Sodom / New Sodom

As promised, more details on this:

Bring me New Sodom! Bring it! Bring it on!
     where shall we phoenix cuckoos
     hatch in fire a city spilling out of us
     weavework of nest wiring the world
          Where?
               Here!
          Out of oblivion!
               Sodom returns!

from "New Sodom"

Table of Contents

Sodom
Nec Spe Nec Metu
Sandy Hook
Your Nick Cave Break Up Song
A Tunnel Out of Sodom
From Scotland With Love
Plato's Daimon
From Xenophanes
The Song of the Stancer
The Heathen Virtues
Orlando
New Sodom

Available in:

First edition hardback

  • limited to 26 lettered copies

  • personally dedicated and signed

          w/ added decoration if desired

          may involve glitter

  • comes with album-length CD of readings

  • plus digital download code for MP3s

Trade edition hardback

  • comes with download code for MP3s

  • CD available if purchased direct

Trade edition paperback

  • comes with download code for MP3s

Sodom / New Sodom

Twelve poems, around sixty pages, Sodom / New Sodom will be a wee chapbook-and-album set of previously uncollected verse, launching over the coming months (exact release date TBC).

Even before the homophobic hatemail dubbed me "THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!" (sic), many years ago, when Delany's epigraph for Driftglass gave the reader a lament for Mother Sodom as voiced by a surviving citizen, that wee snippet of verse seeded the notion of Sodom as a lost homeland, of Sodomites as a tribe in exile.

So, in the titular bookending linchpin poems, and as a conceit lurking under the surface of other works herein, this collection takes the razing of Sodom as origin myth for all queers. Gathering its toolkit of forms and conceits from every corner of verse and song, old and new--sourcing inspiration in everything from Xenophanes to Nick Cave to Plato to Wilfred Owen, shifting from sonnet to free verse to beat poetry to concrete verse--this collection aims to forge a passionate call to arms, a manifesto for art in the face of loss and surl.

If you follow my Patreon, you'll know that my poetry is written as much for performance as for the page, so the aim here is to offer the full experience for both bibliophile and audiophile: a chapbook of the highest standard of design and typesetting achievable; a full album-length audiobook of readings (which should clock in around fifty minutes total.) Both trade hardback and paperback editions will ultimately be available on Amazon and Lulu, but in the first instance, for the collectors out there, I'll be offering a limited run of lettered first edition hardbacks.

Pre-Orders

The lettered first edition will be available for pre-order as soon as I've decided exactly how much seems reasonable as a price. Printing costs via Lulu for a wee run of hardbacks like this are not so cheap as I'd like, and knowing what they gouge for P+P on a small batch of paperbacks, the added overhead for (even slim) hardbacks could be steep, so I'll confess I'm wary of pricing it at a level that defeats the purpose. I don't want to be unreasonable, but at the same time... well, it will be something akin to the sort of collector's edition CD that comes in/with a clothbound hardback booklet as its case--if you know the sort of thing I mean. At the moment I'm thinking that £30 would be taking the piss, but that under £20 would be pushing it for me. (The cheaper options will be available, after all, if you're not fussed about the personalised dedication and collectibility stuff.) So, bear with me as I mull it over, sleep on it for a day or two, and I'll update presently with a price, and open up to pre-orders.

In the meantime, of course, I'd obviously be well happy to have a sense of interest level, so by all means drop me an email at sodom AT halduncan DOT com if you're superkeen enough that you want to be at the front of the line. I really don't expect the lettered edition copies to be snapped up awfully fast, so I doubt there's any great rush, but I'll certainly be happy to put you on a list of provisional pre-orders (pre-pre-orders?) and let you know as soon as the price is decided, so you can get your pre-order in then--or not, as the case may be.