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Clear Cut Press was a small press based in Astoria, Oregon.
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Clear Cut Press was a small press based in Astoria, Oregon.
Clear Cut Press was founded by novelist Matthew Stadler and Up Records co-founder Rich Jensen in 2002. Jensen began talking to Stadler while taking a poetry class in 1997. Their mutual interest in cultural movements and the role of books lead to a discussion resulting in the press. Stadler realized that he knew about "a dozen writers who weren't reaching the audience the could--or weren't being published at all." [1] Stadler noted that, "as a business and artistic venture, Clear Cut is inspired by early 20th century subscription presses, such as Hours Press and Contact Editions, and by the mid-century paperbacks of New Directions and City Lights." [2] A series was available by subscription. Individual volumes were distributed to the trade.
As part of what Stadler referred to as the cultivation of "a long-term conversation that makes a community of readers (and therefore a market) that isn't reached through the national book review organs or most bookstores," [3] Clear Cut actively participates in events in bookstores, warehouses, summer festivals, art museums, and non-traditional settings. Events included reading The Horse Hospital, [4] MoMA PS1, [5] Beyond Baroque, [6] Bumbershoot, [7] What the Heck Fest, KGB Bar, Space 1026, and Catch that Beat. [8] In 2005, Clear Cut Press along with the Western Front Society sponsored Unassociated Writers Conference and Dance Party in Vancouver, BC, a self-organizing event in response to first Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference to take place outside of the United States.
In 2003, Clear Cut released The Clear Cut Future, the first book in the series. The anthology included writing from the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere in what, according to the catalog, made "a map of the territory of interest to Clear Cut Press." Contributions included work by Stacey Levine, Charles D'Ambrosio, Steve Weiner, Tiffany Lee Brown, Emily White, Robert Glück, a former Enron executive. The Seattle Times noted, "Tightly written poems and short stories about existential love and loss mingle freely with essays about corporate sharks, architecture, botanical excursions and artists' memoirs." [9]
One contributor, Patrick Bissell, was a street poet who sold his work on the streets of Seattle. Bissell was the subject of a profile by Jesse Tarbert in The Seattle Times published on May 6, 2003. Thirty eight at the time of the profile, Bissell grew up in Kirkland and began selling his poetry on the street in 1993. Of Bissell's work, "Stadler said "The Sweet Gift" contains some of Bissell's best writing. It reminded him of the work of Emmanuel Bove, a French writer of the early 1920s, he said. In both Bove's and Bissell's work, Stadler said, "the pacing and logic are so at ease, so like the drift of life, and yet it's very literary." [10]
Other books in the series included:
In addition, Clear Cut Press published a catalog of Portland painter Michael Brophy's work with an essay by Charles d'Ambrosio.
In 2007, Clear Cut released an anthology edited by Matthew Stadler collecting work presented at the Back Room series in Portland, Oregon. The book included work by Mary Gaitskill, Lisa Robertson, Gore Vidal, Dodie Bellamy, Wayne Koestenbaum, Kevin Killian, Lawrence Rinder, Michael Hebb, Stephanie Snyder, Moira Roth, John O'Brian, Marc Joseph, Randy Gragg, Barbara Verchot, Anne Focke, and Daniel Duford.
The second series of Clear Cut Press was announced on April 13, 2007 by Rich Jensen and Matthew Stadler. The books selected and edited by Matthew Stadler included work by Emily White, Bruce Benderson, Danielle Dutton, Stacy Doris, Matthijs Bouw. At the event, billed as The Clear Cut Press Potlach, Matthew Stadler announced as a result of being awarded a grant from the UA Artist Trust, he was leaving the press and the country in order to go to Mexico and write. [11]
Thomas Eugene Robbins is a best-selling and prolific American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies", such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Tom Robbins has lived in La Conner, Washington since 1970, where he has written nine best-selling books. His latest work, published in 2014, is Tibetan Peach Pie, which is a self-declared "un-memoir". Even Cowgirls Get The Blues has been adapted into a movie that shares the same name by Gus Van Sant in 1993.
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Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.
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Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet, essayist and translator. She lives in France.
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Matthew Stadler is an American author who has written six novels and received several awards. Stadler has compiled four anthologies about literature, city life and public life. His essays, which have been published in magazines and museum catalogs, focus on architecture, urban planning and sprawl.
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Stacey Levine is an American novelist, short story author, and journalist. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she attended The University of Missouri's journalism school and the University of Washington. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in numerous journals, including The Washington [D.C.] Review, Fence, The Denver Quarterly, Tin House, the Notre Dame Review, the Iowa Review, The American Book Review, Nest-A Journal of Interiors, The Seattle Times, Bookforum, The Stranger, and others.
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Janaka Stucky is an American poet, performer, independent-press publisher, and impresario, based in Boston, Massachusetts. The founder of Black Ocean, an independent press, and publisher of its journal Handsome, he is also the author of three collections of his poetry: Your Name Is The Only Freedom, The World Will Deny It For You, and The Truth Is We Are Perfect. His articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. In 2010, he was awarded the title Best Poet by The Boston Phoenix in its annual "Boston's Best" reader's poll.
Red Sky Poetry Theatre was the longest running live weekly poetry series and open mic in Seattle history.