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Trumpet 11: Ephemera

Issue 11 of Poetry Ireland's occasional literary pamphlet Trumpet - a minor-key publishing project continuing to grow in significance, offering essays and reviews as well as original poetry - was released last month. The focus of this issue, edited by Tapasya Narang, is on ephemeral poetic forms as a means of querying the value of 'publishing' and the assumption that poetry is organised around the achievement of posterity.

Trumpet 11 closes with a full page reproduction of my poem 'Browsing History #4', made as part of my project as Digital Poet in Residence at StAnza International Poetry Festival (2017) in St Andrews, Scotland. The full outcome of the Browsing History project is available as a set of postcards from zimZalla avant objects. On publication of the postcards in March 2018, I wrote a short essay for the StAnza Festival website reflecting on the project's concept and compositional & publication processes, and its relationship to ephemerality and posterity.

As Narang writes in her editorial, this issue of Trumpet "looks at historical and underground publishing trends and explores why individual poets and artists, as well as creative communities, might remain outside of the mainstream 'spotlight' by their own design". "Beyond this", Narang writes later, "it explores ephemerality as a mode of resistance to monoliths of authority, adopting a series of socio-economic and cultural lenses".

Notable contributions to the issue include Kit Fryatt's essay 'Tumblresque Nerdcore Zines, Poetry and Queerness'; Lucy Collins on 'The Ephemeral Archive'; David Wheatley's note on the work of Maggie O'Sullivan; Grace Wilentz and Róisín Power Hackett in conversation about co-editing the journal SEED: objects of wonder; Fióna Bolger on two outliers in Ireland's poetry publishing scene - Éamon Mag Uidhir's Flare broadsheet, and Michelle Moloney King's Beir Bua Press; and a 4-page zine insert by Sophie Meehan.

Trumpet 11 costs €4.00. It is available through selected stockists or directly from Poetry Ireland.

Thanks to Tapasya for seeking my contribution to the issue, and to Paul Lenehan and Eoin Rogers at Poetry Ireland for their attention to the visual particularities of my poem.

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