Yavanika Press
CATALOGUE - 2020
Anthology
What I Hear When Not Listening
What I Hear When Not Listening is an anthology featuring work by 41 contributors to the literary and arts journal Sonic Boom, between the years 2014 and 2019. Curated from issues one through fifteen, this collection brings together the best pieces that were published under The Poetry Shack and Fiction sections of the journal. Embark on a journey that explores selfhood, love, and our shifting place in the world.
Poetry & Prose
Crushed Anthills
“What becomes of the journeys that most shape us? In Kashiana Singh’s Crushing Anthills, a lifetime of travel is made into medicine. From Delhi to Chicago, Chennai to Hyderabad, Singh distills whole cities into delicate and majestic form, rich with insights on lineage, culture, and becoming. Singh knows that beneath the cloth and crowd of travel is another joy, that of remembrance—and here she shows us a way to travel deeply right where we are.”
— Elle Aviv Newton, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Poets Reading The News
Walk
“Mustansir Dalvi‘s words melt into emotional lava. His poems simmer, surge, and take over one‘s senses. This is an onomatopoeic, petrichor-like sensation of fleeting, ghost textures. You breathe in a poem, and then it‘s gone, leaving just a lingering fragrance that swells for long after."
— Danish Husain, Poet & Dastango
Industries Built on Words
“Gerald Yelle’s prose poems in Industries Built on Words may remind the reader of something out of Beckett, or Ginsberg. Yelle’s stream-of-consciousness style surprises while delving into a deceptively familiar world. His poems are existential yet rooted, absurd yet deeply human. The feeling of reading Yelle’s work is that of jumping into an alternate universe that is similar to our own, but not quite. Yelle writes in What the Picture Was About: ‘Where you go. You might not want to be alone. I’ll want to be alone. Especially if the boss is like this good-looking dude. I’d rather hang with the elephants. They don’t bother me. They don’t make me sweat.’ This collection explores the experiences of the workaday man, Yelle-ified – that is to say, well worth the plunge, like elephants. They don’t make you sweat.”
— Lori Desrosiers, Author of Keeping Planes in the Air
Mixed-genre
House of Three Corners
“Growing up in the sixties, I told big white lies, ran from the nuns, bribed my grandmother to do my homework, cheated at solitaire, and demanded to be called Napoleon Solo. In our house of three corners, my childhood keeps leaking from that missing corner. I keep returning to patch up the spaces.” — Kyle Hemmings
tyranny of the familiar
"Vibrant partnerships are those that combine tension and harmony. In the union of art and poetry, disparate pieces come together to form a creation more wondrous than the separate parts. Masters of their crafts, Peter Jastermsky and Tiffany Shaw-Diaz’s haiku and art stand beautifully alone. Put them together, and the poet and artist are a literary and artistic force. Shaw-Diaz’s art explodes upon the page, while Jastermsky’s haiku challenges us to peel back the layers to reveal inner nuances and shades of meaning. There is a brutal honesty at the core ('false starts/how we embrace/the struggle'), balanced with beauty and vitality: 'opening my heart a geode spills its color.' tyranny of the familiar is a book that invites return journeys, each time sparking new revelations and discoveries."
— Marianne Paul, Author of Body Weight: A Collection of Haiku and Art
Japanese short-forms
The Silence We Came For
“Peter Jastermsky is a prolific cherita writer and poet, a master of stories who draws you in with his strength of truthfulness and dedication which I find essential for the genre. If you love stories and believe in them, you won’t have far to go, to immerse, and lose yourself in this poet’s six-line journeys into a world populated with his personal truths, and his powerful desire to keep the campfires of storytelling nights burning.”
— ai li, creator of cherita & editor and publisher of the cherita
between now and now
“While inquiring into age-old metaphysical concerns, the words of Marcus Liljedahl strike with an enlivening directness, as quick as 'the snap/of a finger.' They draw from an ever-present and brimming source, 'between now and now,' from which you can hear the burble of truth—provided you are listening.”
— Joseph Salvatore Aversano, fellow poet
Mini chapbooks
Flying Blind
"Bill Yarrow’s poems in Flying Blind are little morsels of intrigue that hop off the page like jumping beans into your head. They will tickle your fancy, make you think, come to no conclusions, and yet remain as unforgettable mental whirligigs in your imagination."
— Kath Abela Wilson, author of Figures of Humor and Strange Beauty
objects of december
Margot DeSalvo (Ed.M, M.F.A) is a college composition and creative writing instructor in NY and NJ. She is also a freelance writing coach via The Write Place. Margot strives to present the intricate and mangled layers of desire and despair through a playful use of language. Some of her work can be found in Active Muse, Squawk Back, Wilderness House Literary Review, Thimble Magazine, Buddylit Zine, Califragile, Ghost City Review, Pangolin Review, and Dying Dahlia.
On the Run with Dick & Jane
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis, USA. On the Run with Dick & Jane is part of a larger collection of short poems that was written as a cross country road trip starting in Manhattan, winding their way through the midwest and desert and ending in San Francisco. Strap on your seatbelt and enjoy the ride!