News — De-Canon

Come join us on Saturday, June 28th, 6PM, at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) for the launch of our latest library project — De-Canon: A Restless Library.

Our “restless library” features 100 books across a variety of genres, and will move, shift, and grow through the participation of a broader public, including those who come out for this launch!

In a restless library, there’s no fixed home, no due dates. Each book travels, gathering meaning along the way. Those who attend will be invited to take a book out from the library. You may spend time with this book however you’d like, leave your mark — and when you’re ready, pass it on to someone else.

During the event, listen to brief remarks on De-Canon and library projects we’ve drawn inspiration from, browse A Restless Library, check out a book, meet and mingle with others who attend, and join in making a creative response using supplies we’ll have on hand.

If you’re not able to make the event and still want to participate, please reach out to decanonproject@gmail.com.

Location:
PNCA / Pacific Northwest College of Art
Room: Lemelson
511 NW Broadway
Portland, OR 97209

In June 2024, we released the print book A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid-Literary Collection (Fonograf Editions and De-Canon, 2024) and opened the accompanying group art exhibition A Mouth Holds Many Things at Stelo Arts in downtown Portland, Oregon.

A Mouth Holds Many Things is a book, an exhibition, a website, and a literary-social-art experiment that seeks to create a space for a type of literature—a literary art—straining against and splitting the seams of its textual confinements, that spills messily across borderlines into other art domains, that by its very nature resists containment. The hybrid-literary exists because it cannot be relegated to, is not at home within, any one realm alone.

The print publication of A Mouth Holds Many Things features the works of 36 women and nonbinary BIPOC writer-artists working at the restless intersections of literature, visual art, and other modalities. Spanning experimental poetry and prose, image-text, collage, performance text, AI-generated writing, and more, this 360-page ground-breaking full-color print volume illuminates and expands the interstitial spaces where text blends, blurs, and morphs with visual and other media. We held a very special book celebration and launch event on June 28th, in the exhibit space at Stelo Arts, co-presented by Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). This event included readings by seven of our contributors, Stephanie Adams-Santos, Jennifer S. Cheng, Gabrielle Civil, Monica Ong, Jennifer Perrine, Sandy Tanaka, and a roundtable conversation with the writers moderated by co-editors Dao Strom and Jyothi Natarajan.

The group art exhibition at Stelo Arts (June 6-September 7, 2024) included works by twelve of A Mouth’s contributors: Stephanie Adams-Santos, Samiya Bashir, Jennifer S. Cheng, Carolina Ebeid, Nadia Haji Omar, Christine Shan Shan Hou, Vi Khi Nao, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Monica Ong, Paisley Rekdal, Sasha Stiles, and Anna Martine Whitehead; plus a De-Canon Library display containing other books (for browsing) by many of the contributors to the anthology. The exhibit is a spatial-poetic, multimodal extension of the print publication of A Mouth Holds Many Things, an enactment of literature reaching, literally, beyond the page. Experience of book and exhibit together creates an enhanced, multi-faceted, multi-sensory experience of “reading.” We had a robustly attended opening reception on June 6th, with about 200 folks coming through—many thanks to all who have spent time in this space this summer.

We are very grateful to Stelo Arts and Shir Ly Grisanti for hosting our exhibit and for the generous support of the whole Stelo team. We are especially appreciative of the installation design guidance of Marcelo Fontana, and grateful to the whole install team (marvin parra, vy maldonado, Anthony Wylem) for their dexterous hands, eyes, and minds. Their support and collaboration enabled this exhibit to be more than we could envision on our own. Big thanks also to Sharita Towne and Ilish Bath of nun studios for printing risograph exhibit materials and artwork prints; and to the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) for print ephemera support via their re/source residency fellowship program.

We are thankful also to Jeff Alessandrelli and Adie Bovee of Fonograf Editions, for partnering with us to put this collection out into the world. We are very proud of this book and so glad to be able to share it with others. We think of the book itself as a social space, a floating, asynchronous conversation between the works/contributors in the collection that (we hope) will spark further conversations around hybridity and amid/about other hybrid writer-artists. See a complete list of the 36 contributors here.

The book is available direct from our publisher Fonograf Editions as well as via the usual online retailers.

