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to participate in our attempts to mobilize a collection that validates the experiences of writers both published and unpublished.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

Surprise Invitation

So I'm checking my webmail this morning and there's an invitation from Ellen Lewis to be interviewed for the next issue of her literary magazine, Sunspinner. Ellen had been given a copy of my chapbook, The David Museum, last year, and she had some very nice things to say about it, even quoting back a couple of lines that "resonated." I was--I am--truly moved that the poems reached beyond the (imaginary) queer circle I (imagine to) (sometimes) write in (from). Of course I will say yes to the interview: number one, I'm a Leo, and though I halfheartedly shush my own delight at being praised, the truth is that duh, I'm a Leo; number two, I'm genuinely delighted that someone out there found the poems and connected with them.

But I'm also thinking about (imaginary) boundaries, and how I call myself a queer writer: no new ideas here, nothing about identity that hasn't been (re)hashed by more articulate minds than my own, except that it seems appropriate to ponder why I choose this label. Two thoughts for now:

1) It saves time. If you're reading one of my poems for the first time, and it's about tree frogs or freeway spinouts or stealing daylily seeds from my neighbor's garden, it's important to me that you know that my "queer sensibility" shaped that vision just as much, though possibly less emphatically, as it shaped my poem about eating grapes out of someone's tushy on the kitchen table.

2) It's a matter of, well, community. I believe that if we recognize and commit to one another, everyone wins. I'm acutely aware of my identity and position in terms of privilege (educated white male, working at a swanky private college, decently published so far) as well as challenge (gay in a predominantly straight setting, advancement limitations at this institution, literal fear of how I'll pay the rent). So I like to look around, keep my nose in, so to speak, and check out other poets, especially newer, "younger" writers (whatever that means, since I'm by no means "established"), and specifically (since I don't have funds to launch the new lit journal or the new poetry series or the three or four anthologies that are backing up my Dream List, I'd better narrow the scope of where my energy's gonna be focused) queer writers. More on this later (i.e., what, specifically, can one underpaid adjunct do to promote & assist other writers) (and why you should care) because it's after nine and this old dog needs to walk home and spend time with the Husbear.