* Coming May 2012 *

Dadaoism (An Anthology)

Edited by Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp

Dadaoism is the first anthology from Chômu Press. Editors Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp have selected twenty-six novellas, short stories and poems setting out an aesthetic manifesto of rich and stimulating prose style, explosively unhindered imagination and anarchic experimentation.

In their submissions guidelines, they challenged would-be contributors as follows: “We aspire to edit and compile an anthology that will be the literary and psychic equivalent of a tour around the edges of a dying galaxy in a spectacularly malfunctioning space vehicle.” Please “take your protein pills and put your helmet on”; this is not easy reading. Expect views of some fantastic literary nebulae, and encounters with word-form singularities.

From Reggie Oliver’s ‘Portrait of a Chair’, in which consciousness is explored from the point of view of furniture, to John Cairns’ ‘Instance’, a nano-second by nano-second account of a high-speed telepathic conversation, to Julie Sokolow’s ‘The Lobster Kaleidoscope’ in which naïve wordplay acts as a foundation for existentialist philosophy in a story of inter-species love; from those such as Michael Cisco, with growing followings, to unexpected new voices such as Katherine Khorey, Dadaoism presents a mystery tour of the literary imagination to demonstrate that outside of exhausted mainstream realism and uninspired genre tropes, contemporary English-language writing is thriving and creatively vital.

Contents

1 ‘Portrait of a Chair’, by Reggie Oliver
2 ‘Autumn Jewel’, by Katherine Khorey
3 ‘Visiting Maze’, by Michael Cisco
4 ‘The Houses Among the Trees’, by Colin Insole
5 ‘Affection 45′, by Brendan Connell
6 ‘M-Funk Vs. Tha Futuregions of Inverse Funkativity’, by Justin Isis
7 ‘Spirit and Corpus‘, by Yarrow Paisley
8 ‘Timelines’, by Nina Allan
9 ‘Jimmy Breaks up with His Imaginary Girlfriend’, by Jimmy Grist
10 ‘Body Poem’, by Peter Gilbert
11 ‘Testing Spark’, by Daniel Mills
12 ‘Noises’, by Joe Simpson Walker
13 ‘Romance, with Mice’, by Sonia Orin Lyris
14 ‘Grief (The Autobiography of a Tarantula)’, by Jesse Kennedy
15 ‘Orange Cuts’, by Paul Jessup
16 ‘Instance’, by John Cairns
17 ‘Kago Ai’, by Ralph Doege
18 ‘Fighting Back’, by Rhys Hughes
19 ‘Nowhere Room’, by Kristine Ong Muslim
20 ‘Koda Kumi’, a Justin Isis re-mix of ‘Italiannetto’ by Quentin S. Crisp
21 ‘The Lobster Kaleidoscope’, by Julie Sokolow
22 ‘The Eaten Boy’, by Nick Jackson
23 ‘Poppies’, by Megan Lee Beals
24 ‘Abra Raven’, by D.F. Lewis
25 ‘Pissing in Barbican Lake’, by Jeremy Reed
26 ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides’, by Jeremy Reed

What People Say About Chômu Press

“Since it was established in 2010, Chômu Press has released… books that deploy a range of styles to disturb and delight fans of mind-expanding fiction.”

Chris Jozefowicz, Rue Morgue

“There is no easy category in which to place Chômu’s releases; the closest thing I can come up with is ‘disturbing fiction,’ where ‘disturbing’ is more than an elite way of saying ‘frightening.’ It means breaking up, if only temporarily, the way one looks at the world, providing a new and baffling perspective on the reality we all inhabit but rarely observe.”

Brendan Moody, The Stars at Noonday

Online Reviews

– Blogcritics