The Best American Poetry

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Andrea Selch of Carolina Wren Press

NA: Tell me about the name first.  The Carolina wren is a lively little bird, but I am wondering if you wanted the word, Carolina, in the name to imply the South? 

AS: I didn’t found the press, so I didn’t choose the name. But the name is important: The Carolina Wren is a choosey little bird—a feminist bird if such a thing could be said. The female chooses her mate after inspecting nests made by several males. It’s also a very hardy bird, indigenous to the Carolinas… and I like to think it stands for the press for these reasons too. The press’s mission has always been to make underrepresented writers more accessible—in the 1970s, that meant women, people of color, and southern writers; more recently, we’ve expanded that to include other “others,” such as LGBT writers, writers of more diverse ethnic or racial backgrounds, differently-abled writers and even experimental writers. In other words, the mission to publish underrepresented writers has stayed constant while the definition of underrepresented has broadened.

(For more about the history of the press before the 21^st century, see CWP-founder Judy Hogan’s history on our website. )

NA: I think it must take a lot of vision, energy, and passion to start a press.  What inspired you to take that step? 

AS:  I’ll  talk about my history with the press and my later experience of “inheriting” the press.

Once upon a time, Judy Hogan published one of my poems in an anthology called A Living Culture in Durham. I was just graduating from Duke and saw the flyer on a bulletin board. I submitted and was accepted. I later met Jaki Shelton Green (probably the most recognizable poet CWP published in the 80s) when I wrote a story about her for the Independent in 1987.

After that, I forgot about the press until my friend David Kellogg, then president of the CWP board, invited me to submit to a new poetry series he was publishing. He wanted to publish poets in pairs—one established, one emerging—and I was to be the emerging poet alongside the Afro-Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke. My chapbook was published in 2000 and I was invited onto the Board of Directors soon after that.

 

Andrea Selch

In 2000, the press was beginning its transition from an inclusive community-oriented press to one with a critically-recognized national reputation. David was excited to be publishing experimental and political poetry, but didn’t have time for the fiction, nonfiction and children’s literature projects of the press. There were a few old-timers on the board and one part-time Executive Director on salary. As Vice President, I brought a few newcomers onto the board—some more edgy poets, younger types—and looked for a new designer. I lobbied for the press to make over its “look”—at that time the wren on the letterhead was a little puffball! I culled the press’s enormous mailing list and sent out yearly fundraising letters. I also found myself running the meetings and, when the Executive Director decided to move on in 2002, I started doing all the office work, mailing out orders, resubmitting grants, etc.  I brought out the next several poetry titles, as chapbooks.

 

As President, beginning sometime in 2004, I made several changes to the poetry series: First of all, instead of continuing the Poetry Series as “by invitation only,” I made it into a national contest. This brought us some income from submission fees, a wider array and higher quality of entries, and a stronger connection between the emerging and the established poets, since the established poet acted as the final judge for the contest. Having a national contest gave us a national reputation, which the press had not really had. We maintained the southern feel of the press by choosing southern or southern-connected judges most of the time. The judges were generally from underrepresented groups, and I think this appealed to emerging poets also from the margins.

Secondly, I also made the poetry series books more professional-looking and saleable. The early books in the series were chapbooks—handsewn with thread—and bookstores did not like this. Also, they were printed by a local fine press, which meant they were very beautiful but also very expensive. I researched printers for perfect-bound books, got competing bids, and was able to get the books for about a quarter of the previous price. Also, I increased the size of the book from a chapbook to a full-length collection, and opened it to first or second collections. This also increased the number of entries. Finally, I also really upped the promotional efforts: We send out 100 or more review copies (and sometime pre-publication galleys) for each book we publish, we host a launch either at AWP or here or in the author's home town, and we submit the published book to every year-end award we can find. Our books are distributed by Baker & Taylor, one of the two largest distributors in the country, and sold through our website and Amazon.com. We sell to universities directly and through Follett Educational and Barnes & Noble College Bookstores. This kind of availability is crucial…the books have to be accessible.

NA: What kind of writers do you seek to publish?  What kinds of work would you never print?

