Friday, April 3, 2020

Sacha Archer : Simulacrum Press: Intention & Chance




photo credit: Brian Dedora
 Look at any micro-press that publishes poetry and you will find behind the production of those books a poet, or perhaps two. This isn’t incredibly interesting because it is already known—it’s obvious. It is also obvious that what a poet chooses to publish through their micro-press agrees and excites their own sense of poetics, harmonizes with their personal taste, or from time to time may challenge their set palette in an invigorating way. But, what is less obvious is just how succinctly a micro-press’s publications express the publisher’s own practice as poet—an aesthetic translation, or extension of that poet’s own work. This is quite remarkable. There is something uncanny and unconscious about this kind of spreading, something autonomous and slightly mystical working away beneath the sum of individual decisions.

It is not only a spreading outward, but also a gathering-in. As many or most publications produced by a micro-press (or any press, for that matter) are not generally authored by the publisher, this means that other writers have submitted or accepted solicitation, and in doing so have placed their work in the arena of the publisher’s poetic practice, though possibly and often likely the intention of the one being published is simply to be published. Whatever the degree of intention, the work is left with the publisher-poet and it will not be quite the same when, eventually, it is published. Of course, the content received by the publisher will remain the same, save for slight edits (ideally articulated in an open correspondence,) but how the work is presented greatly alters the experience of it. This requires a trust on both ends, a trust which should accompany the letting go of one’s work into the hands and mind of a publisher and a trust which should accompany the receiving of that work by the publisher.        

Simulacrum Press, for me, is the excitement of being led to such knowledge in an incredibly intimate way. Each work accepted is a risk. An enormous amount of thought and decision goes into each publication, but in the end it is an element of chance which determines how successful a publication is. It cannot be controlled for all the thought and intuition given them. And by success I am not speaking about sales. I am speaking about the object that sings. The satisfaction of a harmony between design and content—the compliment.

It is easy to become pessimistic as the publisher of a micro-press. It is not a business that ends in money. It is difficult to even think of it as a business considering the minute scale of the audience and the fact that most individuals think nothing of buying all sorts of junk daily, but stop and think in the most serious manner when considering whether they should purchase an inexpensive book or pamphlet. That in and of itself sounds incredibly bitter, but is simply a fact—not a glass half full or half empty, but a looking up through the bottom of the glass that you are attempting to maneuver beneath.  

But, it always comes down to the making. The latest publication from Simulacrum is Kyle Flemmer’s Correctional Sonnets (for Catherine Vidler) and it is the perfect example of that risk in making and choosing around a poet’s work. I wanted something clean and cold to relate to penitentiaries suggested by the word Correctional which is further suggested by the bars of each sonnet. This is why I used metal to bind it. The chapbook comes in a rough brown paper wrapping so as to faintly suggest the envelope in which one’s possessions are stored when one is serving time. Whether or not the motive for these decisions comes through, they manage to succeed in creating a perfectly balanced object.

Though I am publishing less than the last couple years due to the fact that there is a new child in the home and the job is eating both my time and will I’m excited to get working on the publications lined up for this year precisely because of the challenges they promise as works which deserve a great deal of attention. Next up from Simulacrum is a chapbook by Hiromi Suzuki, a wonderful Japanese concrete poet whose works can differ greatly, but which are always great. The work she has trusted me with are poems written with typewriter. Despite the fact that they hardly resemble her journal/collage work or her digital work with gifs, they carry the same elusive quality which keeps the reader always half in the shadows, half in the light.     





Sacha Archer lives in Burlington, Ontario with his wife and two daughters. He is the editor of Simulacrum Press (simulacrumpress.ca). His work has been published in journals such as ARC, filling Station, Matrix, Nöd, Politics/Letters Live, Utsanga, Otoliths, Anti-lang, Futures Trading, Timglaset and Touch the Donkey. Archer has two full-length collections of poetry, Detour (gradient books, 2017) and Zoning Cycle (Simulacrum Press, 2017). Some of his recent chapbooks are Inkwells: An Event Poem (Noir:Z, 2019), TSK oomph (Inspiritus Press, 2018), Contemporary Meat (The Blasted Tree, 2018) and three forthcoming: Houses (no press), Framing Poems and Mother’s Milk (Timglaset). His visual poetry has been exhibited in the USA, Italy, and Canada. Find him on Facebook and Instagram @sachaarcher.

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