FREEING THE ‘WILD WORD’

A Q&A with C22

C22 (Collective 22) is an artistic collective of Nathan Anderson, Vernon Frazer, Joshua Martin and Lachlan J McDougall, which focusses on experimental writing. Their work is influenced by Dada, Surrealism, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, Futurism and other pockets of the avant garde and aims towards expression rather than commercialism. Each member is free to create art as they wish, to collaborate if they wish, and to publish work elsewhere should they choose. As well as publishing collections of their own work, C22 also provides a platform for other experimental writers through zines and the Open Editions series of chapbooks. It’s all about creative freedom and sharing a passion for experimentation.

Cut Collective:

Could you speak about how C22 came about?  What brought you together as a collective? How has it impacted on your work as individuals and as a group?

Nathan Anderson:

C22 came about from conversations I had with Joshua. We were discussing the issues with being prolific but there being so few publishers of the kind of work we do. We decided on a collective rather than a more traditional press because we wanted to avoid some of the pitfalls we had seen so many small presses encounter.

Vernon was someone I had known for a little while before C22 came about and I put him forward as someone I thought would benefit from such a thing. Josh put Lachlan’s name forward and he seemed a good fit. The whole thing came together very quickly and it’s been enjoyable ever since.

As far as the benefits on my work, I think that so much of art is about the building of communities. There are so few rewards that come from a dedication to experimental writing and it can be a lonely business. It was good to be able to build something with like-minded people.

Vernon Frazer:

I came a little late to the party. Joshua, Nathan and Lachlan had just formed C22, but hadn’t begun operating. Nathan Anderson wrote me a letter telling me my work had influenced him and several other poets. A correspondence ensued, a friendship developed and he invited me to join the Collective.

Joshua Martin:

C22 grew out of a series of conversations Nathan Anderson and I were having in the middle of 2022. Through our conversations, we discovered we both had a large backlog of work we wanted to see published, much of which would be difficult to find a home for due to its extreme experimentation and non-commercial quality. We just wanted a space to publish, promote, and control every aspect of our work while also sharing the workload and perhaps finding a slightly larger audience for our writing. From there, we knew we wanted the collective to be larger than just the two of us, but still small and manageable. We’d both been fans of Lachlan’s work and due to his methods and interests, he seemed to fit into what we were trying to do. Nathan had been friendly with Vernon and I had known his work for some time. Vernon’s work has been an inspiration for a long time, so it made sense to ask him to join as well.

I think basically the four of us share a certain perspective when it comes to not only our writing but also our approach to literature and publishing. I think we bond over our interest in extreme experimentation as well as a commitment to supporting an underground literary culture without concern for book sales or commercial appeal.

For me, C22 continues to push me in new, different, and bold directions. I find myself being greatly influenced by Nathan, Lachlan, and Vernon’s work. It’s always a pleasure when they send new work. I’m always working to keep up with their quality, which has been very inspirational, not to mention their support of my own work. I think C22 has helped me to be more experimental and more non-commercial. I feel like I can do anything without having to worry about finding a publisher. Having the collective, a support system, has been liberating, just knowing that no matter how far I go with my latest work, they’ll always be excited and support it.

Lachlan J McDougall:

Joshua Martin first approached me after reading my work about an experimental poetry collective to help further the common goals we seemed to share. I immediately went out and bought Joshua's books (and then Nathan's once I learnt he was one of the other members) and I realised we certainly did have a lot in common. From there, the collective evolved rather rapidly and organically, with books from each of the core members coming out in rather rapid succession. We have tried to continue this momentum and keep a steady stream from each of us. 

In terms of how it has impacted my work, I suppose I always keep C22 in the back of my mind when I begin a new project. Will this be a good fit for C22 or should I seek to place my work elsewhere? It has also given me a drive to push on with work to keep up with the rapid pace of the other members (especially Josh and Nathan who seem to have a new book every other week!). It's a good outlet for my crazier ideas and formal experimentations that would have trouble finding an avenue elsewhere. I feel lucky to have found a group that is so readily accepting of different ideas and approaches to literature--it has certainly allowed me to be more free with my writing and less concerned about publishability and readership!

CC:

Nathan talks in the author interviews on your website about C22’s mission being ‘To plant the wild word.’  There is wonderful sense of freedom in this, the idea of writing unrestricted by convention and categorisation and spreading organically. Could you speak more about this and how it connects with your interest in the avant garde?

