Loom Press has four books popping into the market this fall, making our output six books for the year, the busiest year ever. Three of the four are listed here for advance orders. We expect these titles to be ready for shipment to you after September 21.
We are excited to release the fourth book by Chath pierSath, a writer and visual artist who is a farmer growing fruits, vegetables, and flowers in central Massachusetts. Chath’s ON EARTH BENEATH SKY collects poems and prose sketches in which he shares his experiences as a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide, resettlement as a boy in America, and later return to Cambodia where he reconnects with his native country. His spiritual and sensual compositions reveal a deep connection to the natural world and his longing to find peace and happiness in sometimes harsh circumstances. Like Walt Whitman, Chath embraces the “body electric” as a gay man who loves deeply. While most readers are still discovering Chath’s work, his poems and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies.
Loom Press is proud to publish the first book by Eric Linder, who has been writing since the 1970s, with selective appearances in respected journals such as The Quarterly, edited in New York City by Gordon Lish at the time, and Harvard Magazine, where Donald Hall chose Eric’s poems. He made the grade in the category of Light Verse, but not all his work has a twist of wit or the tang of stand-up. He writes beautiful lyrics of memory, wonder, and yearning, always in a distinctive voice and with precise and often surprising language. These are poems to keep coming back to. He is a master of no-extra-word as a composer. Eric was present at the start of Loom Press in 1978 when he was a member of the Poets Lab based in Andover, Mass. From a simple start with free photocopied broadsides distributed in the Merrimack Valley, Loom Press has come to this point of issuing Eric’s A BLUE IN THE EYE OF THE GIRL AT LA JOLLA: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Since 1980, Eric has owned Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Stop in a say hi.
CUMMISKEY ALLEY: NEW AND SELECTED LOWELL POEMS is Tom Sexton’s second book with Loom Press. The author of many collections of poetry, Tom is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska who grew up along the Concord River in Lowell. This book brings together the best of his writing about his hometown, which he left in the 1960s but never left behind. He’s returned many times, including to be honored as a Distinguished Alumnus of Lowell High School. The Lowell poems not only recover the lost city of his youth but also track the changes in Lowell as the city weathered an economic collapse in the mid-20th century before gathering itself again as a hopeful community. Cummiskey is Hugh Cummiskey, a 19th-century labor leader whose Irish immigrant workers dug Lowell’s power canals and built textile mills. Sexton’s poems are more of the moment than historical, but he is cognizant that time past exists in time present. Like his much-praised poems of the natural world in the Northwest, Tom’s urban compositions rise on keen observations and telling insights about people and place—and the power of lasting stories.
The fourth title of the fall is due in November and not yet listed: THE POWER OF NON-VIOLENCE: THE ENDURING LEGACY OF RICHARD GREGG by John Wooding. A biography is something new for Loom Press, but we could not pass up the opportunity to bring out the first biography of a little-known but significant figure of the 20th century. Gregg’s story is suddenly urgent, given the recent vast and largely peaceful street demonstrations demanding improved social justice (Black Lives Matter and calls for police practices reform) and the nationwide grief over the death of Congressman John Lewis, a lifelong proponent of non-violence. Richard Gregg was an American social philosopher and pacifist who was among the first Americans to study with Mohandas Gandhi in India. Gregg was eager to learn about Gandhi’s approach to conflict resolution and living with a light footprint on earth. In the 1930s, Gregg published an influential guide to non-violent protest, The Power of Non-Violence, which would influence activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose methods of non-violent protest in the civil rights movement were shaped in part by Gregg’s ideas. Beyond peace-building, Gregg developed a holistic vision for living compassionately that integrates Thoreau-style simple living and sustainable farming techniques with a commitment to non-violence. John Wooding is professor emeritus of political science at UMass Lowell and current president of Mill City Grows. He lives in Medford, Mass.