Recenter Press

10/02/2025

by in issue five of the recenter press poetry journal 👀

09/29/2025

The Litquake Small Press Bookfair today was a huge success! We had so much fun sharing all of the Recenter Press books with San Francisco’s vibrant literary community, and even more fun talking to everyone and learning more about what YOU are up to. Thank you to all those of you that stopped by the Recenter Press table, that organized this event, that read their beautiful poems, and to all of the amazing vendors today. It’s such a joy to support and be a part of the small press community 💓

09/26/2025

One of two pieces by Johnny Rafter in Issue Five of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal 🏠 Definitely ended up going with homes and housing as one of the main themes of this issue, sometimes themes reveal themselves in the collective submissions process

Johnny Rafter is a writer of songs and poems from California. His recording project is The Fruit Trees. You can find him on Instagram .rafter.

09/25/2025

Spotted a new poetry book from Recenter Press contributor Mia S. Willis at City Lights Books in San Fransisco today! “PARABLE OF THE GREAT BANQUET.” was first published in Issue Three of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal, and is now a part of Mia’s stunning poetry collection, The Space Between Men, out from Penguin Poets in January 2025 and winner of the National Poetry series. Congrats Mia!

09/23/2025

One of two poems by Tolu Ogunlesi published in Issue Five of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal 🏠

Tolu Ogunlesi’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Wasafiri, Transition, Sable, Magma, Orbis, MQR, Westchester Review, Nine Muses Review, Ad Fontes, and many others. He’s the winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a PEN/Studzinski Literary Award, and a Honorable Mention in the 2006 Concorso internazionale di poesia Castello di Duino. He was shortlisted for a 2023 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. He has been awarded writing/research fellowships by the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), Sweden; University of Birmingham, England; Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard University. He lives in Abuja, Nigeria. You can find him on Instagram and X (Twitter) .

09/19/2025

I’ll be vending all of the Recenter Press books at ’s Small Press Book Fair in San Francisco next weekend! Head to the Recenter Press table at on Sunday, September 28th from 11am-4pm to check out our books and learn more about the call for submissions for Issue 6 of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal, open now through November 30th. So looking forward to a day of local vendors and poetry readings!

09/18/2025

We'll be vending all of the Recenter Press books at Litquake's Small Press Book Fair at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco on Sunday, September 28th! Come check out our books and ask us about our open call for submissions for the Recenter Press Poetry Journal :)

09/18/2025

One of three poems by Lora Mathis in Issue Five of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal

Lora Mathis is a poet, writer, and visual artist. She has written three books of poems, including The Snakes Came Back (, 2023). She makes sculptures, paintings, photos, and likes to collaborate with friends. With the musician Matty Terrones, they released the live performance album Sediment (, 2022). You can more of their work at loramathis.com, and on Instagram .

09/15/2025

Recenter Press Poetry Journal: Issue Six poetry and visual art submissions are now open!

Submission guidelines: https://www.recenterpress.com/submissions.html

09/08/2025

One of two poems by Olivia Kamer in Issue Five of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal 🐎

Olivia Kamer is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her written work has been published in Spectra, Soft Qtrly, The Dollhouse, and elsewhere. She has also self-published four chapbooks of poetry. You can find her on Instagram

09/05/2025

The Recenter Press shop now has merch! Check it out here:

https://www.recenterpress.com/merch.html

04/22/2025

Itinerant Songs by Terra Oliveira is now officially available to preorder! Preorder here: https://www.recenterpress.com/store/p15/itinerantsongs.html

For those of us that work and are weighed down, Itinerant Songs is a yearning for home—for safe, affordable shelter, clean, commonly-held water, and the rights to our own land and being amongst our people. Through low-wage jobs, the “hard-facts of devotion,” and pilgrimage and recovery, these poems are a politically urgent testament to our times as much as they are a lasting, spiritual attestation.

"I felt such power reading this book. The poems keep strumming the big 'we'—we who tend the earth, who work underpaid jobs, who live in moldy homes and breathe in wildfire smoke. These populist prayers hum with aliveness. Here is the world so frankly recorded that it feels new."
— Lora Mathis, author of The Snakes Came Back (Metatron Press)

"What we need for the times ahead are words, language, an articulation of all the unseen and unsaid things—and Terra Oliveira's Itinerant Songs is exactly this. This book provokes by stating the truth and encouraging conviction through annunciation—'honesty is the warmest blanket,' Oliveira reminds us. These words connect us and they buoy us towards the future."
— Fariha Róisín, author of Survival Takes a Wild Imagination (Andrews McMeel)

"Itinerant Songs is a prayer, a protest, and an outstretched hand rooted in solidarity. Through poems that move across cities, histories, and homelands, Terra Oliveira traces the contours of labor, belonging, grief, and spiritual longing with a voice that is both precise and tender. This collection honors the political in the personal and the everyday acts of resistance that keep us connected to each other and the earth. Oliveira writes toward a world where care is not a luxury—where housing, healthcare, water, and rest are rights, not privileges, and where the act of noticing becomes a necessary form of defiance. These pages hold reverence for those who came before, care for those living through the now, and a steady hope for the future we must all work to build together.”
— Sam Slupski, author of Until Tender (Game Over Books)

For those of us that work and are weighed down, Terra Oliveira’s Itinerant Songs is a yearning for home—for safe, affordable shelter, clean, commonly-held water, and the rights to our own land and being amongst our people. Through low-wage jobs, the “hard-facts of devotion,” and pilgrimage a...