1. Poetry

2. Publishing
     Foundlings Magazine and 'Whistle Stop' Political Poetry Tour    Foundlings Press and Growing Impact    Other Publishing Ventures  

3. Essays and Criticism

4. References

5. Aidan Ryan

Aidan Ryan (born Buffalo, New York) is an American poet, essayist, and publisher.

Poetry

Ryan has published poetry in magazines and papers including Slipstream^[1][2], Peach Mag, The Buffalo News^[3], Buffalo Rising^[4], The Honest Ulsterman^[5], Octavius, and Ghost City Review. In 2017 the poet and novelist Janet McNally selected his poem "At the funeral of an atheist I didn't know" as the winner of that year's Just Buffalo Literary Center Member's Competition; it was published in the newspaper The Public.^[6]

In April 2017 Ryan published his debut full-length collection of poetry, Organizing Isolation: Half-Lives of Love at Long Distance (Linoleum Press, 2017).^[7] In a review, the poet and publisher Rachelle Toarmino wrote, "The collection is a portrait of ultimates—love, religion, presence, absence—formed from the fragments of letters and postcards previously sent to Ryan by his loved ones. The resulting poems feed new life into moments whose hunger has long since abated," and that "The careful manipulation of the text speaks to the magical way we sometimes manipulate memories, given enough estrangement, in an attempt at what Ryan sharply terms 'organizing isolation.'"^[8] The reviewer also noted the book's unusual hardcover, letterpressed design: "[publisher Joel Brenden] adds stunning craftsmanship to Ryan’s vision and produced an art object that plays with themes of organizing and the intimacy of handwritten letters."^[8] That summer, Ryan performed poetry from his collection at the Just Buffalo Silo City Summer Reading Series, along with poet Mathias Svalina and filmmaker Mary Helena Clark.^[9]

Publishing

In 2015 Ryan co-founded a poetry publication, Foundlings Magazine, which later grew into Foundlings Press, based in Buffalo, NY. He currently serves as managing editor. Foundlings co-founder and editor-in-chief Max Crinnin has called Ryan the "locomotive that keeps Foundlings chugging forward."^[10]

Foundlings Magazine and 'Whistle Stop' Political Poetry Tour

The magazine published its first two volumes in May 2016 and January 2017, showcasing a mix of national poets and poets local to Buffalo. Ryan told the Canisius College Griffin student newspaper: "Once we graduated [college], we each were each set to move on to different things, and thought this might be our last opportunity to come together and do this one last creative project, which would keep us sane while we pursued jobs. So we started into looking towards creating a poetry magazine because we noticed a void in the Buffalo area for one."^[11]

Notably, in fall 2016 the magazine orchestrated a four-city reading tour with events on the nights of that year's presidential election debates (with stops in Rochester, Syracuse, and Fredonia, New York, and Toronto, Ontario), featuring poets including Dane Swan, Jacob Maier, and Robert Priest.

According to the Daily Orange, the impetus was the "'bullshit' [Ryan] had to listen to on TV and the radio, to read on blogs and in the papers" in the summer of 2016. "Everyone had to say something about the [2016 U.S. presidential] election, it seemed, and to him they were all wrong. ... Even during his trip in the Bahamas, he could not get away from the sound of Donald Trump’s 'impetuous whine' or Hillary Clinton’s 'stentorian self-righteousness,' as he called it. It was exhausting to be alive." To the Toronto magazine The Varsity, Ryan stated that "that the [presidential] debates suggested themselves as an organizing principle. We’d have four stops in four cities on the nights of the presidential and vice-presidential debates … Whistle Stop was born in a flurry of emails and phone calls over the course of the next month.”

Foundlings Press and Growing Impact

Following the decision to turn the magazine into a small literary press, Foundlings and, as its most frequent representative, Ryan, came to be associated in local and regional media with a newly revived and "uniquely Buffalo" city literary culture.^[12]

In 2018 Foundlings Press debuted an imprint, The Public Books, operated in collaboration with The Public^[15], a weekly newspaper in Western New York, largely made up of staff that departed the long-running weekly newspaper Artvoice. The publishing partnership "came about in a very Buffalo way, in a conversation at a coffee shop" Buffalo Rising reported. "Ever since he left Artvoice to found new alt-weekly The Public, Geoff Kelly wanted to create a sister press for publishing books. At the same time Foundlings, which evolved from poetry publication Foundlings Magazine had been looking for partnerships for nonfiction publication."^[15]

Also in 2018 Foundlings Press released Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, a multigenre collection of work dealing with the legacy of the poet Frank Stanford. Ryan edited the work along with Foundlings co-founder Max Crinnin. Its over 30 contributors included well-known poets such as Forrest Gander, C.D. Wright, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limon, Adam Clay, and Noah Falck, as well as academics, translators, and rising MFA and PhD candidates^[16]. The Times Literary Supplement described the book:

The review concluded, "The diverse voices assembled in Constant Stranger suggest the time is right for common readers to discover this "poet’s poet.""^[17]

Other Publishing Ventures

Ryan also organized and served as managing editor for the first collection of poetry exclusively from young Buffalo writers, My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (Blazevox, 2017). The title came from a poem of the same name by contributor Janet McNally.^[18] In a blurb on the book, the poet and essayist Hanif Aburraqib said, "My Next Heart is a journey through a city the way it should be: many hands, many images, many cars with many windows down. ... All of the work inside of this anthology sings to a different corner of the place where it was born. Even the work that isn’t about Buffalo sings to a very particular emotional interior that builds its own, new home. You will love this anthology if you love a place you were born, or born again. You will love this anthology if you close your eyes from somewhere you are and dream of somewhere you want to be. There are many ways to see yourself in this bounty of lovely, furious, heartfelt, high stakes writing."^[19]

In an interview in Buffalo Spree, Ryan described his motivations for undertaking the project: "There was just so much going on in the scene, with young people especially, that we needed to try to take a snapshot. I knew that I was totally the wrong person for the job, and I immediately thought of Justin [Karcher] and Noah [Falck]—because of their poetry, and because of the role they’ve played in the community for several years now."^[20]

Essays and Criticism

As an essayist, critic, and journalist, Ryan has published with CNN^[21] , The Buffalo News, and other publications. Ryan has also published interviews with authors George Saunders for The White Review^[22], Karl Ove Knausgaard for Traffic East, and Noah Falck for Rain Taxi^[23]

Ryan is a regular music critic for The Skinny^[24]. Notable publications have included interviews with the Scottish musician and songwriter C Duncan^[25] and the Russian theraminist Lydia Kavina^[26]; and coverage of festivals T in the Park 2015, Positivus 2015^[27], and SxSW 2016^[28], which included an interview with the band CHVRCHES. Ryan has also published longer essays with The Skinny, including a critical meditation on Kendrick Lamar's album DAMN.^[29] and a memoir about his experience as an American relocating to Edinburgh^[30]

References

Aidan Ryan

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