We are delighted to have excerpts, reviews, interviews for A Mouth Holds Many Things appear in:

Poetry Society of America - A Mouth Holds Many Things - Excerpts by Diana Khoi Nguyen, Cindy Juyoung Ok

The Poetry Project Newsletter #277 (Summer 2024) - “A Mouth Holds Many Things: A Conversation in Centos” (arranged by Dao Strom & Jyothi Natarajan)

Full Stop - Interview with A Mouth Holds Many Things editors Dao Strom & Jyothi Natarajan (interview by Justin Duyao)

Full Stop - A Mouth Holds Many Things review by Justin Duyao

BOMB Magazine - A Roundtable Discussion with Diana Khoi Nguyen, Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Monica Ong, and Sasha Stiles (mod. by Jason N. Le)

Poetry Northwest - A Conversation with Stephanie Adams-Santos, Jennifer S. Cheng, and Cindy Juyoung Ok (interviewed by Dao Strom)

LitHub - A Mouth Holds Many Things foreword by Dao Strom

Cleveland Review - Video Poetry Excerpts by Samiya Bashir and Carolina Ebeid

Poets & Writers - review in "The Anthologist: A Compendium of Uncommon Collections"

. . .

A Mouth Holds Many Things, De-Canon Exhibition at Stelo Arts, June-August 2024. Works by (roughly in order of slideshow appearance): Carolina Ebeid; Paisley Rekdal; Sasha Stiles; Nadia Haji Omar & Christine Shan Shan Hou; Diana Khoi Nguyen; Stephanie Adams-Santos; Vi Khi Nao; Monica Ong; Anna Martine Whitehead; Samiya Bashir; Jennifer S. Cheng. Photos by Mario Gallucci, courtesy of Stelo Arts.

. . .

Funding for the publication + exhibit of A Mouth Holds Many Things was provided through an Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) Creative Heights Grant, a Make Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), and a re/source residency fellowship from the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC). The book is a joint publication of Fonograf Editions & De-Canon. Fiscal sponsorship for De-Canon has been provided by Stelo Arts and Oregon Contemporary.

Sep 12, 2018

De-Canon: A Celebration of Our Summer Events & A Look Forward

Our stay at Mile Post 5 has been a phenomenal experience. We have enjoyed having a large space to ourselves in which we’ve been able to not only exhibit the entire (and continually expanding) collection of books, but create a space where we’ve hosted readings, offered writing workshops, provided room for meetings, and enabled writers and artists of color to interact with each other, as well as the local community. Here’s an overview of what' we’ve done this summer.

Mar 6, 2018

Ruminations

Some Notes for AWP 2018

Although De-Canon does not have a formal presence at AWP this year (that is, we didn't invest in a table), we will still have a presence of sorts. If you'd like to chat about the project, discuss past or future post topics for the blog, or want to learn more about how to have your own books included in the archive, stop by Table 1136 in the bookfair to find Neil who is representing Boxcar Poetry Review & Have Book Will Travel.

Mar 2, 2018

Owning the Means of Production, Part 2: POC-Edited Literary Journals

In this post, we survey the landscape of literary journals and provide a listing of currently operating journals which are helmed by POC editors. In total, we found __ literary journals whose mastheads list a writer of color as their editor-in-chief. Many also feature additional associate editors and staff members who are also POC. Some of these journals have been around since the 70s, but many are newer online journals, having come into existence in the last 5 years.

Feb 22, 2018

Owning the Means of Production, Part 1: POC-run Presses

If we hope to truly challenge or reimagine literary canon, it is not enough to consider the academic programs where young writers are taught and trained. We must look beyond the classroom and the professoriate, past endless reams of syllabi making and remaking what constitutes canon, and consider the practical matter of how these texts enter the field in the first place. In this post, we present a list of POC-helmed presses that are currently in operation.

Feb 7, 2018

On the Radar

Upcoming Poetry Book Prize Contests for POC Writers

Although the field of literary publishing is still primarily populated by white editors and publishers, there are some POC-owned and directed publishers and a number of new and well-established poetry book prizes that are judged by respected POC authors and which seek to champion work of writers from particular communities of color. If you're a POC poet with a book manuscript in need of a home, here's a list of upcoming contests you might want to try

Feb 2, 2018

POC Writers and Their Libraries

Over the past week and a half, we've been gathering images of POC writers and their libraries, as well as asking readers and writers of color to contribute their thoughts on the importance of building a personal library and how books by other POC writers have impacted their lives.

This post showcases responses from and glimpses into the libraries of Kazim Ali, Francisco Aragón, Jackson Bliss, Genève Chao, Shu-Ling Chua, Oliver de la Paz, M. Evelina Galang, Nathania Gilson, Jenna Le, Gemma Mahadeo, Meera (@ashmeera101), and Brian W. Parker.

"The history of English is inextricably tied to the history of war, to the history of empire; they cannot be separated. And hence our literature cannot be separated from these histories. Language is one of the most powerful weapons of war. It is also one of the war's first victims."

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