Toad Press

2012-01-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! And thank you for sending such exciting work to Toad Press during our open reading period! We're looking forward to reading your fantastic translations over the next few weeks--stay tuned, and look for more updates around the end of the month.

2011 Submission Period is now Open!

2011-10-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Toad Press reads submissions of chapbook-length TRANSLATIONS for the International Chapbook Series each year between October 1 and December 31.

We now accept online submissions only. Please submit approximately 14-24 pages of poetry or prose, cover sheet with name and contact information, table of contents (if applicable), and acknowledgments via our Submishmash system.

Toad Press publishes between 1 and 3 chapbooks a year. Chapbooks accepted for publication will appear the following Summer/Fall. Payment is in copies only.

There is no reading fee, though we certainly encourage you to take a look at our previous publications and familiarize yourself with our press. And, for a limited time, you can take advantage of our FALL SPECIAL - 2 chaps for only $9.50!

Questions? Take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions. If you still have questions, please email us at toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com

Upload and submit your work here. We look forward to reading it!

Our open reading period is almost here!

2011-09-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

In the meantime, you might consider our FALL SPECIAL! Purchase any two chapbooks for $9.50 -- a heck of a deal! Available for a limited time only.

Suite Prelude A/H1N1

2011-07-08T12:45:00.001-07:00

suite prelude a/h1n1

a poem by José Eugenio Sánchez

translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosen Guercio

23 pages, paper, staple bound.

Toad Press, 2011, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Suite Prelude A/H1N1 here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.
It's recommended by Molossus, after all.

About:

José Eugenio Sánchez is the author of four collections of poetry and coauthor of several more, as well as being a well-known performer and the recipient of numerous awards. His book, galaxy limited café, was a finalist for the 2010 Jaime Gil de Biedma International Poetry Prize. Originally from Guadalajara, he lives and writes in Monterrey, a couple hours drive from Mexico's border with its neighbor to the north. Sánchez identifies himself as an "underclown," and his aggressively playful work eagerly engages both pop and high culture with irreverence and insight.

Anna Rosen Guercio is a translator and poet. She lives in Los Angeles and her literary work has appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as The Kenyon Review, Pool, Eleven Eleven, Faultlines, Painted Bride Quarterly, eXchanges, and Words Without Borders, as well as several anthologies. She holds a BA from Brown University, an MFA from the University of Iowa, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine, writing a dissertation on translation studies, poetry, and world literature.

You can read an excerpt of Suite Prelude A/H1N1 here, published in Words Without Borders.

An Evening in Europe

2011-07-08T12:23:00.001-07:00

An Evening in Europe

poems by Jörg Fauser

translated from the German by Mark Terrill

22 pages, paper, staple bound

Toad Press, 2011, $5

You can purchase a copy of An Evening in Europe here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Jörg Fauser, born in 1944 near Frankfurt/Main, broke off his academic studies to work and travel, with longer stays in Istanbul and London, working as a casual laborer, airport baggage worker and night watchman. He supported himself as a journalist, wrote several novels, short stories and poetry collections, and was acquainted with Charles Bukowski. Fauser died in 1987 in an accident on the autobahn near Munich.

Mark Terrill’s writings and translations have appeared in over 500 literary journals and anthologies worldwide, a dozen chapbooks, several broadsides and three full-length collections, including Kid with Gray Eyes (Cedar Hill Books) and Bread & Fish (The Figures). A native Californian and ex-merchant seaman, he currently lives on the grounds of a former shipyard near Hamburg, Germany, with his wife and a large brood of cats.

Read a short review of An Evening in Europe here. Thanks, Prague Post!

Also translated by Mark Terrill, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's Some Very Popular Songs (Toad Press 2009)

Finally! Arctic Poems

2010-08-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Arctic Poems

a selection from Arctic Poems by Vicente Huidobro

translated from the Spanish by Nathan Hoks

24 pages, paper, staple bound

Toad Press, 2010, $5

You can purchase a copy of Arctic Poems here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) was one of the first South American avant-garde poets. Born in 1893 in Santiago, Chile, Huidobro moved to Paris in 1916 where he met Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, and many other Cubist poets and artists. At this time Huidobro continued to develop his theory of poetry, "creationism," which advocates writing "a poem the way nature makes a tree." Arctic Poems dates from this period.

