Poetry, Music & Delightful Media Beyond the Digital: The Bodily Press

Cassandra Mayer
4 hours ago
3 min read

Photo of Eliot Cardinaux by poet Denver Butson

Amidst the general feelings of uneasiness and chaos emerging from the 2016 election, Eliot Cardinaux founded The Bodily Press. As the founding editor, book designer, fundraiser, and empressario, he seems to work around the clock to serve up poetry and music to audiences here and around the world.

In the past 18 months alone, the press has released 30 books by 20 authors, many first-time book-length manuscripts and chapbooks, with others by well-known, accomplished writers.

Cardinaux describes a potent feeling of disillusionment emerging from the disappearance of physical media, paired with an increasing skepticism of the digital world. He has a bachelor’s degree in contemporary improvisation from the New England Conservatory in Boston. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that the internet was as difficult to trust as it was ubiquitous,” he said. While he had been writing poetry on his own for 6 years prior, it was not until he met Ruth Lepson, the poet in residence at the conservatory at the time, that his interest in the medium blossomed. “My understanding that there's a world for poetry began to grow,” Cardinaux said.

In 2018, The Bodily Press broadened its horizons and began operating as a record label as well, after Cardinaux released his first solo album on CD, “Sweet Beyond Witness,” of piano compositions, improvisations, and spoken poetry. “Everything was becoming digitized, I wanted to create a place where physical media was still a thing,” he said. The Bodily Press is a loyal outlet for artists pushing boundaries in the written and spoken word, sound, music, & other media.

The Bodily Press is a loyal outlet for artists pushing boundaries in the written and spoken word, sound, music, & other media.

After earning a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Cardinaux brought together a network of poets from older generations and began printing their work as chapbooks, eventually publishing full length paperbacks. He has created a space which prioritizes the tangible form of the print book.

While the press sells their inventory mainly at performances and readings at venues like Amherst Books, Unnameable Books, and the New England Visionary Artists Museum, they also sell online on their website, www.bodilypress.com and on the music streaming platform Bandcamp. To learn more, visit Instagram@thebodilypress

The Bodily Press will have a wide variety of their publications for sale, celebrating a diversity of styles, at the Northampton Book Fair on November 21st and 22nd including but not limited to:

22nd including but not limited to:

By Bent Light, a chapbook by National Book Award winner Nathaniel Mackey
The Palestinian Freedom Now Suite, a full-length poetry collection, also in paperback, by New Orleans-based poet of the Palestinian/Lebanese diaspora Paul Catafago
David Need's retrospective poetry book, Broken Windows, about a spiritual crisis he lived through in his 20s in the Connecticut River Valley
The Etcetera Variations: Poems For and With Musicians, a full-length paperback by Brooklyn poet, Denver Butson, who has read these poems with musicians such as Mat Maneri, Lucian Ban, and Marc Ribot
Red Tide at Sandy Bend, an ecopotic chapbook by Ithaca NY poet Mary Gilliland
To Umber, a book of miniature poems by Nigerian poet Uche Nduka
Elbow Sugar, a poetry collection by local musician Deja Carr (AKA Mal Devisa)
The latest poetry book by Cardinaux, A Species of This Invaded World
and An Angel Alphabet, a book of paintings visually depicting the Hebrew Alphabet in angelic script, by the painter-among-poets, Amherst resident Tasha Robbins

We hope to see you at the Center for the Arts, 33 Hawley Street, Northampton at the Northampton Book Fair on November 21st and 22nd. For tickets and information.