AS: In her history of the press, Judy Hogan mentions looking among the submissions for “those strange fish.” Yes indeed, we look for the strange fish. We love the experimental and political poets—Evie Shockley, Tiffany Higgins, Erica Hunt, Minnie Bruce Pratt and the forthcoming books by L. Lamar Wilson and Lee Ann Brown. On the other hand, I personally love very tightly crafted, musical poetry—like Yvonne Murphy and Karen Anderson. Though of course the categories of political poetry and lyrical poetry are by no means mutually exclusive—what we like best is work that is BOTH. When I read, I read primarily for music, and I have other readers who look for other things. By having a group of readers, we know every author gets a fair shake. My primary poetry readers are all phenomenal poets: Tanya Olson, Chris Vitiello, and Patrick Herron. Many collections that are submitted to us are imperfect—poets don’t always know what works in terms of ordering their poems in a manuscript, nor how the manuscript will change/grow once it gets designed into a book. We can also edit for content within the individual poems—if the book has the right feel overall, it will be a joy to work on—that shift from manuscript to book is actually my favorite part. Again, the challenge has always been to look for the best poetry but also to maintain our goal of publishing underrepresented authors.

I hesitate to use the word never, but there are certain works that we have so far always passed on: Rhymed verse, especially when it’s centered on the page. 19^th-Century-ish poetry or historical poetry. Poetry that appears racist, homophobic or otherwise hostile to our values.  Poetry with illustrations—because it’s too expensive—with the exception that we provided the ISBN and United States distribution for Grey Mare Press and The National Library of Wales’s The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive-Hicks Jenkins. {We are also not interested in genre fiction, plays, or academic writing.}

NA: I grew up in the South, in Virginia, and I don’t know that the South ever fully leaves a person.  I was wondering if you might  say a little bit about your perspective on southern poetry and publishing?

AS: I always feel uncertain about generalizing here, especially since, despite my 30 years in NC, I am not considered a real southerner…

NA: I love that answer!  I am not real either.  But by rights, you are more southern than I.  I think the very fact that you say that tells you a lot about the south.   Could you talk a little bit about the Doris Bakwin award? 

AS: The Doris Bakwin Award for Wrtiting by a Woman is named for my aunt, who died in 2004. In her memory, my uncle Michael Bakwin gave us a start-up grant for this contest for fiction or memoir by a woman. In Doris’s honor, we always look for gutsy, talented writers—strong women who are telling strong stories. The titles in this series are Downriver by Jeanne Leiby, All Eyes: A Mother’s Struggle to Save her Schizophrenic Son by Phoebe Hoss, and Relative Strangers by Margaret Hermes. We are just now selecting finalists for the next book, and we will also be publishing a book by the current judge, Moira Crone.

NA: Somewhere I read that a CWP editor suggested a poetry book costs 60 cents to print. Is that true?

AS: I hope it wasn’t me that said that! It’s true that I have paid as little as 2.50 apiece for a 6x9-inch, 80-page book of poetry to be printed, based on a 1000-copy print run. That is pretty cheap per piece! But then again, $2500 is a big chunk of change to come up with and it’s less of deal once you consider the other costs associated with publishing a book: prize money to the author, design fees for book and press release, mailing of 100 review copies, as well as the fact that the standard discount to distributors is 55%. There is not much of a profit to be made….

Actually, I am surprised that you did not ask any questions about the economic portrait of the press. I think it’s really important to be open about these things

At the time the E.D. left in 2002, the press’s budget was about $17,000 a year, and there was only $79 in the bank!  In the ensuing years, from 2002 to 2012, I brought the budget back into the $30,000 range and we have settled on 2-3 books or projects per year. We survive by virtue of a) grants from the NC Arts Council and the Durham Arts Council, b) gifts from donors, and c) book sales and contest submissions--about equal parts from each. I am one of the major donors to the press, and of course I don’t take a salary, nor do any of the board members. I usually have a part-time worker, an Assistant Director, who works 5 or 10 hours a week for a generous hourly wage. Aside from publishing books, and a part-time assistant, our single greatest expense is attending AWP—that can cost $3000 or more! But it is well worth it—the other attendees are our greatest audience of readers and submitters.

Our main challenges over the 10 years I’ve run the press have been economic. In the1990s there was a lot more grant money around, but since the 2000s began, the money has been slowly drying up. Our grants (and those of other public arts organizations including libraries) have gotten smaller and smaller. At the same time, a weaker economy has meant fewer or smaller contributions from donors, and slower book sales, and following on that, less willingness on the part of bookstores (and libraries) to carry our books. It used to be that our books went straight onto library shelves (meaning that a good part of a print run was quickly sold), but that isn't so anymore.

