Call for Chapbooks: Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies

Passing this along from Reggie Harris' and Christopher Hennessey's sites:

Call for Chapbooks: LGBT/Queer/SGL Chapbook Archive

The Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies announces that it will house the largest collection of LGBT/Queer/SGL chapbooks. Eric Rofes was a longtime educator and activist who worked on a wide range of progressive social and political justice issues. Since his untimely passing in 2006, many of his colleagues have worked to continue this legacy. The Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies is one among many of the way his legacy is materialized and continued. As a Visiting Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at Humboldt State University for Fall 2008, and Faculty advisor to students operating ERC, Tim'm West, one of Eric's colleagues, has been working to mark the center with a unique collection of chapbooks. Chapbooks honor works published outside of the traditional publishing industry-- books bound by staples, tape, or string, collections printed at copy centers, and creative works that mark writers who have long been told their works are not worthy of being published.

We are working to ensure that all chapbooks submitted receive a call number in collaboration with the Humboldt State University library, though the collection will be housed at ERC. This collection remains a way to ensure chapbooks are preserved. If possible, we would prefer that all chapbooks submitted be signed to "Eric Rofes Center". While students everywhere are working to explore the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, among other identities, we invite all writers to participate in our attempts to mobilize a collection that validates the experiences of writers both published and unpublished. We are especially interested in older collections, or phases of books before more traditional bound versions were created. In the service of including works by community members and our allies, we will be taking a broad approach to collecting LGBT, Queer, or SGL chapbooks. Contributers may submit if their collection has related content, even if the author does not idenfity as LGBT, Queer, or SGL.

Please distribute widely.
Submissions can be sent to:

HSU- Multicultural Center
c/o Eric Rofes Center Chapbook Archive
1 Harpst Street
Arcata, CA 95521

All submissions will receive receipt of their contribution, as a list of all works is being compiled, published, and updated regularly.

Thanks for your attention,

Tim'm T. West
author, Red Dirt Revival, chapbook BARE, and Flirting
Visiting Lecturer, Humboldt State University
www.humboldt.edu
(707) 826-3826
tw33@humboldt.edu
artist website: www.reddirt.biz

Eight Hundred Books

For the past few years, I've worked--in various capacities--at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell. I first came here in '94, as a "June Poet" (a Fellow in the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets)--a great program that I've since had the joy of teaching in. Anyway, the Stadler Center has its own poetry library, a small eclectic collection of mainly contemporary poetry. It had some gaps back then (there are still some gaps now, but the new director, Shara McCallum, is working on filling those out). As an obsessive book buyer, I had a few extra copies and started donating them back in '94 after the June Seminar ended and I went back home to Houston.

When we moved to Lewisburg a few years ago, I brought along roughly sixty boxes of books, and half of those had to stay in storage. There's only so much space for bookcases in our apartment, and though I had six bookcases full of poetry in my office last year, next year I'll be in a much smaller space. So even though I've been donating books pretty regularly since '94, this past year I did some major thinning--and lugged in donations every week.

I like to think that there are plenty of other book lovers who keep a running database of their collection. (If not, I've just confessed a bit too much, but oh well.) So it only took a few minutes to scroll through my "books" spreadsheet the other day and tally up my donations to the library: over 800 books to date.

This is not about me. This is about building a decent collection of contemporary American poetry that will benefit students for the forseeable future. I encourage my students to use this space, to hang out and read in the poetry center. And during the June Seminar, our little library is pretty much ransacked, with piles on the desk and floor to be reshelved. It's great to see the collection filling out, and to know that it's being used. We even have a grad assistant who logs each new book into a (yes!) database. So if you ever find yourself with an extra clean copy of a poetry book, let me know: we'd probably love to add it to our library.