Nathan Hoks has published poems and translations in Lit, Verse, Crazyhorse, Circumference, and many other journals. His first book of poetry, Reveilles, will be published by Salt in fall 2010.

A nice note and short review from Molossus. Thanks!

Excerpt:

Hello, there!

2009-11-04T17:01:00.000-08:00

1. Read about our (and others') takes on chapbooks and publishing in The Chapbook Review.

2. Join us on facebook.

3. Send us your work.

Book List and Ordering Information

2009-10-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Toad Press International Chapbook Series includes:

ARCTIC POEMS, by Vicente Huidobro, translated from the Spanish by Nathan Hoks (24 pages, paper, staple bound. Toad Press, 2010, $5.00)

SOME VERY POPULAR SONGS, poems by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, translated from the German by Mark Terrill (33 pages, paper, staple bound. Toad Press, 2009, $5.00)

THE BADEN-BADEN LESSON PLAY ON ACQUIESCENCE, by Bertolt Brecht, translated from the German by Justin Vicari (27 pages, paper, staple bound. Cover photo by Brett Hendricks. Toad Press, 2009, $5.00)

THE FACTORY OF THE PAST, poems by Mariana Marin, translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Daniela Hurezanu (35 pp. paper. staple bound. Toad Press, 2008, $5.00). LIMITED AVAILIBILITY

MERCURY PROJECT, poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski, translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski (18 pp. paper. staple-bound. Cover design based on a painting by the author. Toad Press, 2008 $5.00).

FERNANDO DE ROJAS ASLEEP ON HIS OWN HAND, poems by Rafael Ballesteros, translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart (20pp. paper. staple-bound. Cover photo by Sean Bernard, Toad Press 2007, $5.00).

WOMAN BATHING LIGHT TO DARK, prose poems by Paul Eluard, translated from the French by Justin Vicari (21pp। paper. staple-bound. Cover photo courtesy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Toad Press 2006, $5.00).

MARTIAL ARTIST, a book of Martial's epigrams translated from the Latin by George Held (31pp. paper. staple-bound, Toad Press 2005, $5.00)

OF THE SAME MIND, by Johann Hjalmarsson, translated from the Icelandic by C.M.Burawa (41 pp. paper. staple-bound. cover photograph by Jora Johannsdottir, Toad Press 2005, $5.00). SOLD OUT

TWENTY-FIVE AND ONE POEMS, by Tristan Tzara, translated from the French by Nick Moudry (39pp. paper. staple-bound. Cover design by Becky Rosen, Toad Press 2004, $5.00). SOLD OUT

You can buy most of our chapbooks here. Some are also available from The Lost Bookshelf and Quimby's . Or you can email us, and we'll tell you more ways to buy our books.

If you are a teacher or librarian and want to learn about our special deals, or if you can't find the book you're looking for from the links above, please email us at toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com.

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Some Very Popular Songs

2009-08-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

SOME VERY POPULAR SONGS

poems by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann

translated from the German by Mark Terrill

33 pages, paper, staple bound

Toad Press, 2009, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Some Very Popular Songs here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was born in Vechta, Germany, on April 16th, 1940, in the midst of World War II, and died on April 23rd, 1975, in London, England, after being struck by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street to enter a pub. Brinkmann had been in London for the Cambridge Poetry Festival, where he read with John Ashbery, Ed Dorn, and Lee Harwood. In May, 1975, just a few weeks after his death, Brinkmann’s seminal, parameter-expanding poetry collection Westwärts 1 & 2 appeared, which was posthumously awarded the prestigious Petrarca Prize.

