USEREVIEW 100: Five from ‘CONUNDRUM 25’

USEREVIEW 100: Five from ‘CONUNDRUM 25’

Happy anniversary to us, it’s our 100th review! In this sweeping traditional review of five books, reviewer Mark Laliberte takes on a handful of early samples from Conundrum Press’ Conundrum 25, a series of graphic short stories, each presented as a small volume of its own, in honour of the publisher’s 25th anniversary. Joe OllmannDay Old (2021) — #1 in the Conundrum 25 SeriesISBN 978-177262-058-0 | 107 pp, 4.25 x 6.25 in | $10 CAD

Read More

USEREVIEW 089: Mute as a Riot

USEREVIEW 089: Mute as a Riot

In this traditional review, Mark Laliberte offers a ouevre-spanning retrospective as context for mid-career writer Gustave Morin‘s latest poetry collection, Gongo Dodan (New Star books, 2022), the first language-forward book from this otherwise ‘visually dominant’ author. ISBN 978-1-55420-186-0  | 88 pp | $16 CAD — BUY Here (publisher) or if you’re in Windsor, get copies at Biblioasis Bookshop #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY After several decades of producing visually dominant ‘writing’ & releasing a constellation of projects falling into

Read More

IN MEMORIAM: Scott Carruthers

IN MEMORIAM: Scott Carruthers

RIP Scott Carruthers (1961 – 2022) We at CAROUSEL are heartbroken at the news of the death of Toronto artist Scott Carruthers, who passed away at home on June 21, 2022 at the age of 61. Scott was a friend, and a cherished contributor to the early days of CAROUSEL; he did a really interesting 4 page experimental comics sequence called ‘Random Passage’ for us waaaaaaaaay back in issue 20 that helped set the tone for

Read More

USEREVIEW 053 (Capsule): The Man with the Spider Scar

USEREVIEW 053 (Capsule): The Man with the Spider Scar

Michael e. CasteelsThe Man with the Spider Scar (Puddles of Sky Press, 2021)ISBN 978-1592913343 | 68 pp, 4.25 x 5.5 in | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY A long-form collage poem that takes the reader on a first-person gunslinging journey, The Man with the Spider Scar offers a tale about a horse thief, split into fifty minimalist poem fragments. It’s a text that’s easy to traverse in a single sitting, galloping on horseback “across

Read More

From the Archive: Cole Closser ‘A Drip in the  Mouth of a Horse’ Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

From the Archive: Cole Closser ‘A Drip in the Mouth of a Horse’ Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

American cartoonist Cole Closser has been called a master of “butchered quotes and borrowed styles” — a man whose ink-stained dreams tend to have a yellowed, nostalgic residue covering them, and whose drawing style is constantly in a state of technical re-examination and flux. Like the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock — who is said to have noticed a drip in the mouth of a horse in Picasso’s mural-sized oil painting Guernica, and from that

Read More

From the Archive: “But the mouse can make a nest in you”: Richard Kraft + Danielle Dutton Interviewed (CAROUSEL 37)

From the Archive: “But the mouse can make a nest in you”: Richard Kraft + Danielle Dutton Interviewed (CAROUSEL 37)

Los Angeles artist Richard Kraft’s Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera is a wildly irreverent collage narrative that challenges at every turn. To create his dreamlike paper opera, Kraft worked directly over an issue of Kapitan Kloss — a Cold War comic about a Polish spy infiltrating the Nazis — superimposing a cast of strange new voices and characters on top of it. “A riot of images and words”, the resulting project is arbitrary, inventive and

Read More

USEREVIEW 018: Dwelling in the Organic

USEREVIEW 018: Dwelling in the Organic

Mark Laliberte transliterates visual poems into text in this traditional review of Sacha Archer’s third full-length collection, Mother’s Milk (Timglaset Editions, 2020). Balancing considerations of both the sensory impact of the works with their articulated thematic preoccupations, Laliberte brings his twin literary and artistic expertise to bear in a way that contextualizes and enlivens Archer’s book. ISBN 978-91-985539-0-1 | 84 pp | €16.00 #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Mother’s Milk is an essential collection of Canadian creator Sacha Archer’s

Read More

CAROUSEL 44 — our first online issue — out now!

CAROUSEL 44 — our first online issue — out now!

The winter 2020 issue of CAROUSEL is available to read for free at our website now! Fall 2020; released exclusively online Cover artwork by Chet Bell Design by Origin Obscure Art Portolio — Chet Bell Fiction — Anne Baldo— Timothy DeLizza— Síle Englert— Jennifer McAuley Poetry — Renee Agatep— Anne Barngrover— Despy Boutris— Amee Nassrene Broumand— Conyer Clayton— James Collier— Mikayla Fawcett— Layla Flowers— Sean Madden— Caroline Misner— Kevin Stebner— Sneha Subramanian Kanta— John Sibley

Read More

From the Archive: gustave morin ‘Clean Sails’ interview (CAROUSEL 36)

From the Archive: gustave morin ‘Clean Sails’ interview (CAROUSEL 36)

Canadian ‘para-literary agent provocateur’ gustave morin has been working in the fields of composition & performance for the last twenty years. As a maker of concrete, found, collage, typewriter & sound poetry, his creative practice always manages to the blur the borders between poetry & visual art, offering up startling hybrid works that resist conventional reading. Clean Sails, a 164 page volume of visually complex, next-generation typewriter poems composed using dozens of different typewriters — the

Read More

From the Archive: Kioskerman Interview (CAROUSEL 34)

From the Archive: Kioskerman Interview (CAROUSEL 34)

