Threshold: Tenuous Proposition of

As has been the case for the last couple of years, this latest issue of Bombay Gin is thematic; yet this time around, that theme—“lunatic,” as the printer Wesley Tanner suggests in his interview—offers, posits, positions itself contingently. Threshold: a location with the tenuousness of proposition.

We chose to leave the threshold various, unstructured by classification or catalog but subject to its natural patterns:  four interviews—all conducted during the 2011 Summer Writing Program between Bombay Gin associate editors from the Jack Kerouac School and SWP writing and printing faculty—anchor the content. We have chosen to pair creative work—textual and visual—with the interviews and then to fill the matrix with the clay of individual pieces by some of our favorite writers. The section concludes with three poems and a lecture presented by Ana Božičević at the 2011 SWP and eventually available in the Naropa Audio Archives.  Then, as has been our custom, we end the issue with six book reviews, this time written exclusively by former and current JKS students.

It has been a pleasure to observe patterns form as if they operated within our design. That is, you will notice that some writers respond deliberately to the question of threshold, while for others the threshold is accidental—a silly word, “accidental,” because by tracking the presence of something, one, of course, engenders it.  Yet, these patterns strongly suggest a shared self-consciousness and anxiety about our unique moment in history, as if this moment is itself a threshold.

In early February, we will release Bombay Gin 38.1. Stay tuned for details regarding our release party. Until then, check out the writers who we will feature:

Vanessa Place
Lily Hoang
Dodie Bellamy
Ronaldo Wilson
Bhanu Kapil
DJ Spooky
Colin Frazer
Lara Durback
Julia Seko
Wesley Tanner
Christina Mengert
Erin  Morrill
Thurston Moore
Ana Božičević

Ana Bozicevic: “I love big cars. I fucking love to stuff them up my cunt.”

The fall issue of Bombay Gin will feature the marvelous work of one charmingly blunt Ana Bozicevic, Croatian-born poet and editor of the online journal esque <http://www.esquemag.com/&gt;. I got to know Ana when she was an invited workshop facilitator, along with her partner Amy King, at Naropa’s 2011 Summer Writing Program. The theme that week was cyborgian natures and the hybrid. In Ana’s class, we pieced together cyborg manifestos, crafted exquisite corpses, and culminated in the production of a group video depicting the simultaneous reading of twelve individual poems. What could the viewer piece together from that? Why, that ‘the human symphony is a cacophonous massage,’ no doubt–another of the provocative and lyrical statements that Ana spouts conversationally, as if to speak in poetry was the norm, and not the divine birthright of a few highly talented artist-writers.

To Bombay Gin, Ana has graciously gifted three new poems and a lecture delivered at Naropa University. A teaser from that material:

I filled the oilcloth bags with some
Gooey liquids – jam, baby oil, and Vaseline, and
I lined them up & called them
Perverts. People could squeeze them. It was a great exhibit

Check back soon for more previews of the fabulousness to come!

–Jess