Agriculture Reader

03/08/2016

AG READER 7

It's here y'all! Printed, shipped, and ready for orders.

The Agriculture Reader is back with our thickest and wildest issue to date, published once again in dos-à-dos format, with a complete poetry manuscript backed by an eclectic anthology of poetry, fiction, unclassifiables, and more work in translation than we’ve ever done before. Side A is Erika Bisk’s debut chapbook, “65 Haikus, Spring 2013.” Bisk’s collection is illustrated by Amy Mees, whose scribbles, hash marks, and spindly star bursts offer a perfectly understated visual complement to “a history of / horrible goodbye hugs and / tremendous letdowns.” Meanwhile, on the B Sides, Matthew Henriksen wonders “Are You Mad at Me?”, Morgan Parker offers a “Poem On Beyoncé’s Birthday”,
Zak Smith has “67 (No Wait, 68) Tips for Art Critics”, and Nicole Steinberg wants you to know that “You’re Doing Kegels Wrong.” There’s new work from Chris Huntington, Anika Jade, Graeme Bezanson, Frank Guan, Eli Todd, Molly Rose Quinn, Martin Rock, and Mike McDonough; Izet Saraljić’s war poems translated from the Bosnian by Sara Nović; Thomas Brasch’s theatrical placards translated from the German by Anne Posten; an excerpt from Hjalmar Söderberg’s 1895 novel Delusions translated from the Swedish by Kempton Mooney; and some one-act plays we bootlegged from Mathias Svalina’s page a couple years ago and didn’t even tell him we were including until it was too late. Side B is illustrated with the astonishingly meticulous and highly gratifying currency collages of Mark Wagner.

indy book small press. poetry and literature. handmade books.

01/29/2016

And this is the poetry collection on the other side

01/29/2016

Untitled album

01/29/2016

RED ALERT JUST SAW THE INTERIOR PROOFS FOR AGR7--PEOPLE, IT LOOKS SO FINE YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MINDS. WE WILL BE IN PRINT BY OR BEFORE AWP AND WE ARE LAUNCHING AT HOUSING WORKS BOOKSTORE NYC ON APRIL 5, STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS, END RED ALERT

10/07/2015

Hello Team! Just a quick update on AGR7. "Sometime this fall" turned out to be a bit ambitious, but it is now really actually IN PRODUCTION and we expect to put it in your hands sometime in very early 2016. We'll post the T.O.C. soon.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to it and/or who might buy one. It's going to be our biggest, wildest issue yet.

08/17/2015

2015 Book Contest Results

Congrats to Leora Fridman & Martin Rock, winners of the 2015 CSU Poetry Prize Contests. Leora, whose work appeared in AGR6, has won the First Book Poetry Competition, judged by Eileen Myles (herself an alum of AGRs 3 and 6). Martin, whose work will appear in AGR7 this fall, has won the First Book Poetry Editor's Choice Prize. Cheers, guys! http://www.csupoetrycenter.com/news-1/2015/8/11/2015-book-contest-results

The CSU Poetry Center is thrilled to announce the results of our 2015 book competitions. The following four books were selected from nearly 1,100 manuscripts and will be published in spring 2016. Thank you to everyone who sent us work & congrats to the winners and finalists below. Winner of the Firs…

07/12/2015

George Jones No Show Jones

AGR7 Update: Submissions are CLOSED. The issue is FANTASTIC. There's more work in translation than we've ever done before, many heavy-hitting poets, several debut publications, and another chapbook-length A SIDE to anchor the issue.

Jeremy and Justin have I CHINGED the sequence. Now we're running down a few stray bios before we send the word doc off to its chrysalis with PRODUCTION GENIUSES Mark and Amy and SPECIAL OPS DIRECTOR Will, who will nurture it to butterflydom. Details to follow, but look for it this fall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HM1AZD4Iis

01/07/2015

AGRICULTURE READER

Howdy AGReaders, just a quick heads up to let you know that we are officially READING FOR ISSUE 7. Please refresh yourself on our submission guidelines (http://theagreader.com/submissions.html) before gracing us with your work, but please do grace us with it. Note in particular that we accept letters of inquiry and work samples (published or unpublished) but will only respond to writers whose work we are piqued to solicit. This saves you (and us!) both the drama of the simultaneous submission and the trauma of the rejection letter.

