ANNOUNCEMENT: 2023 IS TRANSCENDENT ZERO PRESS’S LAST YEAR

FOUNDER AND EDITOR DUSTIN PICKERING. Please view before submitting.

What Transcendent Zero Press offers: . Our goal is to maintain publishing diversity, not so much “identity politics” diversity as differing ways of viewing the world and it expressing it poetically.

As a press, we seek the same diverse approach in our authors as we do for the journal. Our mission is to promote the “underdogs of ideas”- that is, we look within the lesser appreciated spectrum of thought and expression. There are too many cliches riddling the world of art today and we want something outside of that. We like poetry that advocates for the mentally ill and helps others understand the plight of the disabled; however, we also appreciate literature with strong philosophical content and empathy for the despondent, the imprisoned, the fallen, the failures, the ones we forget. We appreciate outsider art, surrealism, language and image play, dreamscapes, and radically new literary conversations. We prefer something with a universal message. We do not eschew identity politics but this does not mean we will not consider you based on your identity as gay, transgender, belonging to a minority community, class status, rural or urban dwelling, life philosophy including choice of faith, or any other factor related to you as a person. We oppose morality clauses because what you do or who you are outside of your publishing contract with us is not our concern. Art should be controversial and we want to encourage that.

As publisher, we strongly believe freedom of expression is a sacred right and it is our duty to protect it regardless. It is the bedrock of democracy.

We are unapologetic about our stance to fight the strain of community censorship currently in fashion.

We strive toward transparency, honesty, and simplicity in our relationships with authors. We believe literature is an expression of strength and empathy. We want to hear the narratives unheard– smash the cliched patterns of guilty literary indulgences. Tell us who you actually are. Let your being sing, unrestrained by expectations and fear. Be a faulty, corrupt individual and show us your inner struggles, your battles with the world, your heart and fears encompassed within your dreams. We are not afraid of humanity.

This Green Life is a tour de force from Lyn Coffin’s previous collections. This stunning collection also includes new work never before published. This volume includes poetry from Human Trappings, The Poetry of Wickedness, Crystals of the Unforeseen, East and West, Joseph Brodsky Was Joseph Brodsky, A Marriage Without Consummation, and new poetry. It also includes the never before published “Rodin’s Girl Friend.”

“In this new genre of ‘Flash Wisdom’ this book takes us gently and boldly into everyday life to scrutinize the beliefs we work out of, often with a touch of ironic humor that leads us to laugh at our foibles and brings us into a deeper understanding of what salvation might mean today.” — Dr. Mary Madec [Ireland]

Our long awaited Love anthology, Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love, is finally available! Click the image to purchase from Amazon.

All humans seek love. It is the basis of our existence, the song that makes life warm and meaningful. In spite of the daily anger and meanness with which we are encountered in today’s heated political climate, an anthology that speaks of love is a strong protest and refusal to give in to the forces of division. We requested poems about love itself– poems that reflect love’s nature and it’s differing forms. In this compilation of beautiful verses, we wish to portray hope and the common things we take for granted. Everyone needs love. We at Transcendent Zero Press hope these verses warm your heart and remind you why life is a passionate and beautiful thing. Edited by Claudine Nash with art from Marcel Herms, Red Focks and Ammi Romero, Kat Copeland. Stunning cover art by Vera Ikon.

We accept ten or fewer manuscripts for publication a year. Harbinger Asylum is a quarterly journal with a strong faith in community kinship, and we might have one of the highest rates of acceptance in the literary community. I would say, roughly 60 percent of submissions.

