AUDIOBOOK
books
SEXO POR ULTIMA VEZ (2022)
SOCIOS FUNDADORES
SPANISH TRANSLATION OF ‘AMBIENT TECHNOLOGY’
translator: Gabriela Bejerman
ARGENTINA, forthcoming july 2022
Translating poetry from a younger girl is like traveling back in time. I refresh myself with the freshness of it. I dive into her infatuations, in her digital reading of a world that I lived analogically. I feel innocence and desire, I feel the physical inquiry of experiences and the wonder of discovery. I have felt free to be an adult woman with the poems of a girl. That freedom gave me great joy and I felt that Ashley's poetry could well be a material close to my poetic heart in many formal and spiritual aspects.
- GABRIELA BEJERMANN, translator
In this passionate sophomore collection of poetry, Ashley Obscura’s poetry explores the function of connection in a post-digital age and how one situates the self and creates meaning within the unions and chasms of our physical, virtual and spiritual selves. Ambient Technology occupies a space that bridges that gap between our visible and invisible worlds, between sentiment and emoji, between the opening and closing of heart matter. With great lust and desire, Obscura unearths something indestructible within ourselves, and lands amongst new tones of being and belonging in the sparkly lining of a too-real world.
“Ashley Obscura’s Ambient Technology somehow manages to feel both space-age and ancient all at once.”
- MARCELA HUERTA, author of Tropico, via Blue Metropolis
“This book is the technology I want and need—of cosmic citizenship, opulent ecologies, feral vivariums of the self and of language. This is a technology that converts not getting the love you want into a vaster garden.”
- ERIN ROBINSONG, author of Rag Cosmology
“A bouquet of miracles.”
- LIZ BOWEN, author of Sugarblood
“I recently read that the Navajo say that their healing songs are not for anyone; since they come from supernatural sources they are directed just to some people. If others hear them, they can be harmed. Ambient Technology showed me that there is a cosmic design to every feeling. Her book was a healing song for me.”
- CECILIA PAVÓN, author of Hotel with My Name
"Ashley Obscura has a way of using words to create such tender and bright images in your mind that leave you enthralled and awakened. Her poetic language is soothing and embracing, and allows you to feel soft like you are floating in the womb. Read this book and relax yourself into the idea of channeling through space."
- FARIHA RÓISÍN, author of How to Cure a Ghost
Lurid, psychedelic, syrupy, sparkly. Vivid, concrete and image driven. If these poems were a movie they would be directed by Sofia Coppola, or maybe Petra Collins.” - Library Vibes
“At times, I felt like I was reading spells. I felt safer after reading Ambient Technology. These lines: He did not want to make something beautiful / With me anymore / But I was still beautiful.”
- Elizabeth Schmuhl, Michigan Quarterly Review
“A natural curiosity shines through this collection, showing how the author is always brought back to herself.”
- RACHEL STADDER, Savoir Care
PRESS
The world of Opheim’s debut collection is populated with online quizzes, “pokes” on Facebook, Kombucha brand identities, Dijon mustard, and making out. “What if a group of experimental, full funded scientists took an immense interest in your aura and decided to try and understand it?” she writes in “Aura Pixels.” “What if they took some peyote to heighten their energetic experience and then published their findings on a website that is somehow everyone’s homepage?” A singular ode to the sheer miracle that is being alive, I Am Here is driven by the great invisible forces that shape our existence: love, peace, desire, and wifi.
- ELECTRIC LITERATURE
I Am Here is delicate in touch.
The collection moves from real to surreal
all while maintaining a strong empathetic core
-BEACH SLOTH
ANTHOLOGIES
Anthologie de la poésie contemporaine des femmes au Québec (2000-2020)
Éditions du Remue-Ménage
Québec, forthcoming 2021
This anthology presents the work of fifty-five poets who embody the movements of contemporary Quebec poetry. A reference tool, this book offers to discover and celebrate, in an intersectional and intergenerational approach, a selection of rebellious works from an environment in full effervescence.
Berta García Faet selects, translates (English to Spanish) and introduces an anthology composed of 16 Alt Lit poets. This is poetry that expresses the disenchantment of a post-all era: children of late capitalism, these voices speak of the disenchantment and loneliness of a hyper-stimulated, consumerist and cynical society.
30 Under 30
in/words press
canada, 2017
An anthology of Canadian millennial poets.
“Montreal-based poet Ashley Obscura’s poem, Plastic Watermelon, focuses on two people sharing a moment of pure bliss. My favourite aspect of this piece is the way it constantly plays with scale: lovers hold one another in “the tiny rain,” flowers are compared to spaceships, and the “space between mountains” is made the same size as the space between two breaths. “I am gigantic for you,” Obscura writes. “I am a tiny spaceship.” [It] makes the small seem big and infinite and the large feel tiny and manageable. While the moments depicted in this poem may end up being just a few fleeting hours of happiness, Obscura expands them into an eternity.”
- Montreal Review of Books
MACRO is an ambitious anthology of image macros (images paired with words, intended for digital circulation) from 125 artists. As one of the first anthologies to ever cover image macros within a literary context, MACRO seeks to document the rise of the image macro as poetry from 2011-2015.
On the same page, there's another macro, this one by Ashley Obscura, whose text reads:
I HAVE ABANDONED
BILLIONS OF PIXELS
OF MY SELF,
ENTIRE GALAXIES OF PIXELS.
[Her] macros are a dialogic exploration about how we see ourselves in relation to one another in a world where the IRL and URL are inextricably linked. They enact the particular brand of eros unique to their contemporary context.”
- Diagram
The word is not youth. The word is strength. It is rage. After this famous verse by the Mexican poet David Meza, a lot of magic has happened and a lot of connections have been generated among young poets from all over the world. That is why we want to celebrate it by inaugurating our Series Poeticas, small anthologies that bring together very varied and different voices, with which we intend to launch a sample of what is happening. Because it is happening. Something is happening and it is not just youth. It is strength. It is rage. It is poetry.
The 4 Poets
issue 3, swimmers group
canada, 2015
The 4 Poets was a biannual literary magazine. Every issue presents four writers, each with 20 pages of writing.
The YOLO Pages
boost house
united states, 2014
The YOLO Pages is an epic anthology of poems, tweets, image macros, and prose from over 50 people. One of the first anthologies ever to cover "alt lit," "weird twitter," and associated communities and figures.
Obscura’s poetry values directness, is vernacular, confessional, first-person, playful, and authentic.
- Post Internet Poetry