NA:

I see the idea of ‘planting the wild word’ as a reaction to the homogenisation and commodification of art. The books we publish are not a commercial gesture but an artistic one. The press makes no money and we don’t seek to make any. This is something that has always drawn me to the avant garde, it is about the art first and foremost. The avant garde has that sense of working on the ragged edge of things. We seek things that are startling and strange. You cannot be startled by something from the homogenised core of the ‘mainstream.’

VF:

The ‘wild word’ came somewhat naturally to me. Kerouac, Burroughs and Olson influenced me when I was fifteen. An intense passion for jazz came several months later and influenced my approach to writing. In the 1960s my bass teacher introduced me to the work of John Cage and the vanguard of the era. Using improvisational techniques derived from jazz and the cutup techniques of William Burroughs creates a process of discovery  in writing that satisfies me more than writing something planned in advance. My early influences interested me more than the mainstream writers of my time, so the avant garde spectrum seemed to fit my work the best.

JM:

I think Nathan’s quote does, in a lot of ways, pretty much summarise the whole of what C22 is trying to do and what we believe in. Simply having a space where you know that nothing is off limits and, not only that, but that the others will be excited, inspired, and enthusiastic about the work no matter how wild, crazy, and unconventional it is. But also that we’re all going to promote and spread the work to as many people as we can. It’s nice not to be out there on your own, especially with the kind of work we’re making. Avant garde work, by nature, is never going to be broadly appealing, but it does have an audience yet reaching that audience is not always easy, especially with considering the extreme fragmentation of our culture and the huge volume of work available. I think the best thing is to try to form a community of likeminded people who are interested not just in the work but in the ethos as well. In a way, the underground is a lifestyle. A commitment. A way of being. C22 hasn’t done anything fancy or loud, we’ve just been plugging away, releasing a wide variety of difficult and experimental work and it’s slowly caught on, forming into a small but solid following, which is hopefully still growing. I know I’ve met and talked to and read new work from so many great people. It’s very encouraging. It’s nice to have a community so you don’t feel like you’re only writing for yourself or releasing your work into the digital void.

LJM:

As I said earlier, C22 is a great outlet for the really wild ideas we have. Sometimes I begin writing and I just know it's a C22 project, just from the outlandish nature of what I have come up with. We look for this kind of thing in the Open Editions as well, looking for people and ideas that sit outside the accepted bounds of literature as we know it. Some of my C22 projects I know would have no real readership outside of the collective were I try to publish through regular channels, but I am glad we seem to have found a regular readership through our efforts and are spreading the wild work of a range of authors through the grassroots networks that have sprung up.

CC:

This ‘planting of the word’ not only covers your own work but also gives a platform to selected other authors through the ‘Open Editions’ series. Why was this important to you? How does the process work and are there any guidelines or requirements for the writers you approach?

NA:

We started Open Editions because we wanted to publish the work of writers we enjoy. It allows us to spread the kind of writing we think is important even further and give a platform for those writers to put out more of their work.

Because each of our four members works, somewhat, independently the process for Open Editions may vary, but essentially we simply approach writers whose work we enjoy and if they want to be a part of what we’re doing we share their manuscript with the other members and if we all agree it we then proceed with publication. It’s really quite simple, we aren’t in the business of running a slick publishing house. This is a makeshift enterprise but it matters to put these books out because the books matter.

VF:

C22 operates somewhat simply. We keep the organization small to let us work simply and quickly. But we include other writers because C22 cultivates and supports a network of writers whose work has a relation to ours. 

JM:

Initially, the idea of C22 was only to publish work from the four of us, but after a while we started to get some great feedback and interest from a number of writers whose work we really loved and admired who definitely fit into what C22 is doing. We’ve made it clear to ourselves from the beginning that we want to keep it as lowkey, simple, and sustainable as possible. There’s no way we’ll ever be able to or want to open up to submissions or publish books by anyone else, but we did want to have some project where we could bring writers we admire into the fold. Open Editions was born out of this. The model for it was presses like Schism Neuronics and Moria Books who publish their books as free pdfs with Print on Demand versions available. It’s important to us that C22 not just be a collective but also a community. Open Editions allows us to remain committed to keeping things small but also expanding our community. Typically, it’s up to each of us to decide who they want to ask to contribute to Open Editions. I think it mainly just comes down to which writers we like and would like to publish. With every solicitation, we encourage people to do whatever they want. There are practically no guidelines other than that the work has to be chapbook length. For me, I love being able to give authors this opportunity of complete freedom. We don’t limit anything. We’re happy to help, but we’re also happy to let the authors make all the decisions themselves if they want.