Two things that have helped us in the last decade: 1) Cheaper printing has meant that we can do larger print runs more cheaply, or choose more interesting (and previously vastly more expensive) trim sizes. 2) By really improving the quality/caliber of the writers we publish, we are selling more books to colleges and universities for use in classrooms. This in turn has meant that college students are getting introduced to our press—and we do find ourselves receiving more entries from the MFA world. (Our attendance at AWP every year also helps!

Ebook publishing, I believe, is affecting the publishing industry as a whole—everyone has had to hurry up and start delivering content for eBook readers. It's much cheaper to produce an eBook than a printed book, and many works are getting a new life as ebooks. We are getting ready to release several of our past fiction collections and memoirs as eBooks. But we have not been satisfied with the eBook formatting of poetry—line breaks get all messed up--so we are waiting for that issue to be resolved before issuing our back poetry titles as eBooks.

NA: Are most of the writers you publish prize-winners? Or do you also solicit manuscripts or have an open reading period? 

AS: For the last several years we have been publishing contest winners (and judges) almost exclusively. We have also published a few poetry collections of poets we know and love— Jaki Shelton Green, Nancy Simpson, and Shirlette Ammons—as well as The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, our recent collaboration with Grey Mare Press and The National Library of Wales. Since I have been doing most the work myself, about 2-3 books or projects a year is all I can handle in addition to being a mom, an equestrian vaulting coach, and a poet myself too.

NA: Will you say a few words about the fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books you publish?    

AS: As for prose—the Doris Bakwin winners are all we have done in the last few years. We published two children’s books, The North Carolina Alphabet and Peace Comes to Ajani in the last few years. The books were beautifully produced, but I am not an expert at marketing children’s literature, so they didn’t find their audiences. Between that, and the fact that color printing is hugely expensive, we are no longer doing children’s literature. But that could change—what gets published has a lot to do with who is on the Board of Directors—and for the past several years we have been poetry-heavy. Who knows what the future may bring, though.

NA: Could you say a few words about your new authors? 

AS: We are right now putting together the next two books in the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series: L. Lamar Wilson’s Sacrilegion and Lee Ann Brown’s Crowns for Charlotte. Both of these books are political and musical at once. They should turn a lot of heads. We are also about to launch Ten Wrens, our first-ever audio sampler of CWP Poets. This cd will be a way to introduce people to poets we have published since 2005, in other words from from Jaki Shelton Green to Lee Ann Brown. Lamar Wilson is a dynamo, with readings scheduled widely next year, starting with Cave Canem in February. Lee Ann Brown is also a frequent reader, so 2013 will be a big poetry year for us.

NA: What are some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press?  Feel free to provide links to reviews, events, readings, etc.

AS: One book I am very proud of is Evie Shockley’s a half-red sea. Evie was one of the first “emerging poets” in the poetry series, paired with Erica Hunt. When Evie’s chapbook The Gorgon Goddess quickly sold out, I asked her to judge the contest and to let us do her first full-length collection. She accepted gladly and we did her book in a wide format with a fold-out page for one poem. Evie hit the ground running with that book—she read/performed as often as she could, she went on panels, she attended conferences—basically she did what I hope all our authors will do—get out there and share the poetry. That’s how the book sells. Of course it has to be excellent writing to begin with! Anyhow, I am so glad I printed 2000 copies of the book because she has really sold it—we are almost to the point of reprinting. Evie’s second book, the new black, came out from Wesleyan UP in 2011, and has been extraordinarily successful. I’m glad she went to another press for that book because I don't think CWP could have handled the promotions at that level. Our job, bringing this talented writer into the mainstream, is done!

By way of ending this perhaps-too-long blog entry, I want to say that my time at CWP has been a wonderful adventure. I have become a publisher through my experiences at CWP, and I have made some wonderful friends through it. I think CWP does an important job bringing writers into the public eye, and also helping writers who are also in academia, get closer to tenure. That job security is so important for poets—if only all our artists could be sustained like that!

