B.C. Edwards

by

This Weekend: 2014 New York Poetry Festival on Governors Island

New York City Poetry Festival

The fourth annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governors Island is almost here!

Augury Books will be reading on the White Horse Stage at 4pm on Saturday, July 26, with Frances Justine Post (BEAST, 2014) and B. C. Edwards (TO MEND SMALL CHILDREN, 2012). Admission to the festival is FREE, so there’s absolutely no reason to miss out!

The NYCPF is put on by the Poetry Society of New York and features a worldclass lineup including Mark Doty, Matthea Harvey, and Joyelle McSweeney, along with over 250 poets on three stages. The festivities will take place on both Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Come for the readings, performances, Vendor’s Village (where you can discover new poetry as well as your old favorites), artists, craftsmen, and food trucks!

Check out the press release for more info, or visit the festival’s website for more information.

Augury Books’ reading period is open — Submit your manuscript!

by

B.C. Edwards To Launch "From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes"

From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes by B.C. Edwards, Black Lawrence Press, 2014

We’re happy to announce that tomorrow night is the launch for B.C. Edwards’ (To Mend Small Children, Augury, 2012) first full-length poetry collection. Edwards will be reading with Amy Lawless and Angelo Nikolopoulos at Berl’s Poetry Shop in Brooklyn to usher in From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). The event will be hosted by Bernard J. Kravitz. See the Facebook event page to RSVP and Berl’s blog post for more details.

by

Support New York City Poetry Festival’s Kickstarter

Photo by Dave Bledsoe by FreeVerse Photography

The Poetry Society of New York needs your help to make the 2014 New York City Poetry Festival happen. The festival, which just launched its beautiful new website, is running its annual Kickstarter campaign for the event. If the festival can meet its goal, the 2014 annual event will be held Saturday and Sunday, July 26th and 27th, on Governors Island. More than 60 poetry organizations, small presses, reading series and other collectives will present over 250 poets, including headliners (brought to you by the Poetry Society of New York), Paul Muldoon & the Wayside Shrines, Mark Doty, Joyelle McSweeney, and Matthea Harvey.

Augury Books, with readers Frances Justine Post (Beast, 2014), David Joel Friedman (Soldier Quick with Rain, 2013), and B.C. Edwards (To Mend Small Children, 2012), will be at the White Horse Stage on Saturday, July 26th at 4 p.m.

Go here for a complete lineup.

B.C. Edwards Reads for Augury Books, 2012—Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

According to organizers Stephanie Berger and Nicholas Adamski, “This year our Kickstarter goal is $10,000, which we will combine with an additional $10,000 in grants, private funding, and earned revenue from last year’s event to bring our operating budget for 2014 to $20,000. The New York City Poetry Festival is free and open to the public, and over the course of its three year tenure on Governors Island, it has served over 5000 attendees. Now, all we ask is for $2 from each of them …. What better season to remember pleasures of the poetic word and give something back?”

The New York City Poetry Festival is volunteer-run, and all funds raised from the Kickstarter will go towards the rental of stages, sound systems, generators and tents; paying for security fees, liability insurance, licensing fees, and other safety precautions; and the purchase and transportation of other equipment to and from the island. The Kickstarter concludes on Friday, May 16th.

Please support the festival with a donation today!

Augury Books’ reading period is open — Submit your manuscript!

by

Over 35% Off: End of Year Book Specials

This time of year, everyone is in the giving spirit. More importantly, everyone has various giftees they need to cross off of an ever-expanding list.

For a short time at a 35% discount, you can give the gift of poetry while supporting Augury Books and the literary arts. Expand your own collection or help beef up the bookshelves of your aspiring-writer niece or your poetry-loving boyfriend. Trying to think of an original gift for colleagues in your office that will entertain and impress? Voila.

For only $40, including shipping* — more than 35% off the regular price — get all four books:

Simply send $40 to augurybooks@gmail.com via PayPal, include your full name and shipping address on the PayPal order to avoid delays, and your books will be shipped within 24 hours.**

Love the idea, but already have our catalogue? Bravo! You can still help spread literary cheer. Share this with friends and (continue to) support the arts.

As always, to keep receiving posts such as this, follow our blog by clicking in the bottom right corner of this page.

*International shipping not included in special. Please contact us for international shipping rates. Sorry, no Amazon orders for this special!
**For receipt before 12/25/13, place order before end of business day 12/19/13.

by

Come See Augury at the 3rd Annual NYC Poetry Festival, July 27-28

 

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Tomorrow is already Wednesday, so it’s time to prepare your answer for the popular post-hump-day question of: “Hey, what are you doing this weekend?”

