A new poetry collection from Seven Dane Asmund, featuring work exploring the space left after a sibling dies, when you abandon yourself to find love, make that lucky connection, and lose it once more. A collection on loss and building yourself back up.
A few years ago, I was on estrogen. I was transforming. I was becoming, in a very real sense, myself. I began to see her in the mirror. Then I got the call.
Your sister is dying. Faster than we realized. We need to all be here.
And I didn't see her in the mirror anymore. I cut my hair. I stopped taking the pills. I began working out. I began fucking. I began drinking. I began dating. I began racing, faster and faster.
I've been a man. I've been a drunk. I've been a woman. I've been a dog.
And I wrote. I wrote so much. I wrote so much garbage I'm still sifting through to find the heart of it. The heart of this book. The heart of what I've been meaning by this lived work. In the curvature of my movements through all of this, the lusting and the dancing the drinking and the losing, there have been words in cursive. I'm finding them now, finally.
After Diana died, I was at the bar every night. And every night, I drank. And every night, I wrote. Lines in ink in my little black notebook. Crappy typo-fueled binges in my phone notes. I cried in public. It was gorgeous, probably, to a sad director. But it turns out because it was real, I didn't get the joy of seeing it as romantic or lovely, it was just kind of pathetic.
And then I dated and I stopped drinking and then I found love and then I started to transition again and I lost love and then I began being a dog on the weekends then I found lust. And finally I went back to the bar again and began drinking and it's not even a full circle, I find it's a constantly moving line.
This warm body of mine, molding like plastic, this shape, then that. All of which is to say, I'm putting it together into a book.
With an incredible cover by Reid Aster, Like Warm Plastic pulls you on my journey with me. A story told in poems. Tragedy, yes. Loss. A harsh objectivization of my body, of my sister's body, as I process what it means to lose someone. A stumbling out of womanhood into manhood, something I never felt at home in, but now yearned for. And a slide into sex, sweaty nights at the bars, and kink.
The book follows my descent into the mess of things, as the poems themselves begin to slide and turn and twist.
I am seeking just $1500. After fees, that's enough to print 250 copies and pay Kollapsar for the cover work, and the broadsides!
If we make it to $2500, I'll work with Kollapsar to bring an older set of work to life again under a new cover, realizing my hole-obsessed poem "While Opening the Wound" and its followup "An Estrangement" in its own standalone pages.Â
I don't expect to make more money than this. Poetry is as poetry is. It was a constant refrain in school that we were writing poems for the three people in the center of the Earth who still read it. I appreciate you for being one of those three.
Like Warm Plastic
Like Warm Plastic Collection
A Signed Copy
The Three Books
All of the Poetry
Signed Poetry Hoard
*The Class Room Set is only for teachers. Due to the mature and explicit nature of many poems here, I'd suggest only offering this book in classrooms that are 18+ years of age. I will be checking teachers for information about their classes and retailers for proof of their store.Â
It should go without saying that I have written a lot of work in my time on this darned planet. So maybe you want some of the previous work? Alright, I'll bite.
Poetry Broadsides (art prints for poetry)
$20 Like Warm Plastic Broadside Set This set of 4 broadsides features foil text over illustration backgrounds of a selection of poems from the book. Thanks to the foil, the poem is fully legible in person even as it crosses details of the art! On the reverse side of each print is the full cover illustration, so you can frame a poem or the cover! Â
$10 I'm Building Down Broadside This large broadside features my poem, I'm Building Down, in gold foil text over my MRI. My favorite poem I've ever done, you can read it in any direction for a different experience across its three stanzas. Give it a try!
$10 Obsessed with Holes Broadside Pair This pair of broadsides features sections of the long poems While Opening the Wound and An Estrangement, a pair of poems about my obsession with holes. They are done over MRIs of my own brain, with green foil text. Â
Books of Poetry
$20 Like Warm Plastic The collection of poems about sex, death, and alcohol that this very project is making real! Get an extra copy.
$30 Every Day in Love: Love's Dead, the Complete Collection In this 612 page collection, Seven gathers the three books of the Every Day in Love project into one. Follow the satirical journey as Seven marries horror icons Freddy Krueger and Pinhead. Domesticity meets touching, funny, and self-referential poems in this collection.
$30 This Map is Just a Suggestion In this 524 page collection, Seven gathers selected and edited poems from across their previous 15 years of work (as of 2021) into one massive book, alongside a new 50 page capstone piece. Reclaiming their previous work from books that were under covers with a name that didn't fit, Seven celebrates their history. *Doesn't include work from the Every Day in Love project or Like Warm Plastic.*
📚�Welcome to Booktopia — a celebration of creativity and collaboration from a vibrant collective of writers, authors and artists collectively running crowdfunding projects from September 5th - September 26th. 🔥Limited Cross-Collaboration Freebies — All 50+ Booktopia creators have paired up with a fellow participant to create two unique and limited freebies together. If BOTH projects successfully fund, backers who support BOTH will get the TWO [2] cross-collab freebies listed on their campaign page, one will ship from each creator. The more pairs of Booktopia creators you support, the more freebies you will earn✨  🧧 1 FREE Limited Edition Booktopia 2024 reward if you back FIVE [5] or more projects. Exclusive reward for Booktopia - Black Metal Bookmark (design coming)
Refunds I will refund any pledges within 30 days of the campaign's finish date no questions asked, from September 26th to October 26th 2024. After that time, no refunds will be granted for any reason, and if you choose not to fill out your survey or pay shipping on time, your pledged amount will be considered a donation towards the project.
Shippingand Fulfillment We will be charging shipping costs in the survey post-campaign. That means you are not being charged for it now, or for VAT or IOSS or any other taxes or fees unique to your country. That will be done closer to the shipping date here on Backerkit. You will not receive your items if you do not pay shipping and any other relevant taxes or fees, and you will not receive a refund for your original pledge if you choose not to pay the shipping costs.Â
I'm planning to ship to people in November of 2024, but that may move sooner or later. You will be made aware of any changes in regular, monthly campaign updates.
Fulfillmentand Survey Deadline Once the first wave of backer items has been sent out around the world for people who get their surveys and shipping charges in on time*, remaining backers will have 30 moredays to complete surveys to then receive their rewards. Any who do not dosoin that time forfeit their rewards, and funds they paid into the project are considered donations to the project. As noted in refunds, no refunds will be made at thattime for people who do not get their surveys in.
*Thiswill be made clear in updates when we know for sure that we're moving to shipping, and will be clarified in multiple updates prior to starting the 30 day final reward claim timer.
Damagedor Missing Items, Lost or Misdelivered Packages You will have 30 days after your package arrivesto you to report to [email protected] if you need replacement items or have missing items in your order. For packages that go missing, you will have 45 days after the item is sent (60 for international packages) to report lost or misdelivered packages to have us resend or follow up on the items.
Backersare responsible for providing proper and up to date email addresses on Backerkit, and for reading updates as they come out to inform them of this information and the deadline dates. Tracking info will be automatically sent to provided email addresses, and it is the backer's responsibility to followup on their packages should problems arise.
Backing this project is a pledge of support to the project itself, it is not the purchasing of items. I will be doing everything I can to deliver all pledged items as part of fulfilling this project with your help, and have a track record of a dozen plus projects of doing so, but there is no 100% guarantee that you'll receive your items with crowdfunding. By pledging you are recognizing this and agreeing to it.Â