And a word to aspiring poets: The CWP poets who are successful are untiring self-promoters: they set up dozens of reading for themselves, they meet with writers groups and classes, attend conferences and book fairs, search out year-end awards that we can submit their books to, and so forth. With the exception of the launch party and the 100 review copies, which the press covers, these poets make these efforts on their own dime, and that is not unusual for poetry. There’s no money in it, never has been—you have to do it for the love of it, of the roll of the words on your tongue, the feel of the paper in your hands.

NA: I would like to end the interview with a poem or excerpt from a Carolina Wren author.  Would you be willing to post one below? 

AS: There are so many wonderful poems to pick from, and from so many wonderful books, as you can see by a glance at our website.

But here’s a short poem from Yvonne C. Murphy’s new collection, Aviaries.

Mona Lisa

It’s a mistake, this mystique.

A technique of thin glazes,
I look like I’m thinking.

He used urine as
a base for me

(I won’t tell you whose).

He also used arsenic—
built-in bomb.

He thought he was a god,
he could have been more generous.

These hands in my lap, perpetual,
I want a pet.

I want a dog
like the other girl got.

Fuck, I hate the Louvre
(pardon my French).

Did I tell you everyone wants me?
Enigma, c’est moi!

All day the tourists—

I’m a girl forgotten
by her womanly body.

My robe is heavy, I need a nap.

----

Andrea Selch joined the board of Carolina Wren Press 2001, after the publication of her poetry chapbook, Succory, which was #2 in the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series. She has an MFA from UNC-Greensboro, and a PhD from Duke University, where she taught creative writing from 1999 until 2003. Her poems have been published in Calyx, The Greensboro Review, Oyster Boy Review, Luna,  Swink, The MacGuffin, Prairie Schooner and featured on the Best American Poetry blog. Her full-length collection of poetry, Startling, was published by Turning Point Press in 2004, and reissued by Cockeyed Press in 2009. In 2007, Choreo Collective danced her “Holy Shell Waiting for the Return of the Soul,” and “Early Weaning” at the biennial symposium of Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center for the Study of Women’s History and Culture. She won a 2008 “Hippo” Award from The Monti for her spoken story, “Replacement Child.” Her small collection of Ekphrastic poems, Boy Returning Water to the Sea: Koans for Kelly Fearing, was published by Cockeyed Press in 2009, and in 2011 her work appeared in The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.   She lives in Hillsborough, NC, with her partner, their two children, and a passel of quadrupeds.

 Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Kelly Forsythe of Copper Canyon Press

NA:  Copper Canyon Press is such a successful independent poetry press.  I simply love the fact that Copper Canyon is for poets only.  But how do you do it?  What makes this press so unique and successful?

KF: Thank you for your kind words about Copper Canyon. I think success in the poetry world is largely defined by having a community who supports your efforts, and Copper Canyon has a terrific community of readers, authors, benefactors, volunteers, board members and staff members. We are lucky to have talented and creative folks working at Copper Canyon who are not only passionate about poetry, but dedicated to getting it into the hands of readers. 

I also think Copper Canyon--and this is something I noticed when I first began working here--is in a constant state of learning. We are continuously educating and reeducating ourselves on the changing ways of the industry as well as seeking out new authors, translators and diversifying our book lists. We are turning 40 years old this year—it’s definitely been a communal effort with lots of branches, stems, leaves and roots.

NA: Who came up with the name, Copper Canyon?

KF: Our founders decided on the name “Copper Canyon.” It refers a large, open pit copper mine in the western mountains of Utah (as the story goes, it was a sacred spot for some jewelry-making Utes).

NA: What are some of the struggles and the rewards of working with an independent poetry press?

KF: I see the struggles of working with an independent poetry press as part of the rewards. Though I cannot speak for everyone, I think the majority of people working in the poetry publishing industry are aware of the financial challenges of nonprofits and understand that trends in sales are going to be strikingly different than, say, the launch of the iPhone 5.

However, I get to work with some of the nation’s most talented, fiery, intelligent writers. I’m able to interact with poetry on a level that continues to push my intellectual boundaries. Working for an independent press has had dynamic effects on my own poetry--my job has profoundly effected my personal life in a positive and intensely productive way.

