Books

The poets are starting to get their copies! Our hearts are so full 💞

 
 
 
 

Fest!

Soo fun to table a zine fest again! Thanks to the organizers (/ICA SF) and everyone who came through! Also just such a wholesome group of people, a great way to jump back into the festival scene.

featured art by Chris Martin

Poetic Hype (THE LAST ONE)

As you may have heard we made a poetry book. Well, it’s about to come out.

There are over 40 different authors featured, from literally around the world!

Here is a our last preview before the book is released.

If you’re interested, grab your copy HERE

This poem is by Elena Orlando, from Seattle WA, called hips.

hips

I saw a bumper sticker that said 

lose the father / ram the daughter 

and a man at a stop sign jacked off 

looking at me


i don’t feel like a woman 

& i don’t not


in losing tenderness i make angry missteps, giving 

ephemeral inattention to my body 


then 

i look back once and can’t  

stop


i want my hips 

to make indifferent rhythm 

just  

moving around 

Poetic Hype (week 3)

With the book release fast-approaching, here is the second to last peek of a poem from Relevant Poetry.

This poem is called BHASA by Leena Joshi

BHASA

the rhododendrons are blooming

they are known to me now as familiars

like the small rough licks of cats on the block

and the buzz of unavoidably gmo pollens


i am here completely on accident

kinless with no real language to lay out in


when i stretch my hips in one tongue

it is haunted sing song     lewd and childish


i try another and am burned

by absolute presence   the news cycle   wifi radiation

i understand the colonialty of each minute

but please   it cannot be constantly sensed


that is asking too much of a body praying

to understand that it is not made of grievance 

2021

A year in film photography! by Marley Jeranko.

This zine made great use of its 40 pages, with 5 chapters: ride, climb, home, with you and self.

“having grown up in the digital world, my relationship to social media & these devices my mind is deeply attached to & hands ever wrapped around is always in flux.

on one side, i love the connection it offers me. i regularly feel inspired by the wealth of creativity & progressive thinking. i learn constantly & am encouraged to expand & heal myself in ways i didn’t know was even possible.

& on the other, i resent it. even those seemingly “good” things come without rest. & the connections, at a certain point, they feel hollow. i’m angry when i don’t hear from friends organically.

ultimately, what keeps me coming back is wanting a place to share the images i produce. my dedication to film photography is amplifying with every roll i develop & has become a precious way for me to show the people i cross paths with that you are seen & so beautiful. for me, it’s an energy exchange, similar to that of sharing a home-cooked meal or hearing the words “i love you, too” roll off a tongue in your direction.

that exchange would remain incomplete without my final gift to you. because no matter what, it starts & ends with you.

& yet…

doing so in a digital space no longer fulfills that circuit. i’m dissatisfied watching these photos that mean so much to me live & die quicker than it takes to press the shutter & pull the lever. you all deserve more than that.

& so, that brings me here.

i’ve been wanting to make something in print for a long, long time now. my perfectionism getting in the way, mostly.

let this be my starting place. no, it’s not perfect, (far from it) but it’s just for you. & that means more to me than the illusion of perfect our digitized lives beg of us to uphold.

thank you for receiving it. i don’t take it lightly: you, sitting wherever you are, reabsorbing the light i saw in you. that’s all photos are anyway—light. & you, are the brightest.

with love,

marley”

Poetic Hype (week 2)

As we mentioned before, we’re going to try to share poems from Relevant Poetry these weeks leading up to its release. Below is José Vadi’s Moon Poem:

Moon Poem

good mornings say Leave while night stays open / beyond calls last made to glowing orbs pondering / its reflection in a sky that envelopes the 210 / a rose bowl’s parade prepared like a letter I won’t receive upon departure / the ground rises to a reflective kiss and we are eye level: the moon and me and pyramid lake glistening below / finches showered in shaded wonder / celestial glaciers versus windshield forensics / known signs of possible life / a beyond murmuring / You were right to only visit / with feet the weight of lead


 

Excelsior St Furniture Project

We love to find out about cool happenings via zines!

More info about Youth Art Exchange here.

Riso printed in medium blue and orange on cream stock.

 

“In Spring 2021, our Architecture Firm students led by Faculty Artists Logan and Chris, designed and installed modular street furniture for the Excelsior Mission St. corridor.

As a way to help capture that process as well as showcase some of the sights and sounds of the neighborhood, three YAX interns based in the Excelsior — Natalie, Shadei, Angelica — partnered with printmaking faculty artist Alyssaand Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to make prints inspired by their corner of the City.

Those prints were then compiled and included in this risograph-printed zine that will be distributed to members of our beloved Excelsior community.

Shout out to everyone involved!!!🧡🧡🧡”

 

Nourishing Grief Cookbook

Lovely heartfelt cookbook zine for tending to our collective grief, by Cardamom and Kavate, as Covid relief for India.

 

“The lovely folks at Irrelevant press took really good care of us and the cookbook, this will be our final print run for the year, we have about some 97 copies left, so please check out our website to order. The world may have moved on, but Covid is still real and folks in India who need help the most continue to need our support. This has been a true labor of love and community.”

 

Poetic Hype

To get ya as excited as we are for our poetry book coming out next month we thought in the next few weeks we would highlight some poems that were selected for Relevant Poetry! The first one we’d like to share is by ji dally, and is titled Midheaven. We hope you like it.

Midheaven

Not nostalgia.

Rather,

Stealing the mundane from you.

The days have informed my apathy

With stale rent flavors.

I’ve forgotten the sweet baker’s scent

Until here,

Where we bake in the sun.

This is new canon — levity for its own sake. 

As the heat settles

The sweat rises to the skin’s surface but never breaks through

In this mid-afternoon with you.

 

Tentative March 20th release date, pre-sale available NOW.
Cover art and design by Drew Grasso.

 

Back in stock!!

One of our favorites, Phone Drawings II by photographer and phone doodler Andrew Win.

We found some hidden copies in our little storage and re-upped the shop.

Get a copy if you haven’t already!