Flat Singles Press
Established in 1976, Flat Singles Press is an independent, award-winning Canadian publisher.
We specialize in short run poetry books, chapbooks, broadsides, and literary oddities.
We practice diverse, equitable and inclusive publishing.
Our motto is too small to kill.
Excerpt from
'In Praise of Small Press'
By Phil Hall
Flat Singles Press began in 1976 in Windsor, Ontario—when I was at the University of Windsor studying Drama and English Literature.
I needed to propagate my first poems, or those by poets I knew. An early folded brochure poem was by Tom Wayman.
It would be a “press” (I had no press) for single sheets, because I was too broke at first to imagine the costs of printing even chapbooks.
One of the first broadsides I printed was my poem “Giving Blood in Detroit” (1976).
After I moved to Vancouver in 1980, I continued Flat Singles Press there. Reprinting—or me-printing—my own writing, then giving it away.
Why give this activity a name at all? A joke, an ambition, a parody, defiance...one way to keep writing.
As I began to publish with other presses, Flat Singles Press lingered on—its tagline was: too small to kill.
I had a stamp that said “Flat Singles Press” (lost now) and sometimes I’d stamp a few copies of some folded mini-book I had made, then give it away...
In 2013, Joe LaBine, then a University of Windsor graduate student, asked me if he could use Flat Singles Press as the press name for some publishing he planned to do.
It would still have a Windsor connection. And so I passed it along. Maybe I gave Joe that stamp...
Flat Singles Press was to have a new life in two directions: Joe brought fresh fervour to my gonzo/zine impulses—he continued to make ephemera, one-offs, and tiny editions...
And he made Flat Singles Press more respectable too—by publishing actual books, notably my own book, My Banjo and Tiny Drawings—a hardcover, no less—that won an Alcuin Society design award.
Phil Hall is from Bobcaygeon, Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor, and began publishing poetry in 1973. Guthrie Clothing—the Poetry of Phil Hall (2015) is available from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. His book of essay-poems, Killdeer, won the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Book Award. He has been twice nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He lives near Perth, Ontario.