I feel a potent, aggressive and ardent sense of gratitude for what I do. When I was studying in Chicago, my MFA thesis instructor Jaswinder Bolina called my attention to how lucky we are, as Americans, to be able to study the art of poetry. Many other countries have economic or socio-economic issues that prevent people from even attending college, let alone attending college to study poetry. I’ve never forgotten this and feel the sentiment carries over into my work with Copper Canyon. It’s not so much that the rewards surpass the struggles, but that the struggles enrich—and in some cases create—the rewards.

NA:  Whenever I hear the name Copper Canyon, I think of Pulitzers and National Book Awards.  Maybe you could say a few words about your recent prize-winning collections. (Feel free to include links to the books, reviews, etc.)

KF: One of our most recent prize-winning collections is Laura Kasischke’s Space, in Chains, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Space, in Chains is one of those collections that captures contemporary domesticity with such sharpness and, as Stephen Burt writes in his NBCC review, “At times the poems are undoubtedly ‘confessional,’ derived from traumatic moments in the poet’s own life. And yet the same poems that look to Kasischke’s experience ask us briskly to look to our own...”.  It’s a startling, graceful collection.

C.D. Wright’s One with Others won the 2010 Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Wright did an interview for the National Book Foundation where she says, “Every poet I know is trying to write their way through the vortex of discourses, and moreover, to write against a massive sense of helplessness.” It’s hard not to be profoundly effected by that statement, or by the investigation being done in One with Others.

NA:  I am always looking for poetry books in translation.  Copper Canyon Press has a nice selection.  Is it a challenge to market translations?  If so, what do you do to overcome that challenge? Do you have any new books in translation coming out?  If so, could you post a short excerpt?  And maybe provide a link?  

KF: Ah, happy to hear you’re interested in translations! W.S. Merwin’s Selected Translations is forthcoming very soon (you can read a review of it at Publishers Weekly), along with Sun at Midnight, translations of Muso Soseki’s work (2013). Much further down the line in the spring of 2013 is New Poems: Rilke, translated by Joseph Cadora. I don’t feel that it’s “challenging” to market translations, though it’s certainly different than working with English-only poetry collections. I think there’s a huge opportunity to find new readership when you publish (or publicize) translations. It allows Copper Canyon to navigate the landscapes of other countries: our translators help us better understand who the readers of poetry are in China, Japan, and so on. It’s invaluable, really, to have that kind of knowledge, and I think we are all grateful for the trans-cultural insights we get each time a translation gets sent down the rail.

 NA:  Do you also publish books on craft?

KF:  We have in the past, Theodore Roethke’s On Poetry & Craft is one example. In the words of our Executive Editor Michael Wiegers, they are more “the exception, not the rule.” The Press’s mission, first and foremost, is to put poetry into the hands of people. So when it comes to considering new manuscripts, Michael is focused on primarily poetry collections—however, if the right book on craft came along, it would certainly be taken into consideration. A PC answer, I know, but true. 

NA:  Your book covers are really beautiful.  Who designs them?

KF:   We have two designers, Valerie Brewster and Phil Kovacevich who regularly work on the cover designs of our titles. In addition to these two graphic designers, Michael and Tonaya Thompson, our Managing Editor, focus lots of time and energy on book design...not to mention the author themselves, who have a hand in selecting artwork and providing feedback on the covers of their collections. For example, the cover of Dean Young’s newest collection Bender: New & Selected is a painting by Young: you can see it here; and Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec cover features a photograph of her actual brother.

NA:  How does one become a Copper Canyon poet?

KF: Well...I’m going to go (indirectly) with John Keats on this one. It’s like his theory, a “Mansion of Many Apartments.” Essentially, Copper Canyon is a house with many rooms, and each room represents a different aesthetic, poetic concern, theme, topic, etc. Just as each room in a house has a different key or “way to get in,” so does Copper Canyon. There is no one way to become a Copper Canyon poet. I’m not an authority on the editorial aspect of book selection, but I know Michael Wiegers is a firm believer in brilliance; i.e. brilliant writing that reaches the public both emotionally and intellectually. We occasionally find poets through recommendations, we occasionally solicit specific poets, and we read every submission that come into our mailbox.

NA:  I am such a fan of one of your new poets, Natalie Diaz.  Her collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, is stunning.   On the one hand, her poetry speaks of her Native American childhood, and on the other, it is surreal, melodic, and darkly visionary.  I would love you to talk a little bit about her work.