PUBLISHER OF HARBINGER ASYLUM

For submissions to our literary journal Harbinger Asylum address Dustin Pickering: Editor@transcendentzeropress.org

Z. M. Wise, Assistant Editor: zmwise@transcendentzeropress.org

EIC Dustin Pickering is hosting a blog called thedailypoetsite where interviews, essays, book reviews, and insightful commentary will be featured. If you are interested in providing material for this blog or being interviewed, please email me at desireofdogs@gmail.com with your request and the angle you wish to portray in your segment. The goal of thedailypoetsite is to capture a variety of aspects to writing, including inspiration, controversy, education, publishing, arranging a book, writing itself, and other art related topics. Let me know what you have planned. The site is www.thedailypoetsite.wordpress.com.  We can keep your segment anonymous if you wish. We want to cover everything about the creative process, that mysterious force within us. How to market your book, the importance of building a group of loyal readers, what makes art happen, and the feeling gained from artistic creation. We hope this blog will serve as a journal for creativity and place of inspiration for others.

For the visual experience, interviews with our crew and exciting outtakes, see Z.M. Wise’s youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ZMthePoet

You can also watch events and performances at Dustin Pickering’s youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/redandgreenoverarms

“Literature is a branch of art that uses writing– based on particulars– to grasp meaningful general subject matter. It reaches a broad scope of topics and styles, and seeks to encompass universal themes. It uses direct means to enrapture the imagination and sometimes to moralize about life and human behavior. Literature engages the reader with a unique perspective and often attempts to make the reader pause and reflect.”

–Dustin D. Pickering, founder

Transcendent Zero Press began in a small apartment in Houston, Texas. Its first steps were taken as a poetry and arts magazine called Harbinger Asylum in the month of September 2010. This has long been a dream of founder Dustin Pickering. When Pickering met Z. M. Wise, an aspiring poet, at Barnes and Noble he shared the most recent issue of Harbinger Asylum with him. Nothing was expected of the exchange. When a local poet could not make a featured reading at Coffee Oasis (later to become Soho, and even later to shut down completely), Pickering invited Wise to substitute. Dustin has always believed in the underdog who wants to put his foot in the door, but is either too intimidated or shy. The relationship between Wise and Pickering has developed into one of professional mutual advantage, one of Wise becoming partners in the business.

Podcast with Scott Thomas Outlar: Songs of Selah

Z. M. Wise has emerged as a talented young voice in the Houston arts community, a respected partner in business and adventurer for the magazine, and a good confidante for important decisions. Transcendent Zero Press is seeking artists for publication, wordsmiths and also painters and artists of images. We have ideas for our community of poets. We wish to bless them with honorable, rich words from international as well as local writers. We are seeking to increase exposure to the Houston arts scene, and keep it fresh. If you would like to be considered for our publication or for manuscript review, you will find our contact emails above.  Please see our archives for samples of writing published in Harbinger Asylum.

Follow @TZPress1   

It is a rare occasion in the publishing industry to see a book that reflects two minds writing on separate planes about the same topics. Imitations of Love Poems is the heart and mind bared on the topics of love, religion, conscience, youth, life, and film. The poetry of Dory Williams opens the collection with a childlike vision of the world. God is seen as the perfect form of Love. Williams’ use of language, irony, and common sense proverb leads the angels of our understanding into a world that is beautiful and tricky, but also wonderful and kind. She writes, “The rights of children are our rights.” The seemingly buoyant style Williams introduces is the product of a cheerful mind often fraught with sadness and the love of man and God. Her worldview, expressed ironically with wit, is that romantic love is the highest state of love given by God. Dustin Pickering takes an alternate approach to the same questions. His tribute poems are dark and sophisticated, thick with allegory and grief. His poetic stance is one of darkness, of facing love in the winter. His approach to God is far less conventional; it is even mystical. He conveys a direct sense of whom or what God is while defining human nature in terms of its relation to truth. Truth becomes an icky concept with lines like: “Yet vain hopes are all I have held. / Her breasts so lush were vanity revealed.” Pickering, in defining human nature, wants freedom from it. He hopes to be genuine and perfectly altruistic but the darker strain in human nature is impossible to overcome. This collection of verse by two disabled poets promises its reader an awakening in how disabled people survive in loneliness, difficulty, and dependence. As America takes interest in the plight of the disadvantaged, Imitations of Love Poems is an important collection to peruse with pleasure and sympathy. Love, in its universality, is also stunningly individual in its expression.