sovay | I'm dialing light up on my telescope

The Kickstarter for

rose_lemberg's An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassifiables is now live.

With your help, I am looking to put together an anthology called An Alphabet of Embers. I want to make the kind of book you'd pick up when you're drowning for a gulp of beauty on a gray day. I will be looking for the short, the surreal, the weird. An Alphabet of Embers would live in that space between poetry and prose, between darkness and sound, between roads and breaths, its pages taut with starlight; between its covers, words would talk to each other, and have an occasional cup of tea.

Rewards range from free copies and cover art through mp3s of the theme song and other publications from Stone Bird Press* to Q&A's with sociolinguists and surprise vintage art. The one Æsir-blessed person who pledges $600 becomes the benefactor of a live performance of Atlakviða in grœnlenzku—The Greenlandic Lay of Atli, from the Poetic Edda—in the original Old Norse. ~~OH MY GOD SOMEONE WITH $600 BID FOR THAT ALREADY~~ I should like to hear that; it will be extremely cool. Also violent.

* I have work in both Here, We Cross (2012) and The Moment of Change (2012) and can vouch for the quality of the tables of contents. I am especially invested in Spelling the Hours, an anthology of poems on underrepresented figures in science and technology. The cover features a grumpy scientist holding crustaceans, all right? Don't let that languish in the limbo of unawarded rewards. $20 for the e-book, $45 for the print edition. GRUMPY CRUSTACEANS. And history.

So that started today. You've got a month to fund it. If it doesn't happen, where are you going to send that fabulous twilight thing between prose and poetry that has not yet found a home, though you know it deserves one? Here's the fire for it to warm its hands at. Give a feather to this flame.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

FWIW I don't think it would be cheating, if KS would allow that I'd set up that option (but there'd still be only one set of additional goodies).

It'll have to be at Readercon, as I travel very rarely due to childcare constraints; I'd get a room and a projector, as it'd be good to have the translation displayed behind me, like in an opera setup, so people can follow the text without the need to look into handouts. Alternatively, if someone in Boston has a house big enough for 20 people and a projector, we could perhaps do it the day before Readercon.

The Benjamin Bagby Beowulf had such a projection behind it.
Readercon 2015, I presume, not a few days from now.

Yes. I had the pleasure of watching Bagby perform some Eddic material in Berkeley, and though he sings amazingly, he did cut out a lot of the verses. I won't sing, but I won't cut out the verses. Each and every one of them is needed and powerful, especially in Atlakviða :)

Readercon 2015, yes.

My only concern would be that if it were an official Readercon event in a programming room, would con staff allow guests of the KS donor who are not Readercon members? I get (perhaps irrationally) anxious about that sort of thing.

if it were an official Readercon event in a programming room, would con staff allow guests of the KS donor who are not Readercon members?

Very easily, if Rose performs it on Thursday night of Readercon 2015: unless they change the policy between now and next year, Thursday night programming is free and open to the public. If for whatever complicated reasons of scheduling it has to be another day of the con, I like to think that with more than a year's notice we could work out something about day passes with the Readercon program chair.

COOLTH

Alternatively, if someone in Boston has a house big enough for 20 people and a projector, we could perhaps do it the day before Readercon.

See reply above to

sairaali—I don't see a practical impediment to performing at Readercon provided it's on the free night, so that Kickstarter backers don't have to buy Readercon memberships if they weren't already coming. The only drawback I can see is that a lot more people might want to attend if they heard about it, because seriously, Old Norse epic.

Edited 2014-07-08 17:24 (UTC)

I just rehearsed it and OMG. I need to brush up on the Gudrun parts, but otherwise it's solid. And it ends in fire, which is thematic.

I need to brush up on the Gudrun parts, but otherwise it's solid. And it ends in fire, which is thematic.

YAY.

I'm dialing light up on my telescope

Re: organizing an audience?

Re: organizing an audience?

Re: organizing an audience?

Re: organizing an audience?

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Re: organizing an audience?

Re: organizing an audience?

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