10-city book tour planned for US bookstores and record shops
Strong promotion across US, particularly: Ross’ hometown of San
Francisco; Rochester, NY; Dallas, TX; and Los Angeles
Serial rights targeting BOMB, Literary Hub, and others
Print and digital publicity targeting VICE, Pitchfork, The Rumpus,
Poets & Writers, American Poets, Electric Literature, Book Riot,
Rain Taxi, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LARB Blog, Full Stop, and others
Promotion at or events pitched for Brooklyn Book Festival, Bay Area
Book Festival, LitQuake, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, San
Francisco Book Festival, Lit & Luz, Dodge Poetry Festival, Winter
Institute, and Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Review copies will be sent targeting all major print and digital
literary media outlets, reviewers, and booksellers; additional
copies available upon request
Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter
feed
(@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); and publisher’s
e-newsletter
Promotion across the poet’s broad international audience
Ross John Farrar was born in San Francisco and spent much of his
young adult life playing music in the band Ceremony. In his late
twenties, he decided to go back to school, finishing his
undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, followed by an
MFA in Poetry at Syracuse University. His work can be found
in RHINO Poetry, Heartworm Reader, The Chaffey Review, Riprap
Journal, and Canary. He has published one book, comprised of
literary mixed media, Society Verse (Bridge9 Press, 2010), and one
chapbook, The L-Shaped Man Poems (Matador, 2015). Ross Sings Cheree
& the Animated Dark is his debut poetry collection.
"Ross Farrar, the front man for Ceremony, has written a book of
poems that is as melodic, fierce, and uncompromising as his music.
His work confronts the ways we connive with our own fate even as we
feel powerless to change it. His penchant for the surreal is
underwritten by quiet introspection that doesn’t shy away from
acknowledging the 'big sins fanning out from every pore.' These
poems are brave, scrappy, and full of heart." — Tom Sleigh, author
of Space Walk, House of Run, and Station Zed
In Ross Farrar’s debut collection, Ross Sings Cheree & the Animated
Dark, the poems’ speaker recognizes the world as the place where
“your bad trips are really your good trips.” Moving through
physical and emotional landscapes of loss and destruction, “Ross”
begins to understand the inherent beauty in such places and states
of being. How do we go on when we lose someone? How do we live
between the earthquake’s wreckage and the waves invitation to swim?
to drown? The metaphorical gun to his own head, “Ross” chooses
beauty, manifested in abundance between the covers of this powerful
book. - Chris Kennedy
Ross Farrar is a master of writing about the everyday nothings that
ruin a life but also make a life beautiful—the essential mysteries
of why you might love someone one minute, and hate them the next,
then love them again. And perhaps more importantly, why does death
happen to people we love/hate? His beautiful book Ross Sings Cheree
& the Animated Dark wraps words around these mysteries so that they
give shape to them without straining for answers or false hope. If
you are baffled or lost or human, these poems are friendly,
slightly drunk companions to accompany you as you muddle through.
Read them—there is much comfort in their glorious bewilderment -
Sarah C. Harwell
Ross Farrar keeps letting us know in his poems: amazing things can
happen if we both step up, and he steps up. He shares the freedom
of his willingness to surrender to the unexpected. He takes us
where we use keener attention to find our bearings. His combination
of urgent uncertainty and spoken immediacy, of idiom and invention,
bursts with feeling and discovery. Ross Farrar keeps finding what
his art requires. To quote Ross’s own heartfelt citation of the
Gospel according to Wu Tang Clan, Word is bond. In these poems,
Word is bond. - Brooks Haxton
Ross Farrar’s poems are twisted in the best way. Twisted by
America, a golden Cadillac, music, and desire. Twisted by Planet
Moon and Rotten Sun. That twist is often a stunning torque to the
body/mind that wrenches you out of your easy modes of perception
and makes something thrilling as a recompense for the cruel and
mean. It’s like a record that makes you sad, but you must listen to
it again and again for its “terrifying & magical” manner. - Bruce
Smith
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