"Some Very Popular Songs," is one of several longer poems in Westwärts 1 & 2. The poem moves forward and backward through time and space, and shows clearly how Brinkmann was becoming more politically engaged in the course of his development as a writer. Presenting Adolf Hitler as a human being, with his love affair with Eva Braun, was a very radical move for a German writer in the politically turbulent seventies in West Germany. "Some Very Popular Songs" incorporates many of Brinkmann's signature traits; social/political criticism, intense self-scrutiny, taboo-breaking, travel diaries reworked as poetry, and his trademark trenchant humor.

Read a short review here --thanks, Prague Post!

Excerpt:

Section 3. (History)

Last night I was thinking about the love
story of Adolf Hitler.
I saw the permanent waves in the hair
of Eva Braun. How many German women

today look like the smile of
Eva Braun. The photos reproduce themselves.
I was not, I know, born in a
photograph. Snow fell in April,

as I was born, shrouded in the
ornamental cloth of the baptism ritual.
The war, I don't understand what that
is, which language is where?

.

& Terrill's full-length Brinkmann translation, An Unchanging Blue, is available here, from Parlor Press.

The Baden-Baden Lesson Play on Acquiscence

2009-08-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

THE BADEN-BADEN LESSON PLAY ON ACQUIESCENCE

by Bertolt Brecht

translated from the German by Justin Vicari

27 pages, paper, staple bound. Cover photo by Brett Hendricks.

Toad Press, 2009, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Baden-Baden Lesson Play on Aquiescence here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

One of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century, BERTOLT BRECHT was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1898. He conceived a style called Epic Theater, using didactic placards, songs, slogans, projections, masks, and other devices to engage the audience in thinking about his increasingly political subject matter. In 1927, he collaborated with composer Kurt Weill on The Threepenny Opera. Extremely popular, the work was both harshly cynical and oddly romantic, with distinct undercurrents of anti-capitalist satire.

In 1933, Brecht left Nazi Germany and moved to Paris, where he and Weill staged their final collaboration, The Seven Deadly Sins. Brecht soon emigrated to Los Angeles to work as a screenwriter, but he was largely unsuccessful and summarized his Hollywood years in a short poem: “Every morning, to earn my bread, / I go to the market where lies are bought and sold. / I take my place among the sellers.” Nevertheless, he wrote some of his best plays during his period of exile, including Mother Courage and Her Children and Galileo.
After being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, Brecht chose to return to East Berlin, where he continued to write and stage plays until his death in 1956.

Excerpt:

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Mercury Project

2008-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

MERCURY PROJECT

poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski
translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski

18 pp. paper. staple-bound.
Cover design based on a painting by the author.
Toad Press, 2008 $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Mercury Project here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

GRZEGORZ WRÓBLEWSKI was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland; he has lived in Copenhagen since 1985. He has published seven volumes of poetry and a collection of short prose pieces in Poland, three books of poetry, a book of poetic prose and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark, and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also published a selection of plays. His work has been translated into five languages. English translations of his poems have appeared in London Magazine, Poetry London, Magma Poetry, Parameter Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Delinquent, Chicago Review, 3rd bed, Eclectica, Mississippi Review, Absinthe, Common Knowledge, Practice: New Writing + Art, Jacket Magazine, and in various anthologies including Altered State: The New Polish Poetry, Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird, and A Generation Defining Itself - In Our Own Words. His selected poems Our Flying Objects was published by Equipage Press in 2007, and the chapbook These Extraordinary People was published by erbacce-press in 2008.

Excerpt:

Read more excerpts (and something nice about us in Polish): http://cycgada.art.pl/?p=1055

More on Grzegorz Wróblewski at Jacket2 and the Project for Innovative Poetry

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The Factory of the Past

2008-04-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

THE FACTORY OF THE PAST

poems by Mariana Marin

translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Daniela Hurezanu

35 pp. paper. staple bound.
Toad Press, 2008, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Factory of the Past here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

MARIANA MARIN was considered one of Romania’s most important poets at the time she died at the age of forty-seven in 2003. During the Ceausescu dictatorship, Marin was one of the very few intellectuals who dared to speak up against the regime. As a consequence, she was silenced for much of the 1980s—“an unpublishable poet, a heavy cross,” as she tells us. Her uncompromising attitude can be seen in her poems even when she is not directly political, as is the case with many of her later poems, such as the ones that appear in this book. But during dictatorships everything becomes political, and even her descriptions of the quotidian are pained records of a historical time when private life cannot be separated from the political. Similarly, her “Love Poems” are bitter and unsentimental, not unlike her “Elegies.” For Marin, as for other Eastern European writers, happiness was a foreign country.

Mariana Marin published five books of poems in Romanian. The poems here are from her 1999 collection, The Mutilation of the Artist as a Young Woman, which won a number of major prizes. In 2002, the Romanian Writers Museum Publishing House (Bucharest) issued a career retrospective, The Dowry of Gold, including a handful of new, previously uncollected poems—her last, as it turned out. A selection of Marin’s poems, Paper Children, was published in 2006 (Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling Presse).

Excerpt:

Love Poem

Do you remember
when you used to play Apocalypse with me?
When you counted my days,
so very few,
on the marbles that never brought luck?

Why do you keep whining?
My little fortune of illusions
lies crushed in the dust
with the muses tricked out in motley,
feasting on dead swans.
Now it’s your turn to count the Beast’s heads.

Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Apocalypse for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Stare hard in your mirror,
find me if you can.

Submission Information

2007-11-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Toad Press accepts open submissions of chapbook-length translations for the International Chapbook Series each year between October 1 and December 31.

We now accept submissions by email only. Send ~14-24 pages of poetry or prose, a cover sheet with name and contact information, table of contents (if applicable), and acknowledgements page (if applicable) to us at toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com. Please attach your work as a .doc or .rtf file and put the word "submission" somewhere in the subject line of the email.

Toad Press publishes between 1 and 3 chapbooks a year. Chapbooks accepted for publication will appear the following Summer/Fall. Payment is in copies only. There is no reading fee.

Questions? Email toadpress(at)hotmail(dot)com

Fernando de Rojas Asleep on His Own Hand

2007-08-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

FERNANDO DE ROJAS ASLEEP ON HIS OWN HAND

A book of aphorisms by Rafael Ballesteros
translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart

20pp. paper. staple-bound.
Cover photography by Sean Bernard
Toad Press 2007, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Fernando de Rojas Asleep on his own Hand here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:
RAFAEL BALLESTEROS (1938-) lives in the Mediterranean city of Málaga. He was a member of Spain’s national legislature and helped draft its post-Franco constitution. Ballesteros is the author of numerous works of poetry and criticism, including the collection of poems Los dominios de la emoción which was released in 2003 by Pre-textos (Valencia, Spain). In 2010 he won the Premio Andalucía de la Críticia for his novel La Muerte Tiene la Cara Azul (Death Has a Blue Face). Ballesteros is also the founder of Editorial Veramar, a publisher of experimental literature from Spain.

Excerpt:

They asked me, In truth, who are the most harmful men
in these realms? I answered immediately, Those who speak to us of eternity.

Woman Bathing Light to Dark

2006-08-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

WOMAN BATHING LIGHT TO DARK

prose poems by Paul Eluard
translated from the French by Justin Vicari

21pp paper, staple-bound.
Cover photo courtesy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Toad Press 2006, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Woman Bathing Light to Dark here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Paul Éluard was born in France in 1895. In 1920 he met Andre Breton, the influential founder of the Surrealist movement. Éluard became an official member of this movement in 1924. Éluard’s many books include: Duty and Disturbance (1917), Animals and Their Men, Men and Their Animals (1920), Repetitions (1922), Dying of Not Dying (1924), Capital of Sadness (1926), Love, Poetry (1929), Immediate Life (1932), Public Rose (1934), Fertile Eyes (1938), Political Poems (1948), and The Phoenix (1951). He died in 1952.

Excerpt:

From Zero

He places a bird on the table and closes the shades. He fixes his hair, his hair in his hands is softer than a bird.

She tells the future. And I’m in charge of making it come true.

