Matvei Yankelevich on Chapbooks and a Reading of OBERIU Poets

MATVEI YANKELEVICH:Ephemera, Efficiency, Excess: The Chapbook in 21st Century North America (A Discourse)Where did chapbooks come from and where are they going? Matvei Yankelevich, editor of Ugly Duckling Presse (Brooklyn, NY) sketches the chapbook’s trajectory from populist pamphlet in the early days of print and its role in the spread of literacy and printing, to its resurfacing in the 20th century, and its strange rise out of the underground in the recent decade. The talk will deal with today’s varieties of design, production, and small-press economy, with some attention to UDP’s own involvement in the chapbook revolution, to end in a discussion of the effect of chapbook contests, festivals, and other types of institutionalization on this ephemeral, efficient, and sometimes excessive book form.* The talk will be followed by a reading of translations of Danill Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky.(OBERIU poets, 1920s-1930s Leningrad)For more information, click here.