Kenning Editions proudly announces the first in the Ordinance series, Memories of my Overdevelopment, by Daniel Borzutzky.
Memories of my Overdevelopment reflects on the politics of translation, transnationalism, neoliberalism and the author’s life as a Chilean-American poet living in Chicago. Through essays, poems and hybrid forms. Borzutzky develops an argument about the continuums of economic and political violence that translate across borders, reversing the stereotypical belief that the US controls South America, and not the other way around. Here, translation is a means of showing that the “neoliberal policy lab” of Chicago could not exist without the influence of pre-existing economic experiments in Chile and Latin America.
Daniel Borzutzky is the author of the poetry collections The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy (Nightboat, 2015), The Book of Interfering Bodies (Nightboat, 2011), The Ecstasy of Capitulation (BlazeVox, 2007); the chapbooks Bedtime Stories for the End of the World (Bloof Books, 2014), Data Bodies (The Green Lantern, 2013), One Size Fits All (Scantily Clad Press, 2009), and Failure of the Imagination (Bronze Skull Press 2007); and a collection of short stories, Arbitrary Tales (Ravenna Press, 2005). He has translated Raúl Zurita’sThe Country of Planks (Action Books, 2015) and Song for His Disappeared Love (Action Books, 2010); and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (Action Books, 2008). His writing has been translated into Spanish, French, Bulgarian, and Turkish, and has been anthologized in, among other publications, Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing; La Alteración del Silencio: Poesía Norteamericana Reciente; Malditos Latinos Malditos Sudacas: Poesia Iberoamericana Made in USA; A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years; and The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century. Borzutzky’s work has been recognized by grants from the PEN American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ordinance, a critical series, issues nonfiction writing in the areas of contemporary poetics, philosophy, politics, and technology. Ordinance as in coordination, ordinal points, and incendiary potential with greater stamina than yesterday’s feed. Each chapbook in the series is handmade, perfect bound, and portable. The Ordinance series is available by subscription ($35.00 for all) and Individual titles may be purchased ($7.00). Free PDF downloads of each book will be available at Kenningeditions.com. The series will be complete by the end of 2016, with ten titles in all. Next are essays by Julietta Cheung, Daniel Spangler, Andrew Durbin, Cassandra Troyan, Margit Säde and others.