We’ve got you covered. “Going to the Third Annual New York City Poetry Festival, hosted by the Poetry Society of New York, on Governor’s Island,” you can say. Why? Because, hopefully, you are just as excited as we are for the two-day celebration of New York’s dynamic poetry scene.

Yes, Augury will be there! Our own B. C. Edwards (To Mend Small Children), David Joel Friedman (Soldier Quick with Rain) and Paige Lipari (Family of Many Enzos) will be reading Sunday (July 28) at 1:30 p.m. on the White Horse stage.

Find out all you need to know at the Poetry Society of New York’s website, including the lineup of over 50 poetry organizations and 200 poets, the times and locations of each reading, and transportation info to and from Governors Island.

Also, check out Coldfront’s fabulous NYC Poetry Festival Preview, featuring interviews from many of the presses, journals, and organizations that will present at the festival — including one from Augury!

by

New poem by B. C. Edwards!

In anticipation of the upcoming New York City Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island, we are posting a new poem by one of our featured readers. Please join us on Saturday, July 21st at 2 pm at Chumley’s stage. Can’t wait that long? You can also hear Carter read on Friday the 13th at the H.I.P. Reading Series at Bar on A (170 Avenue A) at 7 pm.

Like Everything Was Already There

Joshua,
I am making a list of the things we need to buy
A bathroom scale
A weekend vacation house for the bathroom scale to live in
and keep occupied during the weeks that we are in the city.
A blender to keep the bathroom scale company. One of those nice ones
That can grind rocks into sand. That if we leave it too long
Will grind sand to dust. Dust to whatever comes after dust.
Pots of various sizes
and colors if possible
A vacuum for the dust and what comes next.
A couch
Two couches, actually, unless your sister has a spare
Mine does not. she has no extra couches
She is flush all out
but my sister is lousy with beds
We do not need any extra beds
we have between us five beds possibly more
we could each spend almost a week
every night in a different bed
and not sleep with each other once
A dry bar.
A shower curtain.
Stools for the dry bar.
A shower curtain liner,
but to be honest I don’t know what those are for
They just seem to get in the way, dangle on the wrong side of the tub at all the worst moments
I only added it to the list so that you wouldn’t think that I was one of those brutes that grew up only having a shower curtain and not the liner, which I was, in fact.
A dishwasher, because we should be honest about this, neither of us is going to wash the dishes. Probably not ever.
A maid. Mostly to deal with the dust, what comes after and also take the dishes out of their washer.
We’ll need a bedroom as well.
or really just the walls to define the bedroom.
because we kind of already know where the bedroom is
but haven’t told anyone
and without the walls there, no one will know that it’s the bedroom
but, as I said before, we’ve got plenty of beds for it.

B.C. Edwards lives in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of the 2011 Hudson Prize put out by Black Lawrence Press which will be publishing his collection of short fiction, “The Aversive Clause” in 2012 and his collection of poetry “From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes” in 2013. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Red Line Blues, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. His short story “Illfit” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it

by

To Mend Small Children by B.C. Edwards

“If you like to be spooked by poems, if you like poems to send you back into your quotidian existence with a more acute sense of its weirdness and charm, read “How to Mend Small Children” carefully. Edwards’ poems offer solutions to bizzaro problems and alchemic transmogrifications for exotic items, but their miraculous nature really lies in the way they transform the person who reads them. Prepare to visit a dimension that is weird, dark, funny and eerily similar to the one in which we live.” ~Ben Mirov

by

Book Release Party with Edwards & Lipari!

Finally, something to do Monday, February 20th if you live in the New York Tri-State area! Augury will be around to heartily celebrate the release of its three new titles. B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari will also be there to read from their startlingly beautiful new chapbooks.

Also, music by Alicia Jo Rabins of Girls in Trouble! Cupcakes! Drink specials! Poetry! Books!

RSVP on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/272806632784695/

And we would be remiss if we didn’t thank everyone who supported Augury during our fundraising process. We made our goal! Thank you to donators, well-wishers, word-spreaders, hand-holders, and everyone else.

by

Big News: Chapbooks by B.C. Edwards & Paige Lipari

We have fantastic news! Following hot on the heels of our announcement that Patrick Moran won the Editors Prize for the Book of Lost Things, we are pleased to announce that Augury Books will be publishing two chapbooks this Winter/Spring. Take a moment to meet our attractive new authors B.C. Edwards and Paige Lipari.

B.C. Edwards lives in Brooklyn. He is the recipient of the 2011 Hudson Prize put out by Black Lawrence Press which will be publishing his collection of short fiction, “The Aversive Clause” in 2012 and his collection of poetry “From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes” in 2013. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Red Line Blues, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. His short story “Illfit” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it.

Paige Lipari is a poet, music maker, cartoonist, and cook. She lives and works in Brooklyn, and was previously an editor at A Public Space.