The Green Lantern Press recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico from Chicago. I’ve worked with them in the past, as a former board member at their gallery space Sector 2337, and was delighted when they asked if I could photograph their entire catalogue for the new online shop. I’ve picked out some of my favorites from the shoot and the GLP catalogue, shared below. You can also find my artwork in two of the books: Ghost Nature and The North Georgia Gazette of 1821.
Founded by Caroline Picard in 2005, the Green Lantern Press (GLP) is an artist-run, nonprofit publishing house dedicated to the support, production, and dissemination of contemporary art, poetry, and philosophy. The GLP also produces experimental art exhibits, critical print publications, and cultural events that promote public discussion and community. Since inception, the GLP has organized over 250 events and exhibitions while publishing more than 40 paperback editions in a range of genres from contemporary art, critical theory, fiction, and poetry.
I did a little Q&A with Devin King, GLP’s poetry editor, about what they are up to these days:
Becca Grady: It was so fun to get to see all the GLP books together, some I haven't seen in years and some of the newer titles that I hadn't had a chance to see in person yet. It's quite a catalogue!
What's new with GLP? What are your latest titles? Do you have any book projects in the works that you can talk about?
Devin King: I’ve got two books that are in the final design phase right now. A translation by JD Pluecker of Luis Felipe Fabre’s Writing with Caca, which is a long poetics essay where Fabre reads the Mexican poet Salvador Novo as being responsible for creating a poetry of the anus. And then a book of poetry by Chicago poet Joel Craig.
Writing Art Cinema, DIagrams, Mothernism, Notes On
BG: How has GLP evolved over the years? Is there a shift in particular that has been interesting for you to work on?
DK: Hmm. I think because the project is an artist run project at heart the evolution is just as much about our own practice and interests as the press taking over and shifting on its own. We’re not really market driven, you know, so whatever shifts are present happen through a circling back to what’s important to me, or Caroline, or Fulla. So, to answer the question involves talking more about myself than the press—which I’m hesitant to do. That said, I do think one thing I’m really, continually excited about with the press is that we keep challenging ourselves with projects. One of the things that maybe annoys people about the press is that we don’t have a “house” aesthetic or interest—all of our books are pretty wildly different, even when they’re in the same genre. This is odd, I think, for a small press. But it’s been nice to see that as we’ve grown and “professionalized” a bit, we’ve still kept up that spirit of investigation.
On Civil Disobedience
Writing Art Cinema
BG: Has anything changed with GLP since the closing of the gallery space and the move to New Mexico?
DK: I’d say being somewhat “off the grid” as far as daily discourse around art means that putting books out means more. I think the actual books get lost sometimes in the constant need to have events or be in a bookstore or do interviews and promotion and what have you. Being away from a city where we were spending a lot of our time doing stuff like that means that the books themselves are back in focus. I know it’s silly to say this during Covid when we’re all missing contact with other people, but who needs events when you’ve got a book?
BG: In putting together the new website, and pulling some of the older titles are there any books that you've been excited to revisit? Or to see for the first time? You joined Caroline at GLP in 2010, right?
DK: Yes! I am constantly astonished about how awesome our books are. All of them. I haven’t even read half of them! But they’re so fucking awesome.
BG: What's next for GLP?
DK: As an editor, I’d really like to do more long form narrative poetry, there’s such a dearth of that in the poetry world.
Institutional Garbage, Imperceptibly and Slowly Opening, The New New Corpse, Ghost Nature, The North Georgia Gazette of 1821
Find the Green Lantern Press at their website thegreenlantern.org and on Instagram at @greenlanternpress .
All photographs by me, Becca Grady.