Colossus Press began as a poetry salon in 2017. It was a creative way to express fury at the US government’s cruel immigration policy. At the end of the salon we decided to make a chapbook of the poems we had written and use them as a fundraiser for a Bay Area immigration non profit. Since then, Colossus has evolved into a performance project, small press, and fundraising organization for nonprofits working for change.
Our intention is to create a space where we can gather in the spirit of resistance to call out cruelty and support concrete change through art and fundraising. Readers are; James Cagney, Norma Smith, Dan O’Connell, Richard Loranger, Paul Corman Roberts, andJennifer Barone.
This nourishing anthology of gorgeous poems reshapes how we think about water. How one poet recalls the Boxing Day Tsunami, to another's ideas on the American River, to the myriad ways that water sustains us, the poets gathered here invite us to understand and reimagine how miraculous water truly is. This stellar book is for everyone, everywhere.
—Lee Herrick - California Poet Laureate and author of In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (2024)
This collection of poems feature a transcendental dance of the spirit. Moving through the various neighborhoods of the human family, worthy odes to our shared protagonist-element. Odes and calls to arms as our most sacred and shared relative persists embattled by the insanity of this mode of production, who would give the ocean itself a nightmare. The sentinels are out, the poems are written, the waters championed; the future, a return.
—Tongo Eisen Martin -8th San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus; American book award winner and author of Blood on the Fog: Pocket Poets Series No. 62 (2021)
Featuring poetry anthology contributors;
Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated Poetry Collection Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and the forthcoming chapbook 19th Street Station Volume 2 (Collapse Press.) He works as an educator and organizer somewhere on a long lost island in California.
Norma Smith was born in Detroit, grew up in Fresno, California, and lives and writes in Oakland. She worked for years in hospitals. She has also worked as a journalist, editor, and writing coach, organized events and conferences, and led writing workshops. She has long been an educator and community scholar, using oral history as data collection method for social research, focusing her interest on smashing white supremacy. Smith's writing has been published in scholarly, literary, and political journals. Her book of poems, HOME REMEDY, is available from Black Lawrence Press.
Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poems have appeared over eighty times, including in Mississippi Review, Homestead Review, America Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Assisi Journal of Arts & Letters, Dash Literary Journal, and Ghost Town Literary Magazine. Dan is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, Different Coasts, Theory of Salvation, and A Third Set of Teeth, and several chapbooks, including State of the Union and Sheltered in Place Poems & Art – A Collaboration. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com
Oakland born James Cagney is author of MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness, winner of 2021 James Laughlin Award from Academy of American Poets. Please visit JamesCagneyPoet.com
K.R. Morrison is a San Francisco poet and musician who splits her time between Southern California and the Bay Area. Her first book "Cauldrons" was published by Paper Press Books, in 2021
Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. They are the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. Their latest book of poetry and flash prose, Mammal, was released by Roof Books in October 2023. They’re also the author of Unit of Agency (now in its second edition), Be A Bough Tit, Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and ten chapbooks, and have work in over 100 magazines and journals. You can find more about their work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.
75% of funds raised from sales of Colossus:Current will be donated to Whollyh2o. Whollyh2o is a Bay Area nonprofit that supports the connection between people and our natural world.
Link for Whollyh2o: