> About SPAM
SPAM zine & Press is an online magazine & pamphlet machine based between Glasgow & London
Statement
of Intent
As ~Slavoj Zizek~ (ikr, sorry) declares, ‘I already am eating from the trash can all the time.’ We live in a culture saturated by throwaway discourse: public transport advertising, corporate PR, social media squabbles, flowery specifications for crap jobs. Our online and IRL everyday floats on an infinite stream of textual detritus. If the visual art world has been very responsive to this technological acceleration and cultural hypertrophy, the same cannot be said of the literary world, often stuck in its old ways, still clinging to a pen-and-quill ideal of the poetic sublime that we dare call ~drab and ~trite.
It is time for poetry to enter the post-internet age, and SPAM zine wishes to take upon its shoulder the weight of this herculean enterprise. To bridge the gap between the internet divine and the pathetic IRL; to make poetry meme, and meme poetry; to watch highbrow theory and pop culture have animalistic sex live on Facebook; to Make Poetry Cool Again - that is what SPAM is for.
We believe to be entering the metamodern phase in which the monstrous Chthulucene of self-devouring irony and the reduplication of signs and slogans find an inseparable companion in new constructive sincerity, in the need for wholesomeness and reciprocal care. Unlike most publications, SPAM does not ask its contributors to choose one pole over the other. We acknowledge our generation’s need to constantly move between pretence and eagerness, between the absolute and the relative, between optimism and cynicism - never having or wanting to choose.
Like the artist Luke Turner, we, too, ‘recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world.’ Our contributors represent a generation raised on the anxiety of a culture deprived of structure, stability and origin. SPAM provides a DIY platform for writers, artists and musicians to work through the frustrations of the times as much as unfolding the everyday weirdness, joy, and bipolarity of our contemporary condition.
Our aim is to import the experimental culture, computer aesthetics and hypertextual modalities of the internet era into a literary scene we perceive as conservative and resistant to change. SPAM very much aspires to a semi-rhizomatic model of publication, accepting contributions from cyberspace and beyond, and facilitating the everyday exhibition of memes, tweets, troll quotes, and the strange k-hole of YouTube comments, next to nuggets of critical theory, and masterpieces of the poetic canon.
Although our aesthetic tendencies converge towards the realms of the post-internet and avant-pop, our visual style is also in constant flux - mimicking the visual variety of the landscape explored by the modern-day internet surfer. All of our publications are affordably priced, and all profits go directly into funding future issues, and nurturing the pamphlet machine SPAM Press. We are 100% volunteer-run.
Contacts
Current editors
Kirsty Dunlop (Editor-in-Chief)
kirsty.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: publications, submitting reviews, nonfiction and other website content, press and documentation/publicity, events, New Media writing, creative coding and e-lit - she/they.
Maria Sledmere (Managing Editor)
maria.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: collaborations and commissions, events and readings, workshops, press, funding, design, website issues, ecopoetics and all matters of culture/theory - she/they.
Associated and Former editors
Ian Macartney (Operations Coordinator)
ian.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: distribution, podcast queries, deep time, video games - he/him
Denise Bonetti (Founding Editor)
denise.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch with SPAM legacy/history queries and with general chat about space & time - she/her.
Max Parnell (Staff Editor, Podcast Producer)
max.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: translation projects, production, typesetting, podcast queries - he/him.
Alice Hill-Woods (Poetry and Nonfiction Editor, Marketing Strategist)
alice.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: SPAM Cuts, marketing, promotion, press, distribution outreach and matters of visual, hybrid and experimental interest - she/her.
Mau Baiocco (Staff Editor, Poetics Specialist)
mau.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: poetry and translation, post/proto-internet poetics, sonnet talk, editing and reviews, SPAM Magazine, outreach, collaboration and matters of utopia - they/them
Loll Jung (Assistant Copyeditor)
loll.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: existing editorial projects with SPAM, manuscript proofing, accessibility issues and general memory/geopoetics - they/them.
Emma Urbanová (Editorial and Research Intern)
connect.spamzine [at] gmail.com
Get in touch re: PR and social media, research, poetry and translation, nationhood and identity, concrete poetry and matters of rhyme - she/her
All Editors
spamzine.editors [at] gmail.com
Our shared inbox if you’re unsure who to email :’)
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Reviews of our
publications
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Alice Brewer reviews Cocoa and Nothing for The Arts Desk
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James Davies reviews Greg Thomson's from im and not this for Blackbox Manifold.
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Esme Lloyd reviews fred spoliar's With the Boys for GUM.
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Maya Uppal reviews Lizzie McCreadie's glitterbawl for Snack Mag
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Alice Tarbuck reviews Dom Hale’s Time Zone for Sabotage
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Colin Herd reviews Denise Bonetti’s probs too late 4 a snog now :’((( for Adjacent Pineapple
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Colin Herd reviews Maria Sledmere’s Existential Stationary for Adjacent Pineapple
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Colin Herd reviews Max Parnell’s And no more being outdoors / And no more rain for Adjacent Pineapple
Press
Libraries
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Stephanie Sy-Quia mentions Nick Ines Ward's A Devotion of Sonnets in The TLS.
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Tom Byam Shaw reviews Parel Joy's The Queen of Cups for Leopard Arts
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SPAM Season 6 mentioned in The Skinny's 'Scottish Poetry News: June 2022'
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'POETRY... Well versed', SPAM mentioned in May 2022 issue of Elle UK.
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Julia Hegele reviews Lizzie McC's glitterbawl for Glasgow University Magazine
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Bad Moon mentioned on BBC Radio 3 'Eco-Criticism' programme
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Daisy Lafarge recommends Rosie Roberts portals as one of the Ignota Books of the Year 2020
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Paul Griffiths recommends Oli Hazzard's PROGRESS: REAL AND IMAGINED as one of the TLS Books of the Year 2020
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The Poetry Foundation cover Nasim Luczaj’s review of Jennifer Firestone’s Story
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SPAM does Pop Mutations
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‘SPAM on Making Poetry Cool Again’, a two-page interview on the January 2020 print issue of The Skinny Scotland
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SPAM is Publisher of The Month at the South London Gallery
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Rebecca Tamás recommends Helen Charman's Daddy Poem for The White Review's books of the year 2019
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‘Can you noodle a synth?’ SPAM interviewed by Dostoyevsky Wannabe
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The Poetry Foundation cover Alice Hill-Woods’ review of Maia Elsner’s ‘Transnational Zoo’
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Dazed recommends SPAM as one of ‘7 contemporary poetry zines you need right now’
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Rachael Allen recommends Sam Riviere’s Darken PDF for TANK Magazine
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GlasgowLive cover ‘That’s Hot!’ poetry night as part of Glasgow International 2018
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Editors Denise, Maebh and Maria talking issue #7 Prom Date on ‘Cut Your Hair and Get a Job’, with Raissa Pardini for Subcity Radio
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SCAN @ Lancaster University interview Dan Power on his Predictive Text Poems
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The National Poetry Library pick On Paper: A Love Island Anthology as one of their acquisition highlights for October 2018
post-internet
scrapbook: here
Stockists
> Scotland
Good Press, Glasgow
Mount Florida Books, Glasgow
Aye-Aye Books (Centre for Contemporary Arts), Glasgow
The Fruitmarket Gallery Bookshop, Edinburgh
Category is Books, Glasgow
The Lighthouse, Edinburgh
Typewronger, Edinburgh
Burning House Books, Glasgow
> England
ICA Bookshop, London
BOOKS Peckham, London
TACO!, London
Magalleria, Bath
> Elsewhere
Motto, Berlin
Unfortunately we are not currently looking for volunteers to join the team, but you can check back here to see if that changes :)
You can browse all our publications at The National Poetry Library (London), and the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh). Selected works are also available at the Glasgow Women's Library.
If you are interested in stocking SPAM Press publications at your shop or library, please drop us an email at kirsty.spamzine [at] gmail.com.
SPAM Press Publication History
To purchase available titles and check out current pamphlet deals, visit our shop.
