Month: May 2017

Benefit for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Walter Butt’s Laureate Fund

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The roots of Igneus Press are struck through the Granite State of New Hampshire, having operated out of Bedford, New Hampshire for over two decades since its first publication, The Required Dance, by W. E. Butts in 1990. Igneus Press publisher, Peter Kidd and W.E. Butts were very close. We are honored to present information about the Benefit for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Walter Butt’s Laureate Fund. S. Stephanie will be reading a poem by W.E. Butt’s, in honor of the man and his contribution to American poetry. Collectors editions of The Required Dance and A Season of Crows by W.E. Butts can be found on Igneuspress.com.

Laureates Three Quatre poster

We hope that this benefit raises awareness of both W.E. Butt’s role in New Hampshire, New England and American poetry. We also hope readers continue to support small independent presses working quietly and selflessly between the seams and cracks of American belles-lettres, bringing the work of poets such as W.E. Butt’s into the palm of our hands.

Igneus Press Announces Our Latest Release: Seasons in the Ravine: a Suite of Poems, by P.J. Laska

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We’d like to announce our latest 2017 Igneus Press release. Seasons in the Ravine: a Suite of Poems, by P.J. Laska sees the poet return to the region of his heart-land, bringing American Appalachian poetry with his word-worn hands to our most honed attention. Made readily available to the proletariat as well as the 1% (it’s a free country after all) at $5.00, we hope that you enjoy this careful meditation on how places travel between our thought and mind’s tongue, bringing us in a nano-second from within swirling leaves of a China tea cup back to the glistening cold of snowed-in pinecone within an Appalachian ravine.

Dr. Edwina Pendarvis, poet and Emeritus Professor of Education at Marshall University Huntington writes: “Seasons in the Ravine adds to the assembly of classical Chinese and Japanese imagery adopted, adapted, and elaborated by contemporary American poets, like Gary Snyder and–some would argue by Appalachian poets especially compellingly. A master of the poetic conventions assoicated with this body of work, Laska uses and refuses the conventions with ease. His pastoral log cabin is set in the middle of town, and he writes from a ravine, rather than the romantic heights of a mountain. His landscape is up-close, filled with leaves, trees, wind, sun, and rain, along with the clutter of trash tossed over the hillside. Punctuating his own passages with ‘wall poems’ by Basho and others, Laska critiques and, in a sense, overcomes the dualism of ugliness and beauty, encouraging us to love them fully, enjoying and protesting, no matter how heavy the odds.”