This chapbook is temporarily on sale for just $9 plus shipping over on the press' bigcartel site.

My recent redesign of this webpage excluded my "store" section that included my experimental polaroids, broadsides, and more. My polaroids are still available for sale. For pricing and a catalog of the few remaining polaroids please email me here. Or contact me using the form below. 

In 2020 my friend Joy Garnett asked me for some of my experimental polaroids to feature in The Evergreen Review. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity. The Evergreen Review, along with Grove Press as a whole, were instrumental in making me the writer and artist I am today. Being included in The Evergreen Review is still one of the things I am most proud of. You can see my inclusion here.

My chapbook, “the silent crucifixion”, has officially sold out over at Between Shadows Press. I want to express my gratitude to everyone who bought a copy, and to Tohm Bakelas who published the collection, rescuing the manuscript from a drawer.

In a few weeks I’ll be adding the full PDF to this site as a free download, in a nod to the great Derek Beaulieu, who insists a poet shares their out of print work for free.

Share your work, share your methods, don’t be a gatekeeper.

I am beyond honored and excited to announce that Plethora Magazine’s 12th issue is available now for preorders at this link.

The issue includes some of my experimental Polaroids as well as work from Wilson Bentley, Anna Atkins, Adam Jeppesen, Lee Bae, Nicolai Howalt, Tilde Bay Kristoffersen, Henry Fox Talbot, and more. Plethora describes this issue (of patterns and fragments…) like this on their website:

The issue is being printed in a limited edition of 1000 copies so be sure to order one quick, while they’re in stock. In the past Plethora has published work by Francesco de Goya, William Blake, Salvador Dali, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Werner Herzog, Hieronymous Bosch, Diego Rivera, JM Basquiat, Berenice Abbott, and many, many more.

I recently had the honor of contributing to the debut issue of Capgras, a new literary magazine from Between Shadows Press. My poem “test footage no. 1” was included. The poem was the first “centipede” poem I wrote.

This issue has just sold out so I thought I’d include the poem here:

Keep an eye in Between Shadows Press, as they may reissue the magazine. You can also order a copy of my chapbook “the silent crucifixion” from the link above.

Kaleigh and I are in the process of packing up our apartment to move a few streets over. This has inspired me to clean up my site a little bit and organize it a bit better. I've consolidated a few pages, moved some tabs around, and (hopefully) made navigation a bit easier. Thank you to everyone who has put up with the mess up to this point. 

Today I packed up all of my film and photography equipment, so I apologize for the upcoming lack of new material on that front. By mid May I should be unpacked and back at it. 

In addition to cleaning up the site I've spent the last few weeks cleaning up and downsizing my library and work in my archive, recycling hundreds of pages of material dating back as far as January 2009 that no longer aligns with my work at the present, and selling/donating nearly 400 volumes to a local bookshop. The apartment feels empty in the most beautiful of ways.

In the coming weeks I will be having poems appear in a number of publications, including a new journal from Hickathrift Press in the UK that I'm quite excited for, and some photographs in the Copenhagen-based magazine Plethora. As information becomes available I'll relay it here, as well as on my Instagram. 

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This is a friendly reminder that you can order a copy of my chapbook "the silent crucifixion" here, and you can order a copy of Lemures Books' first publication, Paul Lastovica's "inventory clerk", here. Also be sure to check out the second issue of Blue as an Orange Magazine, which has just started releasing work from its second issue, here. 

On the first of April, 2022 my chapbook “the silent crucifixion & other poems” was published by Between Shadows Press. Also on the first a poem of mine was included in the inaugural issue of Capgras, a new literary magazine.

Today, April 4th, at 1:15 AM I destroyed my archive of poetic works created prior to February 2022. All in all I took three large bags worth of notebooks, typewritten pages, handwritten material composed on napkins, loose sheets of paper, envelopes, and more and recycled them in bins a street away. This decision did not come lightly. I recently had to purchase a new laptop and hard drive, and in transferring and digitizing these files I felt a disconnect. I no longer believed in these works as they were from a far different life from the work I’ve recently been writing. The only works remaining are new pieces and pieces that have already been spoken for in the United States and Europe (three chapbooks in the US and a full-length collection in England).

This destruction is a good thing. I feel liberated. The worst thing a writer or artist can do is live in the past (or their past works). I am sitting down now, about to draft a new poem in Spanish that was solicited by a small press in Santiago, Chile. With me I have a glass of Bourbon (Heaven’s Door, in preparation for my tenth Bob Dylan concert this evening here in Chattanooga) and an excitement I haven’t felt in months to be facing a blank page. Wish me luck and don’t be afraid to start over.

Form and structure have always been an integral part of the history of poetry. From sonnets, to haiku, and to more obscure forms such as James Laughlin’s typewriter metric or Jonathan Williams’ metafours, poets have flirted with form. Free verse has been the most prevalent form since the 20th century (to the point that most editors immediately discard anything with a noticeable structure or rhyme scheme today), but there is still the desire among poets to practice the classic forms. Kerouac wrote hundreds of haiku, Ted Berrigan experimented with the sonnet. Why do poets experiment with these older forms? My best guess is that when restricted by form, creativity must take over. You are forced to make different choices than you would with free verse poetics.

In 2019 I began writing poems in a form I called “centipedes”, mostly as a reaction to a negative experience I had with an artist from New Zealand- channeling the anger and utter confusion caused into poetry. The form is rather simple, and rhyme is not necessary.

Each poem consists of ten lines of ten syllables each (equaling one hundred syllables) followed by a line break and a single line or phrase of unrestricted syllable count.

​My forthcoming publication “dead city;; indigo sky” is made entirely of centipede poems, one hundred of them, followed by a free verse poem. The collection (due for publication the first of January, 2023) will be published by Doug Evans of Stone Skeleton Books in London. Doug suggested this post in hopes that others will adopt my form. If you try this form out, please leave a link to your work in the comments below or email me at biernat.kristopher (@)gmail(dot)com. I’d love to see your results!

Keep an eye out- on the eleventh of October this year Stone Skeleton will be releasing a new English-language translation of the complete poetry of Jean Cocteau (illustrated with photographs by myself), featuring many poems of Cocteau’s that have not yet been translated into English.

We have been sentenced to six more weeks of winter, and with that news I am running a sale until the end of February- two polaroids for $60 USD or five for $110 USD. Free shipping to the United States. 

You can contact me via instagram or email to get a complete catalog of available polaroids and discuss shipping costs if you're outside the United States. 

Note: I accept PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and Apple Pay via text message. I do not accept cash or checks, no exceptions.