Cartoon minimalist Pablo Holmberg — better known in Argentina under his pen name Kioskerman — makes four-panel comics that elude easy description. His darkly romantic strip series Edén appears in Spanish every week on his website, offering readers an ideal mix of weight & whimsy. Interview conducted October, 2014 You’ve been publishing strips on the Internet since 2004; why did you decide to start a web-comic?I was reading Tony Millionaire’s Maakies and Kaz’s Underworld online

Read More

From the Archive: Chip Kidd ‘Gasp! You Did It!’ Interview (CAROUSEL 33)

From the Archive: Chip Kidd ‘Gasp! You Did It!’ Interview (CAROUSEL 33)

Chip Kidd is a man of many talents, with an insider’s perspective on pop culture. Universally recognized as an American master of contemporary book design — USA Today once described him as “the closest thing to a rock star” in the graphic design world — his iconic covers offer an inventive marriage of type and found images. In addition, Kidd’s work as an editor of books of comics for the mass market have helped to

Read More

From the Archive: ‘Improvisation is Important’ Jason Interview (CAROUSEL 30)

From the Archive: ‘Improvisation is Important’ Jason Interview (CAROUSEL 30)

With a career spanning nearly two decades, Norwegian cartoonist Jason is undoubtedly one of world’s finest storytellers. Known for his sparse drawing style and anthropomorphic characters, he is the creator of a series of acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels that always deliver the perfect blend of humour and heartache. Interview conducted May, 2012 Jason, can you give us an idea how you create a new work? I’m interested in how you break down the tasks, how

Read More

From the Archive: Winnie Truong (CAROUSEL 28)

From the Archive: Winnie Truong (CAROUSEL 28)

WINNIE TRUONG Portfolio: Trichophilia They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they’ve got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they, and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, “thus far, and no farther.” That is their great sin:

Read More

From the Archive: Tor Lundvall ‘Transforming a Landscape’ Interview (CAROUSEL 25)

From the Archive: Tor Lundvall ‘Transforming a Landscape’ Interview (CAROUSEL 25)

New York-based downtempo producer Tor Lundvall balances his music production with a parallel career as a painter of cloudy autumn days & ghostly landscapes Interview conducted May, 2009 Sound is primarily for the ears; painting is primarily for the eyes. In your creative life, how are the two mediums interconnected and where do they overlap?For me, the line is most definitely blurred as to where the two pursuits overlap and blend; there’s such a strong bond

Read More

USEREVIEW 003: Creation, Derivation, Exchange

USEREVIEW 003: Creation, Derivation, Exchange

Though he has crafted what feels like a slick trailer, Mark Laliberte‘s animated experimental review of Dani Spinosa‘s OO: Typewriter Poems (Invisible Publishing, 2020) ultimately performs not only its prescribed analytic function, but also a meta-discursive one, bringing to the fore questions about what it even means to review a book. Laliberte’s review is thus a fitting response to Spinosa’s text, which challenges its readers to reconsider the limits of its own chosen genre of

Read More

From the Archive: Daniel Erban (CAROUSEL 21)

From the Archive: Daniel Erban (CAROUSEL 21)

Lens Irritant — DANIEL ERBAN Portfolio Montréal based artist Daniel Erban (1951-2017) creates printed images and large drawings that, in his own words, “scratch at the viewer’s retina and bleed into their conscience”. He has spent the better part of three decades hell-bent on exploring society’s dark impulses through the production of thousands of loosely figurative, near-profane images. Unapologetically provocative, Erban sees the role of the artist in contemporary culture as a “disturber of social

Read More

From the Archive: Ed Pien (CAROUSEL 19)

From the Archive: Ed Pien (CAROUSEL 19)

Against Entropy — ED PIEN Portfolio There is something instinctual about visiting the well of inspiration. Thirst is a need, and as a need, it cries out to be satiated. Who amongst us can resist the invisible call of our base drives? Pretend or distract, need still eventually finds a way to be served. Need brings out the animal, puts the human in his place. When animal logic takes over, every gesture moves towards potential

Read More

C35 Contributor Eduardo C. Corral Wins Prestigious Poetry Prize

C35 Contributor Eduardo C. Corral Wins Prestigious Poetry Prize

We’d like to congratulate CAROUSEL 35 contributor Eduardo C. Corral, who just took home the 2016 Holmes National Poetry Prize. This prize was developed in memory of Princeton alumnus Theodore H. Holmes, and is awarded each year by faculty of the Princeton Creative Writing Program to a poet of notable merit. Corral’s debut collection of poems, Slow Lightning, won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and his poems have been featured in Best American

Read More

C35 Contributor Robin Richardson Launches New Magazine

C35 Contributor Robin Richardson Launches New Magazine

CAROUSEL 35 contributor, Robin Richardson, has founded Minola Review, a Journal of Women’s Letters, featuring poetry and prose by women, femme-identifying, and non-binary writers. Minola Review has gained quick popularity with striking new work by Cassidy McFadzean, Catherine Graham, Alice Burdick and Paige Cooper, among many others. : : : : Read Richardson’s piece on why she founded a no boys allowed magazine in Partisan : : : : Richardson’s poems, which are from her forthcoming collection, Sit

Read More

CAROUSEL 26!

CAROUSEL 26 (Winter 2010 issue) OUT NOW! This latest issue of CAROUSEL MAGAZINE features work from the following  writers and artists: Xavier Barrade • Jason Botkin / EN MASSE • Julie Cameron Gray • Michael DeForge • Daniel Everett • Sarah Feldbloom • Jaime Forsythe • Christopher Hutsul • Kasia Jaronczyk • Melinda Josie • KOYAMA PRESS • a.m. kozak • Drazen Kozjan • Mark Laliberte • Greg Lamarche • Ginette Lapalme • Aaron Leighton

Read More