Poetry isn’t the most popular genre out there. In fact, it’s not even close. So, what if a team of poets shoved themselves even further into the niche with political poetry? What about poetic activism, anarchism, socialism?
Welcome Commune Editions.
In an article published April 24, Publisher’s Weekly profiled the three poets Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr who “have bootstrapped Commune Editions, a publishing collective, with an assist from anarchist publishing and distribution house AK Press.” This team of poets has been collaborating for years. In their final collective post for online poetry Journal Jacket2, they defended their highly collaborative efforts with this: “We have gone to jail for each other and bailed each other out and done each other’s jobs and collaborated on many writings before and argued a lot with each [other] too.”
With this gritty, loyal foundation, Commune is set to launch three books this year, all self-published, with books by Cheena Marie Lo and David Lau slated for next year. Commune holds no pretense about their self-publishing. In Bernes’s words, “What we’re doing isn’t that different, though it is different in that we’re being honest about it.”
AK Press Fire. Courtesy of AK Press.
AK Press, whose mission is to “revolutionize by the book” will be the perfect support grounds for Commune’s publishing and distribution needs. After a fire two weeks ago, AK Press is currently crowdfunding to rebuild their distribution center in Oakland, CA. Please consider donating to get this boundary-pushing press back on its feet.