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Janet Holmes

School Ties: Poetry 2018,” an article in the current issue of Publisher’s Weekly, features Boise State’s Ahsahta Press and quotes its director, Janet Holmes.

Here is a passage from the article:

“Ahsahta Press has just published Jonah Mixon-Webster’s Stereo(TYPE), which explores the relationships among language, race and oppression. In the book, Mixon-Webster uses white space, erasures, blackouts and drawings to consider the rhetoric of racial identity.

Similarly, Cody-Rose Clevidence’s Flung Throne uses nonstandard typography, strikethroughs and traditional verse to parse the interplay between language and violence. Ahsahta’s Holmes agrees with other editors who said that telling some stories, especially those concerning historically marginalized groups, “often requires experimentation with form.”

Holmes also took part in a recent round-table discussion of erasure poetry and conceptual writing that was included in the Swedish publication Tidskrift för Litteraturevetenskap 2017:2. The “Samtal om konceptualism” was led by Lisa Schmidt and also included Robert Fitterman, Kenneth Goldsmith, Heidi Neilson and Johanna Drucker.