KF: I agree, it’s “darkly visionary” and stunning. I think Natalie Diaz’s poetry speaks to a community of voices that have been historically underrepresented. What’s so fascinating about her writing is how rich in emotion it is while still tackling politically and socially relevant subjects. When My Brother Was an Aztec is not just gently approaching “identity” or “culture,” it’s full-on embracing the collision of language and society, language and love, language and community, and so on. The poems move tactfully between tenderness and brutality so the reader gains quite a realistic picture of her personal life in addition to a more global insight on Native American society. 

NA:  Could you mention some other new and forthcoming titles?  Maybe provide links to interviews, reviews, etc.

KF: Absolutely—we have a great upcoming Spring / Summer 2013 season with collections by Bob Hicok (Elegy Owed, forthcoming in March), W.S. Merwin (Collected Haiku of Buson), former Yale Younger Poet and doctor Fady Joudah (Alight), Kwame Dawes (Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected), Lisa Olstein (poems from her collection Little Stranger will be featured in an album by the band Cold Satellite), Ed Skoog (Rough Day), Tishani Doshi (Everything Begins Elsewhere) and Jane Miller (Thunderbird).

There is also Brenda Shaughnessy’s newest collection Our Andromeda (she has a recent review in The New Yorker where the poems are referred to as “vulnerable, heartbroken, mean, vengeful, and thrilling.”). New York Times bestselling memoirist Stephen Kuusisto has a new collection of poetry due out soon called Letters to Borges, along with Mark Twain Award winner Dan Gerber with Sailing Through Cassiopeia, Tung-Hui Hu (Greenhouses, Lighthouses), and Tom Hennen (Darkness Sticks to Everything: New & Collected).

Dean Young’s Bender: New and Selected has just hit the ground running. We also have some exciting books by debut poets like James Arthur (Charms Against Lightning) and the APR / Honickman Prize Winner Tomas Q. Morin (A Larger Country) that are absolutely polished and beautiful works.

NA:  I would like to close the interview with a poem from a Copper Canyon poet.

KF: While I don’t have one favorite CCP poem, I heard Matthew Zapruder read this poem at the Denver AWP in 2010 (before I began working at Copper Canyon) and it struck me as the kind of poem that can make you laugh, but also intensely consider your entire life’s work and commitment to poetry—yes, I wish I was being hyperbolic. It’s from his collection, Come on All You Ghosts (2011) and you can also find it online at The Poetry Foundation website.

The Prelude

Oh this Diet Coke is really good,
though come to think of it it tastes
like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,
or an acquaintance of chocolate
speaking fondly of certain times
it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,
or nothing remembering a field
in which it once ate the most wondrous
sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese
yet still wished for a piece of chocolate
before the lone walk back through
the corn then the darkening forest
to the disappointing village and its super
creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair
I returned to the city. Something
seemed to be waiting for me.
Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth
wrote he would even were it “nothing
better than a wandering cloud”
have followed which of course to me
and everyone sounds amazing.
All I follow is my own desire,
sometimes to feel, sometimes to be
at least a little more than intermittently
at ease with being loved. I am never
at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk
and look at the brightly colored
houses filled with lives, not with night
when I lie on my back and listen,
not with the hallway, definitely
not with baseball, definitely
not with time. Poor Coleridge, son
of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel
the energy. No present joy, no cheerful
confidence, just love of friends and the wind
taking his arrow away. Come to the edge
the edge beckoned softly. Take
this cup full of darkness and stay as long
as you want and maybe a little longer.

 

Kelly Forsythe is the publicist for Copper Canyon Press. She has poems forthcoming or published in Black Warrior Review, Columbia Poetry Review and The Minnesota Review. In 2011, she was featured in American Poet as an Academy of American Poets “Emerging Poet.”

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Kate Gale of Red Hen Press

NA: Red Hen Press looks like a fairly large and sophisticated operation. Located in Pasadena, you offer several awards in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. And you have two other imprints, Arktoi and Boreal Books. And you offer literacy programs in the schools . . . How do you manage all that?

Dr. Kate Gale

KG: Red Hen is in Los Angeles where the cultural noise level is high. To make any kind of difference, you have to work hard at building community. We’re able to do all the things we do—20 books a year, the two imprints, two issues of The Los Angeles Review, $5,000 in awards, a Writing in the Schools program, an active presence at international book fairs such as London, Frankfurt, Guadalajara—because we have good staff people who are very organized and don’t waste time, an outgoing and energetic managing editor, and a publisher who cares deeply about books and book design. We’re constantly trying to improve our methods and operations, to make production, publicity, marketing, and development more efficient and effective.

