painting next door, some ceiling job by some dude named Michelangelo, left me cold and meh. I seem to have something at stake here.
And for this text, I will be Don Quixote de la Costanza.
by Amee Nassrene Broumand
The city was Boise, Idaho. The year was 1995. I was 17 and taking photography classes at Boise State University. While hovering over trays of chemicals in the darkroom one afternoon, I wound up having a three-hour-long conversation with one of my classmates, a gifted artist named Ronny Joe Grooms. Flash forward to 2017. I message my friend Ronny Joe – who goes professionally by the name of Narayan St. Jude – and ask him to join me in photographic conversation for Burning House Press.
He agrees. Continue reading “A Conversation in Photographs with Narayan St. Jude”
by Amee Nassrene Broumand
Note: Creators, would you like to be interviewed for one of my Burning House Press blog posts? See the details at the end of this post.
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 – available to purchase here
Featuring the best poetry, flash fiction, photography, art, interviews and features from around the world, including the UK, Japan, Canada, USA, Malaysia, India, Philippines, Sweden:
stephanie roberts – Saquina Karla C. Guiam – Penny Goring – Adrianna Robertson – Anneghem Wall – Dawn Fredericks – badpoem – Dean Lilleyman – Antony Owen – Aina Izzah – Bruno Neiva – Paul Hawkins – Keith Ford – Joseph Ridgwell – Dhiyanah Hassan – C. R. Resetarits – Rob True – Sophie Pitchford – Jamie Thrasivoulou – Martin Appleby – Liz Zumin – Siddharth Dasgupta – Ben Williams – Caitlin Meredith – Adam Steiner – Jim Gibson – V.M. – Fredric Nord – Mark Goodwin – Hiromi Suzuki – Trevor Wright – Howie Good
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 is a 92 page full colour/b&w matt/gloss perfect-bound A5 magazine (this is a limited edition and, being the inaugural print publication from Burning House Press, is sure to be a collectible item)
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 – available to purchase here
The Arsonist Magazine Edition 01 will be officially launched on Thursday 22nd June at Nottingham’s Chameleon Arts Cafe!
The magazine has been printed, is looking fantastic, and will soon be available from our online shop.
The launch event is free entry, and will feature an open mic, and readings by contributors from the magazine, headlined by Derby’s finest, Jamie Thrasivoulou!
Really hope to see you there – copies of the Arsonist will be available for purchase on the night – see you there! XX
The Sandpipers
It’s time for a ghost story—now,
while opalescent giants, dark-robed, stride
over us, hair blazing with the night
to come—
they imagine themselves
masked, bejeweled, descending
to the asylum window. The inmate’s lament—
They came in the night and stole my head.
What did they do with it? My old green head. Continue reading “3 Poems & An Interview With Poet Amee Nassrene Broumand”
Britain’s Most Wanted
It was while opening a package from the States
That it happened
The package contained the artwork to my latest novel
Burrito Deluxe
By Calif’s finest
Jose Arroyo
Holed up and rolling with the punches
East of East LA
The artwork was perfect for
The novel and nobody but Arroyo could’ve come up with it
Unique
But as I stood there admiring the creation
Britain’s Most Wanted
Came on the television
A list and faces of UK’s most wanted criminals
And the shock when I heard the name
And looked up
And there on my television
In High Definition
Was the hero of my novel
The inspiration and catalyst to
Everything that had happened
On our great Mexican adventure
The man who once said the creation of a myth
Was the only thing he was interested in
And that if you join them, you will always be at odds with them
And everything they stand for
And there he was on the run
Still running free
And laughing at the sun
Long may he run. Continue reading “4 Poems by Joseph Ridgwell”
The Arsonist Magazine edition 01 – featuring flammable materials from 30 international writers artists photographers – Coming Soon
Halfway Up The Street
She stops to light a fag, watches some sparrows fight over batter-bits, left by a slow-blown chip-paper that tumbleweeds across the Courthouse grass.
From the pavement she squints to make out the headline exclaiming Sandie Shaw a winner.
She drags deep on her fag, exhales, puts both hands back on the pram and starts walking, steering around a curled mound of dog muck.
Jean and her sisters watched the Eurovision on their new second-hand black and white TV on Saturday night, bought by her mam the weekend before from a woman at work.
Jean and her sisters gasped when Sandie’s microphone didn’t work at first, and then moved as one to the edge of the new second-hand settee when Sandie’s voice came through loud and clear.
Jean would like her hair cut like Sandie’s, but for now she wears it in a beehive.
She stoops by the cenotaph to pull the backs of her sandals up, and to stop her heart beating fast she sings the first line of Sandie’s chorus, almost breathing it into the mouth of the pram.
Say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there.
She frowns, drags on her fag, then starts reading the blackened names on the cenotaph.
For those who fell.
She gets as far as Evans G, then understands these names mean nothing to her, and placing one hand on the pram, she moves on in slow measured steps, fag in mouth, using her free hand to check her hair.
In the mirror this morning she thought she looked older. This is something she wants, and has been practising an older face. The older face doesn’t smile.
She takes her fag out and glances down to her belly and legs as she walks. In her brown suede miniskirt her belly has lost its little pudding, and she thinks her legs have gained nothing after the birth.
In the distance, the Post Office clock looks like it reads a quarter to one, but she can’t be sure without her glasses.
Jean puts the brake on the big old pram and moves around to the side of it, peering into the flaky chrome struts that hold the hood up. Her black eyeliner is thick today, and her slate-grey eyes stare back between curls of peeling silver.
She rubs the loose flakes off and wishes she had a new pram.
When the woman from the Social came to tell her someone had donated a used pram and did she want it, Jean felt happy. She walked all the way across town to a big old house to collect it. The woman who was donating the pram smiled at Jean, but she could tell the woman was judging her.
Jean’s mam warned her people would be like this when she came home with the baby.
Jean knew this anyway.
Lifting the brake with the toe of her sandal, Jean and the pram move off slowly. She still has quarter of an hour until she meets Mick, and Mick is always late.
Her heart starts beating faster again when she thinks of him, and she hates herself for not being strong and calm like an older woman would.
She parks the pram by the bench and sits down, pulling her skirt down lower.
Stamping her fag out, she remembers Mick’s face when she told him she was pregnant. She remembers the flicker of shock in his eyes, the blink, then the grin, the Oh well I suppose we’d best get married then.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 
‘Boredom’ by Liz Zumin
Boredom
I find myself thinking about boredom. Boredom, is a feeling that seems to be prevalent amongst the modern world’s most dominant social experiences of fatigue, depression and various neuroses which are effected in today’s society. It is an inevitable consequence of modern technological advancement where the borders between work and life have become blurred, the world made smaller by the internet, and the news broadcast continuously twenty four hours a day, extending even further into our subjective experience.
Continue reading “‘Boredom’ by Liz Zumin” →
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