LJM:

I think C22 was always meant to be bigger than the core members. We have tried to cast a wide net and capture as many of the wild writers out there as we possibly can. People who write for the sheer love of the act of creation and who have ideas which push the boundaries of commonsense literature. If we stuck only to the four core members, I feel that it may have devolved into a masturbatory exercise in self congratulations, but with the addition of the Open Editions, we have expanded beyond this and into a realm where anything is possible with the written word. 

CC:

C22 publications are available as free downloads but also can be bought as a print on demand option. This feels quite a unique approach, can you talk about the thinking behind it?

NA:

It should be no surprise to anyone working in experimental writing that these books don’t sell in any great numbers. What many people don’t realise, however, is that if they are made available as free pdfs they will often be downloaded hundreds of times. But, like most writers, we enjoy print so we offer the books in POD as well. It’s a best of both worlds approach I suppose, pdfs to ensure they are read and print because we believe in physical art.

VF:

C22 recognises poetry sells very poorly. To increase our audience, we offer free downloads. Print-on-demand is a useful option for me because a computer screen can tire out my eyes after a long enough day and I like to read lying down. We’re just getting out work out to as many people as we can reach. Joshua Martin also issues mail art from C22, so a few of us are working in areas outside the digital world.

JM:

This is both practical and philosophical. The fact is that we get so many more views/downloads than sales. It’s not even close. The important thing is that the work is available in whatever format people prefer to read it. We want people to be able to have access to the work. We’re not interested in making money and our collective is based on a non-commercial model. We’ve also attempted to create a sustainable model of publishing. By making the work available as a free download and as a print on demand, we can keep our cost down to basically nothing so that we can continue to exist and publish work for as long as we want to keep going. Again, I think the main thing is to continue to build and foster a community of readers and artists. Plus, the kind of work we make and publish is never going to sell in any substantial form so why not let people look at it for free?

LJM:

The freeing of the word must be a real freeing of the word. I know how much many of us struggle and as the lead editor of my own small press enterprise, I know how hard it is to sell books in the modern hyper-competitive market. If the Open Editions were limited to print editions, I'm sure they would be doomed to failure, but with the free download option available, we have managed to open up our readership a great deal. People who can't afford to buy books, or are simply curious and don't want to make a monetary commitment can now read our catalogue of great experimental titles and gain a real love for the art form and what we are doing. Hopefully, some of these downloads will turn into sales to help support us and what we are doing, but that is not the primary aim. What we are doing is trying to get the work out there and read by as many people as possible, trying to jumpstart the imagination circuits of an unsuspecting public. This is why we make our work available for free.

CC:

Tell us (if you can!) what’s coming next for you all as individuals and as part of C22. Are there any more Open Editions forthcoming?

NA:

There are plenty more Open Editions on the horizon as well as some more full length books and a new issue of eYeland that Josh has done a remarkable job with. Things are still moving forward and there’s plenty to look forward to coming up.

VF:

We’re discussing 2025 right now, but haven’t decided on changes yet. Open Editions remains an active part of our publishing effort. We’re discussing  it right now. As far as projects, each of us works independently, then shows the work to the collective. And we incorporate other writers. We keep our options open so that we can expand as more writers and publishers discover us.

JM:

We have a few more releases scheduled for 2024. A new full-length book from Nathan in October and then one from me in December. We have an Open Editions release in October from Mark DuCharme and one from Lachlan in November. Vernon has an Open Edition release coming in January. Our work will be featured on Var(2x), run by Daniel Y. Harris and Irene Koronas, all throughout January 2025. eYeland issue #3 has just been completed. It was completely made by hand and each issue is individualized. Issue #4 will likely be out sometime in 2025 and will, this time, be digital so as to include a much wider range of contributors and work. Otherwise, we hope to continue throughout 2025 with more full-length books from the four of us, as well as from Open Editions, with hopefully some new authors.

LJM:

We always have new works in the pipelines. I know for a fact that there are plenty more Open Editions on the way and that we are actively reaching out to new and returning writers to see if they have anything they would like to add to the pile. Myself, personally, I have a new Open Editions chapbook coming out soon entitled The Book of Crow (A Cycle of Woe). I know we are likely to see more work from Josh, Nathan, and Vernon very soon too. It's a hard balance trying to make sure we each have our own robust publishing lives outside of C22 while maintaining momentum with the collective, but rest assured, we are not slowing down and there will be plenty more great experimental work on the horizon.

To find out more about C22 and access books, zines and the Open Editions, visit https://C22press.wordpress.com