NA: Why is it called Red Hen? I keep thinking of the little red hen who planted the seed, and cut the corn, and took it to mill, and baked the bread and ate it all herself. Is there some reference here?

KG: You got it. In the beginning, we wanted to be a collective, but typically for sprawl cities, two of us ended up doing all the work, so when we became a 501(c)3 we decided to be Red Hen Press. In poetry, everyone wants to eat the bread—get published—but most people don’t want to plant the wheat and knead the dough. The actual work of putting together books and getting them out into the literary culture in such a way that someone will read them is daunting to most.

NA: Could you talk a little bit about the different contests the press sponsors?

KG: We conduct three contests ourselves, and two in conjunction with other organizations. The Benjamin Saltman Award, for an original unpublished poetry collection, is named after my poetry teacher, a fine Southern California poet. It’s for $3,000 and has been won by some outstanding poets. Our first winner was Gaylord Brewer, several of whose books we’ve now published, most recently Give Over, Graymalkin. The last two winners are Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, whose But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise came out in March of 2012, and Brynn Saito, whose The Palace of Contemplating Departure will come out in March of 2013. We also have the Red Hen Short Fiction Award and the Red Hen Poetry Prize, both for $1,000. The winning pieces are published in The Los Angeles Review. We choose new final judges for all three awards every year and all the initial reading is done by the Managing Editor and Publisher.

Every year, we also publish the winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, for the best unpublished poetry collection by a woman. Every other year, we publish the winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, for a second or third full-length collection by a Latino or Latina poet. Each of those winners also receives $1,000. 

NA: Are most of the writers you publish prize-winners? Or do you also solicit manuscripts or have an open reading period?

KG: Of the 20 books we publish each year, two are the imprints, one is the Ben Saltman Award, one is the AROHO winner, and every other year one is the Letras Latinas winner, so that leaves 15 or 16 slots depending on the year. Our core poetry authors take up the rest of the poetry slots, so we are not acquiring new poets. But our prose list is still in progress. Our open reading period is the month of June and we accept work from agents throughout the year.

NA: Will you say a few words about Arktoi Books?

KG: I asked Arktoi’s Editor, the poet Eloise Klein Healy (whose new and selected, A Wild Surmise, comes out in March of 2012) to answer this one. Here’s what she said: “Red Hen Press was my first choice of publisher to approach about an imprint. I had come to the conclusion that lesbian writers weren't being published in the numbers I had grown used to and I wanted to do something to give them more opportunities. Also, I felt that the lesbian community had reached a new stage and the writing should reflect that literary and political growth. I felt I wanted to publish books that spoke to the whole world, that would find a way to many audiences, that would reflect the intelligent and challenging work I knew was out there waiting to find its way into books. And, a book is still a ticket, so Arktoi exists to put tickets in the hands of fabulous writers who happen to be lesbian women.”

NA: And Boreal Books? I am such a fan of that book, Double Moon, by the artist Margo Klass and the writer, Frank Soos.

KG: Boreal Books brings out one title a year by a writer from Alaska.  So far we've had a book by Eva Saulitis, a marine biologist who studies killer whales in Prince William Sound.  Leaving Resurrection contains essays that deal with questions science doesn't let her ask.  The second title is Double Moon, the book you admire--intricate box constructions by Margo Klass and brief responses crafted by Frank Soos.  Full color and a sophisticated design make that book especially gorgeous.  Our third title is a book of poems, A Measure's Hush, by Anne Coray, who lives subsistence on the north shore of Lake Clark.  No road leads to her cabin, but these poems can get you there.  She's an artist, musician, and poet.  This year's Boreal Book is a novel in poems by Nicole Stellon O'Donnell.  She went into the Alaska and Polar Regions collection at Rasmuson Library and found a cache of 600 letters to and from one of the first women to come to Fairbanks during the Gold Rush.  Nicole got ideas for characters and a story line and wrote Steam Laundry.  The Boreal Books series spotlights the finest new writing from Alaska.

NA: How long has Red Hen Press been in existence? How has it evolved over time?

