We are collaborating with artists to release poetry chapbooks accompanied by a record we emboss at home using a circa-1937 Presto 6DSP record maker. The record lathe works by using a sapphire-tipped needle to emboss grooves into plastic discs, literally pushing the audio into the record.

Our first release in the On the Record Poetry series is Dark Nature, a horror story told through poetry, written by Joe Carlough. The story follows a man who resists the advice of others and becomes lost in the woods, eventually becoming the woods itself. The book also contains an essay from Joe about the nature of nightmares, mythology, and personal experience. The book is accompanied by a leaf-shaped record of a reading by Joe recorded on cassette using a microphone from 1970’s.