🌝 THIRTEEN MORISETTES, COURTNEY BUSH & JACK UNDERWOOD (JANUARY 2024)
🌝 BRILLIANT VIBRATING INTERFACE,
EDS. KIRSTY DUNLOP, LOLL JUNG, IAN MACARTNEY (NOVEMBER 2023)
🌝 IN THE COUNTRY GARDEN/THE END OF ENGLAND, JACK YOUNG (NOVEMBER 2023)
🌝 ALL IN ANIMAL TIME, KAROLINA ROS OLAFSDOTTIR (NOVEMBER 2023)
🌝 COCOA & NOTHING, COLIN HERD & MARIA SLEDMERE (JANUARY 2023)
🌝 INFECTION (IN COLLABORATION WITH SYLLABUS VI),
EDS. ALICE HILL-WOODS, LOLL JUNG, MAX PARNELL (MAY 2022)
🌝 TRAVESTY58: LAKE POEMS, JAY GAO (MAY 2022)
🌝 ! / OBJECT, IAN MACARTNEY (MAY 2022)
🌝 THE QUEEN OF CUPS AND OTHER POEMS, PAREL JOY (MAY 2022)
🌝 WREATHING, ALI GRAHAM (MAY 2022)
🌝 SOME TIMES, ZERO HOURS, GONÇALO LAMAS (MAY 2022)
🌝 FROM IM AND NOT THIS, GREG THOMAS (DECEMBER 2021)
🌝 AFTERNOON WITH MAGNOLIA, FELIX BAZALGETTE (DECEMBER 2021)
🌝 X, EMMA GOMIS (NOVEMBER 2021)
🌝 A DEVOTION OF SONNETS, NICK INES WARD (NOVEMBER 2021)
🌝 HOT ORANGE SQUASH SKY, ALEX GEORGE (NOVEMBER 2021)
🌝 SACRIFICIAL FABRIC, ROSA-FRANCIS JONES (NOVEMBER 2021)
🌝 CONTEMPT, JENNIFER SOONG (NOVEMBER 2021)
🌝 WITH THE BOYS, FRED SPOLIAR (AUGUST 2021)
🌝 GLITTERBAWL, LIZZIE MCC (NOVEMBER 2020)
🌝PROGRESS: REAL AND IMAGINED, OLI HAZZARD (OCTOBER 2020)
🌝BAD MOON, SAMANTHA WALTON (OCTOBER 2020)
🌝PORTALS, ROSIE ROBERTS (AUGUST 2020)
🌝BOYS, ANJELI CADERAMANPULLE (MARCH 2020)
🌝CYMBALISM & LEMONADE, T. PERSON (MARCH 2020)
🌝POEMS BY MY IMAGINARY BOYFRIEND ABOUT IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND,
HANNAH READ (MARCH 2020)
🌝THE APPRENTICE POETRY ANTHOLOGY: MAKE ME MONEY & DON'T PISS ME OFF,
ED. DENISE BONETTI, ALEX MARSH & MAX PARNELL (FEBRUARY 2020)
🌝PURE SOUND, MAX PARNELL AND MARIA SLEDMERE (NOVEMBER 2019)
🌝CAPRICCIO, DAISY LAFARGE (SEPT 2019)
🌝AN ORCA IS WAY TOO BIG TO ATTACH UNLESS AS A JPEG,
ANNA DANIELEWICZ (JUNE 2019)
🌝DADDY POEM, HELEN CHARMAN (MARCH 2019)
🌝SILO BLISS, ALEX MARSH (MARCH 2019)
🌝ANOTHER GREEN WORLD, ROBIN BOOTHROYD (MARCH 2019)
🌝I HAVE COMPILED 14 GAY LOVE POEMS, AUDREY LINDEMANN (MARCH 2019)
🌝PORTS, CALUM RODGER (FEBRUARY 2019)
🌝SPIEL :: VERSTEHEN | WELT :: GESTALTEN, LOLL JUNGGEBURTH (DECEMBER 2018)
🌝ON PAPER - AN UNOFFICIAL LOVE ISLAND ANTHOLOGY,
ED. LIVIA FRANCHINI & DENISE BONETTI (SEPTEMBER 2018)
🌝TIME ZONE, DOMINIC HALE (SEPTEMBER 2018)
🌝DARKEN PDF, SAM RIVIERE (AUGUST 2018)
🌝EXISTENTIAL STATIONARY, MARIA SLEDMERE (APRIL 2018)
🌝PROBS TOO LATE 4 A SNOG NOW :’(((, DENISE BONETTI (APRIL 2018)
🌝PREDICTIVE TEXT POEMS, DAN POWER (NOVEMBER 2017)
🌝 TESSERACT LIFE, RYAN JARVIS (NOVEMBER 2017)
🌝AND NO MORE BEING OUTDOORS / AND NO MORE RAIN,
MAX PARNELL (APRIL 2017)
Enquiries
Work for SPAM?