Ahadada Books is a small press based in Tokyo, Japan and Toronto, Canada, specializing in new and experimental poetry and prose. Established in 1998 by Jesse Glass, its authors include Jerome Rothenberg, Lou Rowan, and Judith Skillman, among others. Fluxus, Performance Art, Plays, and Concrete poetry are part of the press’ publishing agenda. Ahadada Books also publishes translations from Asian languages and Sino-Japanese related materials. In 2009, Ahadada Books established the on-line literary review Ekleksographia, which features a revolving editorship. (Part of this text was adapted from Wikipedia.org.)
Initially, I thought the name of the press came from “A-ha, Dada,” as in a reference to the Dada movement of the 1910′s. However, as it turns out, “Ahadada” is what Jesse Glass’s young son called him. Alas, I find the Dada-connection interesting. Here’s an excerpt of the Dada Manifesto, written by Tristan Tzara in 1918: “Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment I enjoy mixing this monster in oil paints: a paper tube imitating the metal that you press and automatically squeeze out hatred, cowardice and villainy. The artist, or the poet, rejoices in the venom of this mass condensed into one shopwalker of this trade, he is glad to be insulted, it proves his immutability. The author or the artist praised by the papers observes that his work has been understood: a miserable lining to a collaborating with the heat of an animal incubating the baser instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh multiplying itself with the aid of typographical microbes.”
[Excerpt of Coördinates of Yes]
The Artist, as “Incidental Person,”
Comments on His Book Towers –
His “Skoob” Art (Books Backwards)
- an assemblage by John Latham b. 1921
I merely accelerate erosion.
Dismembering books
by cracking their spines
and spray-painting them red.
Margins and words
bludgeoned to ash.
Hung on this wall:
mutilated texts tethered
together by a wire, open
to their turnable pages.
I find great comfort
in elemental changes,
like a swatter to a fly –
its infinite eyes seeing,
then not. Offended biblio-
philes, you are entitled
to love the words
beyond words.
As for me, I am
entitled to this.
My art is not
for making friends.
Your face now bruised
with anger, you wish
to do harm.
Here, you and I
are no different.
[originally published by Ekphrasis magazine]
