Give to ChaxnJoin our Community
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In our 37 years Chax has practiced the creation of community. Our community includes our directors and founders, our board members, interns, volunteers, authors, and supporters, as well as international partners in book making, poetry, & poetics. We hope you decide to be a part of the connective tissue that we foster. Please take this moment to consider an important gift to Chax Press.n nChax began with an awareness of the possibility of a small literary press to manifest what would essentially be a poetics program, i.e. THIS is what we think of poetry, THESE are the poets with whom we think (and of course, the collaged history of how those poets and that poetry came to think in such ways), THIS is the path we walk together. We move on paths forged by such poets as Charles Olson, Jackson Mac Low, Paul Metcalf, Robert Creeley, David Antin, Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka, Robert Duncan, bp Nichol, Susan Howe, Bev Dahlen, Kathleen Fraser, and many others. Certainly “language writers ” and others of a generation just a decade or so older (or less) than our founder, through their work that appeared in many journals and presses of the time, also contributed to a growing sense of a fully active and quite various practice of poetics in which a press might find itself.n nAlso inspired by hand bookmaking, Chax began with the understanding that the shape of the physical book, its structure, materials, inclusions, and methods could have a relationship with the innovative writing we publish. In this way, Chax printing and publishing became an artistic practice. Many of our poets, conceiving of language and the page as maps of linguistic exploration, have helped us make a practice that, in its physical suggestions of poetic possibility, embody ideas of powerful social and political purpose.
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We continue all of this work today. In the last two Covid-impacted years, Chax has presented readings and has saved and archived nearly 100 of them on our YouTube channel. These events include our own readings and those we have supported and collaborated with, from Ecopoetics to Enclave to POG. We have built on our pre-Covid travels and participation in conferences and festivals in China to begin a book series, initiated by the Chinese poet Yan An, as translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen. We have published new works by American poets Andrew Levy, Michael Gottlieb, Adam Cornford, Steven Salmoni, Sarah Riggs, Andrew Levy, and Kyle Schlesinger, with books at this moment being produced by Norman Fischer, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Tom Mandel, and more books forthcoming by more than a dozen authors. One of our upcoming projects is a June 2022 Symposium on Innovative Poetry & Poetics at the US-Mexico border, which continues our concerns for the conjunction of political and poetic practices. We are working as well to find a new space suitable for our hand bookmaking practices and educational workshops.n nTo date we have published 250 books, over 70 letterpress broadsides (including the one by poet & activist Amiri Baraka that we have photographed and included in this mailing to you), presented over 100 events, taught workshops in poetry and book making, and found ways for the hand crafted book arts to experiment in order to find conjunction with innovative literary works. We have participated in local, national, and global events that have furthered progressive developments in poetry and its connection to politics & society. In recognition of all that Chax has done — not only in the past year, but in all the years the press has existed, in 2021 our founder was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.n nYet through all our publishing, presenting, creative arts, and symposia, Chax has been small, even intimate, and the ethos has been furthered through the united support of writers who create new visions for a world that will always require our creativity, understanding, and developing consciousness.
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We are fortunate, in our books and other public projects, to work with creations of various minds and bodies, yet all innovatively pushing forward waves of American and international poetry and poetics. We have been fortunate to receive survival funding from COVID-related government grants and awards, and to have several individuals who have significantly funded specific book projects. We have grown in our activities over the last two years. The most significant area in which our funding can grow is in gifts from individuals like you.n nWe welcome tax deductible contributions in any amount, so that we may continue to publish books and create events. Your donation at this time will help poetry and its impact in our world. When you make a donation you become part of our community as we work to bring an innovative poetry and poetics to our contemporary social moment. Please give what seems appropriate to you, but consider the largest gift you can make at this time. We pursue this work together, as partners with our authors, artists, and supporters. We invite you to take this opportunity to join us. You may send us a check to 1517 N Wilmot St no. 264
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, Tucson, AZ 85712, or use PayPal or VenMo to send a contribution to chaxpress@gmail.com, or go directly to our web site at chax.org, find the Support page and make a contribution and/or become a member. n nThank you for joining our work.
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Yours sincerely,n n nCharles AlexandernExecutive Director & Founder
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