Book List and Ordering Information

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

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

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: .

Mercury Project

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 .

The Factory of the Past

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

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