We are especially interested, this issue, in considering longer poems and work in translation.

We have never published a play or a comic before but would if we could.

We are a *very* hard sell when it comes to fiction.

We work without a schedule, and the issue is done when it's done, but we think 7 will come out this fall. Hope to hear from you!

JT & JS

The Agriculture Reader is a small arts journal that publishes once a year. We are interested in fiction, poetry, criticism, and anything we haven't seen before or even thought of yet. Please send us a query letter rather than a submission. Tell us about yourself, what you liked about our previous is…

11/02/2014

Hey there AGReaders, I know we've been quiet lately, but that's about to change. There's a reading celebrating AGR6 and X-ing Books happening at the KGB Bar on Monday 11/10, as part of the storied Monday Night Poetry Series. Melinda Wilson, Ian Dreiblatt, and Jeremy Scmall (both X-ing author and AGR founding editor) will read from their work, and Justin Taylor will present some of the "greatest hits and rarities" from our back issues. MARK YOUR CALENDAR! TIE YOUR DOGS UP! HARVEST YOUR CORN!

05/21/2014

Roshan Abraham interviews Jeremy Schmall

Roshan Abraham interviews our very own Jeremy Schmall for Banango Lit.

Jeremy Schmall is the founder and co-editor (with Justin Taylor) of The Agriculture Reader, and the author of Jeremy Schmall & the Cult of Comfort (X-ing). He lives in Detroit. Roshan Abraham lives in...

03/24/2014

Art that's made of money

Hey AGRers, Our own Mark Wagner was featured on the most recent episode of CBS Sunday Morning. It's a great piece on the art and process of Mark's money collages--and if you've never seen them before, well, it's pretty much bound to blow your mind. Amy Mees (our ace designer) and Henry (who holds the largely-but-not-entirely-ceremonial office of First Toddler) both have cameos. Enjoy!

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/art-thats-made-of-money/

To many the idea of cutting up money for artistic purposes seems insane. But Mark Wagner saw something more when he first cut up a dollar 15 years ago. Now he's assembles collages entirely from one dollar bills that can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Anthony Mason reports.

03/19/2014

"The Dead Generations" by Jared Hohl, recommended by The Agriculture Reader

Hey guys, we've got this week's Recommended Reading--an excerpt from Jared Hohl's novel "The Dead Generations", which we published in issue 5.

Issue No. 96 EDITOR’S NOTE For as long as we’ve known him—since the mid-aughts, when we were all students together at The New School M.F.A. program—Jared Hohl’s been among the most interesting writers...

03/02/2014

Answer the question.

03/01/2014

Sun Bear.

02/25/2014

AG READER 6

The day has come, friends! AGR6 is here. Check out the issue on our sweet new website, order a copy (or three), tell your friends, visit us at AWP this week at our table with Coldfront--whatever you wanna do, do. And look for us in an upcoming issue of Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, as well as at Berl's Poetry Shop on Friday 4/18 for the NYC launch.

After nearly two years fallow, The Agriculture Reader returns with what might be our most ambitious issue to date. AGR #6 is a dos-à-dos featuring as its A Side "The New Music," a poetry collection by Greg Purcell, with drawings by Eliana Perez. Side B's got poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leora Fridm...

12/18/2013

SPOKE TOO SOON

AGR alums/heroes Anthony McCann and Julia Cohen are just two of the several awesome contributors to the new issue of SPOKE TOO SOON (http://spoketoosoonjournal.com/), an amazing-looking online journal devoted to long poems (with audio of the poets reading their poems) which I just learned about five minutes ago from Mathias Svalina. Highly & heartily recommended.

10/07/2013

Greetings from Hamtramck, MI.