The bruised heart, the aching soul, the broken hands, the white hair, the prisoners, the entire water covers me like a raw wound.

Of the Same Mind

2005-08-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

OF THE SAME MIND

poems by Johann Hjalmarsson
translated from the Icelandic by C.M.Burawa

41 pp. paper. staple-bound.
cover photograph by Jora Johannsdottir
Toad Press 2005, $5.00

We're sold out of this title, but there are a few copies left at The Lost Bookshelf.
You can purchase our other titles here.
Don't forget to add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

JÓHANN HJÁLMARSSON is one of Iceland’s premier poets. He has published 18 books of poetry and seven collections of international poetry in translation. In 1961, after his first book, Hjalmarsson moved to Spain to study romance languages at the University of Barcelona, where he began translating the French post-symbolists, French and Latin American surrealists, modernist and post-modernist American poets into Icelandic. He returned to Iceland and began a career as an arts reviewer and travel writer for the country’s largest circulating newspaper, Morgunblaðið. He was presented with an Icelandic Parliament Award in 2003 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Icelandic literature as a poet and translator.

Read more about Jóhann Hjálmarsson and see some translations by C.M. Burawa on the Project for Innovative Poetry blog.

Read an interview with C.M. Burawa at The Writer's Center.

Lyle Daggett writes that these are "Remarkable poems, quiet and meditative, by a poet of contemporary Iceland, filled with ocean waves and rock, gray sky and birds' wings, blackberries and silence, mingled with sudden scenes of the modern busy world." Read more on his blog.

Excerpt:

OF THE SAME MIND

I once saw birds of like mind arrive.
I hid

as they flew in from the south
bound for the north
to their summer on the glacier.

Those that made it were met by storm,
yet still sang to each other
as they recovered by the bare trees.

The trees began shooting the youngest birds
when I—
who had intended to flee with them—
noticed that July was over.

A young girl with red lips
laughed at me
from below the surface of a blue spring.

I drank from her shadow.

Martial Artist

2005-07-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

MARTIAL ARTIST

a book of Martial's epigrams translated from the Latin by George Held

31pp. paper. staple-bound
Toad Press 2005, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Martial Artist here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS (A.D. 40-104), or Martial, was born in Spain and flourished in Rome. His greatest achievement remains his 1500 epigrams, in which he depicts, often satirically, the behavior of his fellow Romans and perfects the form in Latin. His influence appears in the work of virtually every epigrammatist since. The poems in Martial Artist collect some of his many epigrams about his own work and his life as a poet.

This book includes both the English and the Latin.

Excerpt:

VII.90

Mathew says my book is unbalanced.
If it’s true, Mathew praises my poems.
Calvin and Shade write balanced books.
A balanced book, Curtis, is a bad book.

Iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum:
si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho.
aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Umber:
aequales liber est, Cretice, qui malus est.

Twenty-Five and One Poems

2004-08-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

poems by Tristan Tzara,
translated from the French by Nick Moudry

39pp. paper. staple-bound.
Cover design by Becky Rosen

Toad Press 2004, $5.00 SOLD OUT

You can purchase our other titles here
& add Twenty-Five and One Poems to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Orginally published as Vingt-cinq poèmes (Zurich: Collection Dada, 1918) with ten woodcut prints by Hans Arp. Republished as Vingt-cinq et un poèmes with the addition of “la grande complainte de mon obscurité trois” (Paris: Collection l’Age d’or, 1946).

Noah Eli Gordon (in Jacket ) calls Moudry's translation "mind-bendingly fresh".

Excerpt:

SPRINGTIME
to h arp

put the child in the vase in the depths of midnight
and the wound
a rose of winds with your beautiful fingernails
thunder in feathers see
a horrible water runs down the antelope’s legs

to suffer below have you found cows birds?
the thirst the venom of the caged peacock
the king in exile by the well’s brightness slowly mummified
in the vegetable garden
sow broken grasshoppers
plant ant hearts the salt fog a lamp drags its tail across the sky
the little sparkles of glassware in the belly of the fleeing deer
on the ends of the short black branches for a cry