Luna Bisonte Prods

John M. Bennett
Columbus, Ohio

Ficus Strangulensis, Flaming Crust: Visual Poems & Cut-Ups (1999).


Luna Bisonte Prods really began around 1950, when I, as a child, made little book-like objects out of paper, matchboxes, and the like, and threw them into the Pacific Ocean on a return from Japan. There were other efforts of that type through the mid–1960s. That’s when I published some chapbooks, using mimeo and ditto machines, under the imprint of the Frustration Press. The name Luna Bisonte Prods came about in 1974 and became the portal through which I continued making small books, chapbooks, cards, labels, and other products, using rubber stamps, collage, photocopiers, and found materials. In 1975 the journal Lost & Found Times was born, which continued through 2005. Since that time in the mid-1970s, LBP has published or released thousands of broadsides, TLPs (“Tacky Little Pamphlets”), objects, one-of-a-kind books, chapbooks, artist’s books, Lost & Found Times and some other shorter-lived serials, audio and video works, print edition books, print-on-demand books, tons of mail art, and numerous stunts, gags, and performances.

John M. Bennett, La Vista Gancha (2010).

One critic referred to LBP’s vast array of formats and genres of poetry, word-art; visual, sound, video, and performance poetry; multiple languages, and collaborative and translinguistic writing and art as “bewildering.” The, hah, “mission statement” of LBP is to publish and distribute the unpublishable: important, beautiful, and essential work from around the world, with an emphasis on the use of language (defined in the broadest possible terms). LBP is also a platform on which I can publish some of my own work, when I want to have complete control over its presentation, content, and look. Most of LBP’s output resonates with the long, deep international tradition of avant-garde and outside art and literature. Luna Bisonte Prods provides an alternative and challenge to the vast world of stale, formulaic, and cliché-ridden writing that dries up the creative juices of the majority of writers and readers in the world today.

— John M. Bennett, Columbus, Ohio, January 2017

Contributors include

Blaster Al Ackerman
Sarah Ahmad
Stacey Allam
Reed Altemus
Hartmut Andryczuk
Ivan Argüelles
Baron
Ben Bennett
C. Mehrl Bennett
John M. Bennett
Carla Bertola
Luis Bravo
Thomas M. Cassidy
Jon Cone
Fabio Doctorovich
K. S. Ernst
Peter Ganick
Scott Helmes
Davi Det Hompson
Juan Ángel Italiano
Richard Kostelanetz
Paul T. Lambert
Jim Leftwich
Olchar E. Lindsann
Carlos Martínez Luis
Sheila E. Murphy
Rea Nikonova
Michael Peters
Javier Robledo
Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Serge Segay
Matthew T. Stolte
Thomas T. Taylor
Andrew Topel
Nico Vassilakis
Jack Wright