synaesthesia press

Volta is my homage to Wallace Berman.

It’s also an assemblage and a little magazine that’s published whenever I can make it happen.

I named it after James Joyce’s one and only (failed) business venture — The Volta Theater at 45 Mary Street in Dublin. The Volta Theater was opened in 1909 and was Ireland’s very first movie house…although the very first movie to ever screen in Ireland didn’t take place at The Volta…which is probably why The Volta failed.

Some have even claimed The Volta as myth, as far as it being Ireland’s very first movie house, but that really doesn’t matter, does it?

The first issue of Volta was published in an edition of 50 copies, all of which were sent to the friends, the enemies, and the heroes of the synaesthesia press.

Essentially Volta is a junk shop of sorts, as I take whatever paper scraps I have laying around from completed projects, found scrap paper from thrift stores, and various found objects that I’ve yet to use, and then I just run ‘em through one of my presses — after I set the type and proofed it all.

Well, I don’t run the objects through my press, but I use them to house whatever it is I’m printing…which will be included in future issues.

Contents for the inaugural Volta include a poems by Bulowski, Brautigan, Litzsky, Denander, and Catlin; there’s one of the many “overs” I had in my archives of the Childish woodcuts that accompanied “The Strangest One of All”, as well as an assemblage / found piece by Jim Pritchard.

John Martin called Volta a “brilliant little piece of publishing”, which made me squeal like a little girl; I squealed a bit louder when he sent me 6 Bukowski poems for future issues.

Volta can’t be bought; it simply arrives at your door.

There’s lots to say — and as much to keep quiet — about Jim Pritchard.

His story, The Neighbors, ended up being published as the very first synaesthesia press chapbook. As a publisher, I was heavily influenced by the beat chapbooks from the mimeo era, and that was the initial idea for everything the press would put out. Of course, things change, and that policy went out the door when I went to press with the Chris Offutt book. But looking back at The Neighbors, and Pritchard’s other contribution to synaesthesia, The Man With the Buzzer In His Throat, well, I’ll stand by those two books any day.

The Man With The Buzzer in His Throat ended up being published in Vox. The artist Brian Marsland silkscreen the cover in his backyard on a warm spring day in Tempe, Arizona, in two variants: on cover had just the red ink featuring the man with the buzzer in his throat and the title of the story; most, however, had a yellow background.

Now, if we could only find Pritchard. Last time we heard of his whereabouts, he was living in a one-room flophouse in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, driving a cab, and working on a novel. Then, he disappeared.

If you know how to contact him, please let me know — he owes me money.