Carbonation Press 007: found confetti by Rhea Melina

Forthcoming 2024.

In found confetti, Rhea Melina’s fusion of performance-poet style and page-poet aesthetics continues to push unflinchingly into life’s difficult places. This debut full collection shows what our wounds can teach us, and these poems invite us all to not only heal, but to celebrate. “To save ourselves,” she writes, “We must redefine beauty.”

Rhea Melina (she/her) is a multi-ethnic poet who lives in Seattle. She is an educator, birth-worker and herbalist who has been writing and putting out poetry since the early 2000’s.  Her chapbooks include “Fireant” (SSO Press, 2005), “These are not secrets” (XYZ Animal Stars, 2009), “a place to put things” (Bottlecap Press, 2023), and “Not My Wasteland” (Bone Machine, 2024).  Her poems have been published in Fiilthy Glo Zine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Papers Pub, Rising Phoenix Review and Text Power Telling Magazine, among others. found confetti is her first full length collection.

Carbonation Press 006: Twentyfour Self Portraits at Twentyfour by Zachary Charles

Published in October 2024.

Twentyfour Self Portraits at Twentyfour is an exploration of young adulthood in the third decade of the 21st century. It asks questions of elders and ancestors that range from: Why do we still count the years based on Jesus? to: How do I leave this planet better than I found it? In it the poet stands between two mirrors and peers deeply into their reflection, looking for clues to help them better understand themself and their world.

Zachary Charles (they/he) is a poet who currently lives near Alki Beach, West Seattle with their partner, cat, and dog. They teach Spanish on Vashon Island. Their poetry practice consists of a few pieces: portraits, conversations, and an ongoing effort to compose 10,000 haiku. They are a member of the Cascadia Poetics Lab Youth Committee and Poetry Postcard Fest Project Board. In addition to poetry, they spend creative time on multimedia collage and paintings, and love combining visual art with language art.

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Carbonation Press 005: The Weather Says by Catherine Owen

Published in July 2024.

The Weather Says is a sequence of lyrics and fragmentary longer pieces that address our new relationship with the weather: its highs and lows, its warnings, its benevolences and its dystopic visions. Drawing from a range of lines written by poets, along with scholarly material, these poems address the unavoidable realities, the presumably dull quotidian and even the mysteriously terrifying projections that an awareness of weather gifts us. Whether as small talk or catastrophe, balm or devastation, the weather is intimately bound up with what being truly human means in the 21st century.

Catherine Owen, from Vancouver BC, is the author of sixteen collections of poetry and prose including Riven (ECW 2020) and Moving to Delilah (Freehand Books 2024). She also edits, runs the performance series 94th Street Trobairitz, and hosts the podcast Ms Lyric’s Poetry Outlaws from her 1905 home in Edmonton, Alberta.

Paperback: $15.00 ISBN: 978-1-304-25101-5

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Carbonation Press 004: underbelly by Eric M. Acosta

Published in April 2024.

A new book of poems by the Seattle-based poet Eric M. Acosta, with an introduction by Mike Tracy. Includes assorted images by the poet throughout the book. underbelly is a follow-up to Acosta’s 2023 release Motion Flesh.

Eric M. Acosta is a poet living in Seattle. He hosts a twice monthly curated reading / performance / whatever series called Unpoetry. Find all of his work at www.printcopiesavailable.com. For the most up to date information, follow him on instagram @bottle_meat.

Paperback. $15.00. ISBN: 978-1304612854

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Carbonation 003: DaySong Miracle (Past 62) by Paul E. Nelson

Published in April 2024.

This is third of four “DaySongs” Seattle poet Paul E. Nelson has completed. The ritual was designed for workshop participants in online Zoom courses he has been conducting since the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. They’re currently run under the names “Poetics as Cosmology” and “Life as Rehearsal for the Poem.” The DaySong comes mainly out of projects by Bernadette Mayer (Midwinter Day) and The “Canto Diurno” of Pierre Joris.

The DaySong exercise is only possible writing projectively and is a test of a poet’s ability to write in the method Charles Olson, in part described as a “use of speech at its least careless and least logical.” It also incorporates a notion that the late BC poet Barry McKinnon ascribed to William Carlos Williams, that each poem you write should be a summary of your life to that point. Having three long-time friends die at age 62 in 2022/2023 and writing the DaySong two weeks before Nelson was to turn 62 was part of the energy that propelled this poem.

Poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Books include Haibun de la Serna (2022), A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) & American Sentences (2015, 2021). Co-Editor of Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press), Make it True meets Medusario (2019) (Spanish & English) and other anthologies. He’s Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill and lives in Rainier Beach, alongside dəxʷwuqʷed Creek.

Paperback. $15.00. ISBN: 978-8892984997

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Carbonation 002: Echoes Lost to the Wind by Chath pierSath

Published in February 2024.

In his latest collection, the Cambodian-American poet Chath pierSath delves into the intricate relationship between the external and the intimate. A testament to the resilience of the human spirit, this is a poetry transcending boundaries and embracing the fullness of life. From public moments to inward reflections, from pride to joy and anger, pierSath’s poetry balances across space and emotion, offering poems of composure and ectasy, of revelation and proclamation.

Moving through a world made cold and closed by the isolation of the COVID era, these poems invite you to explore the act of opening. Through his journey of sexuality and understanding connection, pierSath fearlessly delves into the sensual, presenting it in myriad manifestations that resonate from present to past, from the United States to Cambodia, with emotions that dance in between.

Chath pierSath, born in Battambang, Cambodia in 1970, survived the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and grew up in the United States. He is the author of three collections, After: Poems (Abingdon Square, 2009), This Body Mystery: Paintings and Poems (‎Abingdon Square, 2012), and On Earth Beneath Sky: Poems and Sketches (Loom Press, 2022), and a children’s book, Sinat and the Instrument of the Heart (Soundprints, 2010). Also known internationally for his visual art, he has exhibited in Asia, Europe, and North America. He lives and works on a family farm in the town of Bolton in the Nashoba Valley of central Massachusetts.

Paperback. $15.00. ISBN: 978-1365057748

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Carbonation 001: Pushing Through Glass by Greg Bem

Published in November 2023.

This is the first release by Carbonation Press. This book of poetry is by Greg Bem. It contains three small sequences of poetry from Seattle, Washington, the Cascade Mountains, and Spokane, Washington.

Greg Bem is a poet and librarian living in Spokane, Washington, where he relocated after 13 years in Seattle.

Paperback. $12.00. ISBN: ‎978-1312111097

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