10/04/2013

AGR6 was handed off to the design team today. Street date is early 2014. SO much good poetry. And the two craziest short stories we've ever done. We also booked a hotel room for AWP so look out for looking out for us there. - JT

10/03/2013

Visited some family this week.

09/27/2013

On the corner of Milwaukee and Brush.

09/26/2013

Easier said than done.

09/25/2013

Taken from my bike on the way into work. Milwaukee Junction, Detroit, MI.

04/01/2013

Rattapallax21

We posted about our collaboration with Rattapallax about three weeks ago, before the download was actually available. You can get it now! The app is free and the poems and art are swell. It also functions as a sneak preview of Issue #6.

Get Rattapallax21 on the App Store. See screenshots and ratings, and read customer reviews.

03/07/2013

Current Issue

We are super excited to let you know that we guest edited a portion of the latest issue of Rattapallax Press, selecting poems from two of our personal favorites--Melinda Wilson and Leopoldine Core. Get on it!

For the past 10 years, Rattapallax magazine has been on the forefront of introducing readers with compelling literature, poetry, films and ideas from around the world. Timeout magazine has called the literary journal “the visceral, multimedia hit of poetry.” Rattapallax (issue 21), edited by Flávia…

01/07/2013

AGRICULTURE READER

Hello friends! After a longish hiatus, we have begun work on AGRICULTURE READER 6. We would love to hear from you, but please (please!!!) note that our submission guidelines request (quoting here) "a query letter rather than a submission. Tell us about yourself, what you liked about our previous issues, and please include a brief, representative sample of your work (published or unpublished--it doesn't matter)... We only respond to those that ignite our interest." Email address is on the website. Looking forward to reading! JS & JT

contributors:Yelena AkhtiorskayaJoshua BeckmanG.K. ChestertonJohn DemingAdam FitzgeraldBarbara Claire FreemanAlly HarrisPaul HlavaJared HohlDorothea LaskyPaul LegaultCourtney MaumMike McDonoughKarl LaroccaEileen Myles & Leopoldine CoreJordan ReynoldsLevi RubeckPeter SpagnuoloRobert SnydermanTerese S...

05/10/2012

AGRICULTURE READER

Today is the day! Agriculture Reader No. 5 is now available for sale!

http://www.theagreader.com/

contributors: Yelena Akhtiorskaya Joshua Beckman G.K. Chesterton John Deming Adam Fitzgerald Barbara Claire Freeman Ally Harris Paul Hlava Jared Hohl Dorothea Lasky Paul Legault Courtney Maum Mi...

03/30/2012

CUNY Center for the Humanities

AGRICULTURE ALERT: AGR#5 will be at the CUNY chapbook festival bookfair all day today. If you missed us at AWP, if you've been waiting for the website to update ordering info (it hasn't), or if you're a contributor and WE OWE YOU ONE, come by and see us. And even if you're none of the above, come by and see us. You might like us.

The Festival celebrates the chapbook as a work of art and as a medium for alternative and emerging writers and publishers. Now in its fourth year, the festival features a two-day bookfair with chapbook publishers from around the country, workshops, panels, a marathon reading, and a reading of prize-...

02/26/2012

Sneak preview of AGR No. 5, featuring Eileen Myles with Leopoldine Core, Paul Legault, Dorothea Lasky, John Deming, Joshua Beckman, and many many more. Available this week at AWP and NOWHERE ELSE.

01/16/2012

AGR No. 5 (!) off to the printer! We will officially have it in hand by AWP.

03/01/2011

No Ideas But In Pancakes: An Interview With Poet Jeremy Schmall | Poetry

Hey AGRfolk, check out this grand Faster Times interview--our own Jeremy Schmall talks about his new book with poet (and AGR#4 alum) Ben Mirov.

Jeremy Schmall is a poet and the editor of the Agriculture Reader. His first collection of poems, Jeremy Schmall and the Cult of Comfort is a strange little book that epitomizes the beauties of small press publishing.