Tag Archives: Ugly Duckling Presse

Gifts Galore at Malvern Books

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The festive season is well and truly upon us, my dears—and if you’ve left your shopping till the last minute, fear not, as all your essential Yuletide gifts can be found here at Malvern Books! We’re open every day until the 25th (with a slightly early closing time of 6pm on Christmas Eve), and to make your present-purchasing a little easier, we’re also offering a stupendously generous Holiday Gift Card Offer—for every $40 you spend, you’ll receive a $10 gift card. (Please note, the gift card can not be used on the day of purchase.)

As for what to buy… well, there are plenty of handsome new arrivals featured on our home page, but here are a few more top picks for the beloved bookworms in your life:

Hit ParadeBrooklyn’s Ugly Duckling Presse recently released Hit Parade, a bilingual Russian-English collection of poems by Semyon Khanin, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, and Artur Punte, the four most acclaimed members of the Orbita creative collective, based in Riga, Latvia. Lyn Hejinian called Hit Parade “one of the best collections of poetry I’ve ever encountered,” so it’s a pretty safe bet that your favorite poetry lover is going to appreciate these greatest hits.

Last week we eagerly unpacked a new order from Chax, a Texan indie press founded in 1984 and dedicated to “increasing the impact of new writing in our culture.” We received a host of awesome titles, including Reason and Other Women by Alice Notley, The Complete Light Poems by Jackson Mac Low, Andalusia by Susan Thackrey, and Linh Dinh’s Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, which might just be the most enticing book title ever.

chax press

And don’t forget our lovely sidelines! We have holiday cards, t-shirts, mugs, bookmarks, and beautiful Leuchtturm notebooks in a wide range of colors.

Sidelines

A Beautiful Ugly Trifecta

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We’re rather fond of Ugly Duckling Presse, a publishing collective run out of an old can factory in the heart of industrial Brooklyn. In fact, we’re one of their Partner Bookstores, which means we have a standing order to receive every new book they release. And this month we were delighted to get our mitts on the handsome Ugly trio you see below…

Ugly Duckling Titles

The Green Ray by Corina Copp — the first full-length collection of poems from Copp, a writer and theatre artist based in New York. Arava Review described Copp’s poetry as “a beautiful racket” and “a strange waterfall interruptive soundtrack,” which sounds pretty darn intriguing.

Costume en Face by Tatsumi Hijikata — Hijikata (1928-1986) was a Japanese choreographer and the founder of Butoh, a radical form of dance performance art. Costume en Face is the first publication of one of his notebooks; it contains fascinating notations concerning the art of Butoh, as transcribed by Hijikata’s “disciples.”

Alien Abduction by Lewis Warsh — Warsh has been a major figure in contemporary American poetry for over forty years, and this extraordinary new collection, his first full-length volume since 2008, will only enhance his reputation as a poetry icon.

Swanlike Stuff

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Following on from our introduction to the literary delights of Forklift, Ohio and Smartish Pace, let’s take a gander at another journal that will soon be propped up adorably on our shelves: Ugly Duckling Presse’s 6×6 series.

Ugly Duckling Presse is a publishing collective run out of an old can factory in the heart of industrial Brooklyn. The press(e) focuses on emerging writers, “forgotten” authors, and work in translation, and they’ve published some very impressive titles, including Tomaž Šalamun’s Poker, which was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

UDP

The press began in 1993 when college student Matvei Yankelevich and a friend pasted together a zine made up of collages and “ballpoint scrawl” and called it The Ugly Duckling. From this initial “beautiful mess,” the enterprise expanded and began to take shape as a collective of like-minded writers and artists. UDP is now a pretty big concern—they’ve published over 200 titles—but there’s still an irreverent, artisanal feel to all things Ducky. The press is still run by a volunteer collective, and its members still like to get their hands dirty; each and every book is handmade to some extent. Among UDP’s many projects, there’s the Eastern European Poets Series, the Lost Literature Series, the Cellar Series Podcasts (recordings of readings and discussions with UDP authors), and the poetry journal 6×6.

Ugly Duckling

6×6 was first published in 2000 and is edited by Yankelevich and friends. The journal comes out three times a year, and showcases mostly young(ish), new(ish) poets from at home and abroad, with at least one work in translation in each issue. And as the series’ title might suggest, each issue features six poets, with each poet given six pages. The journal is a pleasingly symmetrical 7” x 7”—I guess 6” x 6” would have been a wee bit cute?—and is bound with a handsome rubber band (I’m not the only person who admires the bands; a question regarding rubber band stockists appears in the Ugly Duckling FAQ). And in keeping with the theme of sixes, apparently the plan is to call a halt to the series after the 36th issue. I can’t promise Malvern Books will have every issue in stock—some are already sold out—but I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to offer you at least… six.