Rick Jackson Remembers Ralph Angel

Earlier this year we mourned the passing of the poet and beloved teacher Ralph Angel. Ralph contributed a chapbook of extraordinary poems to Strays Pack 2. This was, tragically, his final publication; he passed away unexpectedly on March 6, 2020.

Ralph was the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the University of Redlands and a member of the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His fellow VCFA faculty member, the poet Richard Jackson, wrote a beautiful remembrance for Ralph in the latest issue of the VCFA magazine.

Rick writes about the “intimate distance” of Ralph’s poetry, captured so movingly in his Strays contribution. Rick cites an untitled poem from the collection. The poem “starts off with all the bustle of everyday life,” he writes:

… then moves to ashes, tears, “whispering aspens,” and ends: “an angel comes and taps / my lips.” An angel. How fitting. How consoling to think so. The invisible, the silence. The absent presence.

Read Rick’s tribute here.

Following Ralph’s footsteps, Rick will be a featured poet in Strays Pack 3, which we’ll release this December 15.

We’re out of Ralph’s limited-edition chapbook, but there are still copies available through SPD.

The Wallace Award Returns: Foundlings Announces Third Biannual Chapbook Competition Featuring Artist Julie Molloy

Please note: Submissions for the third biennial Wallace Award are now closed. Foundlings Press will announce the winner in spring 2021. Please check back in December 2022 for the return of our chapbook contest.

The Wallace Award is back.

Only open for submissions once every two years, Foundlings Press offers the Wallace Award to an outstanding poetry chapbook, publishing the winning manuscript with cover art by a guest designer.

This year’s guest designer is Julie Molloy, whose work first charmed and enchanted us at a Peach Mag event in 2018. We left with a painting and with the hope that we might get to collaborate someday.

That day has come. Following previous guest artists Stephen Fitzmaurice (2017) and Edreys Wajed (2019), Julie will team up with Foundlings Press and the eventual winner of the 2021 Wallace Award to produce cover art for the winning manuscript, which Foundlings will publish in fall/winter 2021.

Submissions

Submissions for the third biannual Wallace Award chapbook contest are open from 16 November 2020 to 31 January 2021. Foundlings will announce the final selection in spring 2021.

Requirements

• Length: 20-70 pages

• Format: Word or PDF, remove any/all identifying information

• Style: N/A - we’ll read anything, but please familiarize yourself with our catalog

Entry

Entry is $5, payable through the Foundlings website (link below). Need-based fee-waivers are available—no documentation needed; just email us. Once you’ve paid your submission fee, email your chapbook manuscript as a Word or PDF document to publisher@foundlingspress.com.

Enter here.

More about Julie Molloy

Julie Molloy is an illustrator, designer and art director at Block Club, an award-winning branding and strategy agency in Buffalo. Her gallery work debuted in 2014 in her solo show, Inside Voices, a series exploring the relationship between our public faces and private lives. She has since been featured in The Public and elsewhere, displayed her work at events with partners like Peach Mag, and taken on a wide variety of illustration projects, including designing the cover of Matthew Bookin’s chapbook Palace (Ghost City Press, 2018) and many private commissions. Based in Buffalo, she is currently living and working in Mexico City.

View: https://www.juliemolloy.com/

Follow:https://www.instagram.com/juleeclip/

Blazes Launch: November 7 at Duende

Join Foundlings on Saturday, Nov. 7, 7pm at Duende’s outdoor Watu Cantina for a reading to celebrate the launch of Blazes, the debut collection by poet Zack Graboksy.

Guests can enjoy food and drink from the cantina and sit at an appropriate distance around the venue’s outdoor stage, south of downtown Buffalo and in the shadow of the grain silos. Zack—coming up from Carlisle, PA—will read from his new collection and copies of Blazes and other Foundlings titles will be available for purchase.

We’re requiring masks for anyone moving about the venue, and requesting them for seated guests who aren’t eating or drinking. We’ll also be following and enforcing the latest Erie County health guidelines and notifying guests of any changes to the same in the weeks and days leading up to our event.

Click here for more info about Blazes.

Click here to RSVP to the event.

Goodness Gracious Launch Reading and Reception Jan. 16 at Buffalo Arts Studio

Buffalo Arts Studio
Tri-Main Center, Suite 500
6pm January 16, 2020

Join Foundlings Press for the official launch of Goodness Gracious, a poetry chapbook by Nicholas Molbert, winner of the 2018 Wallace Award.

The event will include a brief reading as well as a pop-up exhibition of original work by Buffalo Arts Studio Studio Artist Edreys Wajed, guest book artist for Goodness Gracious.

Foundlings will host an informal afterparty at the Central Park Grill, a short walk down Main St. from the reading venue.

About Nicholas Molbert and GOODNESS GRACIOUS

Winner of the Foundlings Press Wallace Award, Nicholas Molbert's Goodness Gracious explores creation, distance, landscapes, and the passing of lives. As guest book artist Edreys Wajed puts it, "These poems are light as feathers, hit hard as bricks."

Charged with memory and desire, haunted by heaven and lineage, Nicholas Molbert's poems are sluiced with physical and spiritual longing, unexpectedly tender, sometimes funny, and always moving.

- Mark Wagenaar

Originally from Louisiana's Gulf Coast, Nicholas Molbert lives and writes in Southern Ohio as a PhD student in poetry at the University of Cincinnati. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in journals such as The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Missouri Review Online, Ninth Letter, Permafrost, and Pleiades Book Review, among others.

Blurbs and purchase information here.

Retail orders available through SPD.

Watch and listen to Nicholas Molbert reading here.

Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford Enters Second Printing

Pre-order, pitch in, or help spread the news

One year from its publication on the 40th anniversary of the poet Frank Stanford’s death, the earth-turning anthology Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford is coming back in a second printing.

Constant Stranger is the result of the incredible generosity and energy of contributors, advisers, donors, and friends. This second print run, however, comes in the middle of our production cycle for several exciting 2020 titles and surprise projects—putting a significant strain on our finances. If you’d like to help our all-volunteer staff share this work with a wider audience, here are a few suggestions:

• Pre-order Constant Stranger now

• Forward this news to a friend or listserv

• Post about us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram

• Recommend Constant Stranger as a class text to someone teaching a course in poetry or literature

• Ask your favorite independent bookstore to inquire about stocking copies

• Ask your university library to acquire a copy

• Send a tax-deductible donation to Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, earmarked for Foundlings Press

  • A donation of $50 or more will get you a copy of Constant Stranger signed by the editors along with Strays Pack 1 and Pack 2 as soon as they are available.

Praise for Constant Stranger

The diverse voices assembled in Constant Stranger suggest the time is right for common readers to discover this “poet’s poet” as well.

- Leo A. Lensing, The Times Literary Supplement

Constant Stranger offers readers a place to explore and to problematize the wholly unique effects of his poems, and to grapple with the charismatic but flawed poet behind them.

- Jack Christian, Rain Taxi Review

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Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford was released August 1, 2018, celebrated with a small event in Buffalo, NY that month, and officially launched at the second Frank Stanford Literary Festival hosted by Open Mouth in Fayetteville, Arkansas in September 2018.