KG: We started in 1994 as a poetry press. By 1997, we were also publishing prose, and at this point, nearly half the list is prose. We’ve become a national press with four reading series in Los Angeles and four in New York.  Our editorial direction has always been to embrace the work of outsiders, but now that has evolved to include publishing books by established authors whose new books are too risky for New York, like Ron Carlson’s Room Service, a hybrid work of poetry, prose poetry, and micro-fiction, or David Maine’s An Age of Madness, a truly haunting novel. We publish work by such disparate authors as Camille Dungy, John Barr, Doug Kearney, David Mason, Chris Abani, and Lisa Krueger.

NA: Is there any way to describe what kind of writers you seek to publish? Or maybe what kinds of work you would never print?

Monday Cartoons by Nin Andrews

Monday Cartoons by Nin Andrews

 

For more of Nin Andrews' cartoons and commentary, visit her blogs:  Nin Andrews, Fracking Comics, and Physics Comics.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Geoffrey Gatza of BlazeVOX

NA: I love your description of BlazeVOX: “We are an independent publisher of weird little books.”  Would you elaborate on the weird little books you publish?

GA: Hurray, I am glad you like our description. It started out as a descriptive joke but then developed into the best abstract of our mission statement.

BlazeVOX [books] Mission Statement

BlazeVOX [books] presents innovative fictions and wide ranging fields of contemporary poetry. Our books push at the frontiers of what is possible with our innovative poetry, fiction and select non-fiction and literary criticism. Our fundamental mission is to disseminate poetry, through print and digital media, both within academic spheres and to society at large.

We seek to publish the innovative works of the greatest minds writing poetry today, from the most respected senior poets to extraordinarily promising young writers. We select for publication only the highest quality of writing on all levels regardless of commercial viability. Our outlets of publication strive to enrich cultural and intellectual life, and foster regional pride and accomplishments.

BlazeVOX [books] consciously acquires a collection of titles providing focus, continuity, and a basis for the development of future publications. Through the publication of works of significance, BlazeVOX [books] is committed to the dissemination of knowledge.

NA:  How long has BlazeVOX been in existence?  How has it evolved over time?

GG:  BlazeVOX started off as a college project while I was at Daemen College, Amherst, NY in 1998. The school is near Buffalo so our contacts with poets and poetry are vibrant. I wanted to start a creative writing journal but we only had a budget of $100. I took that, bought a copy of Dreamweaver and learned how to design web pages. I used this format for the college journal and it was a great success. In 2000 I started BlazeVOX as the online journal was gaining momentum. The goal of the journal is to present innovative fictions and wide ranging fields of contemporary poetry. Our main goal is to provide good quality poetry. The technology allows for a very low overhead in our operation. We moved into book production, as there was a real market for us to expand our horizons, and once the Print on Demand systems began, we hopped right on board. The technology had been awful up until 2004 but now is fantastic. We have published 280 books and over 1000 writers in our online journal and other outlets. Our family of fine writers includes Kent Johnson, Bill Berkson, Anne Waldman, Clayton Eshleman, Lee Ann Brown, Tom Clark, Ray Federman and Gloria Frym and many, many more. I do think that I have succeeded in our aims. Through publishing hundreds of books and poems online we have been able to make a huge impact on the poetry world.

NA:  Have you always been the editor? 

GG:  Yes I have, but I have had a lot of help along the way. We have a few volunteer staff members that help in the choosing of books, ebooks and pieces for the online journal. Most of the actual editing of the books is a collaborative process between the author and the press. We work together to make the best book we can and I am very happy with the way that I am able to engage on each book. I am more of an open spirit when it comes my editorial style. I hesitate to put myself into the poet’s poems, or a fiction writer’s realm. I have a trusting intuition in our authors and I believe in them and their work. We have a very small operation so in many cases I am also the overall book designer, photographer for many of the book covers, web manager of online content, blogger, manage the accounting and any other job that needs doing. It is a wonderful life and I am thrilled to be a publisher. 

NA:  How does one become a BlazeVOX author?

GG:  It’s a very simple process; one sends his or her work to us by email. If the work fits in with the audience we have cultivated then we look to see how viable that work would best project. We have many outlets of publication, an online journal, ebooks, kindle books and printed books. So there are many ways in which we can promote poets and writers. We do have one guiding philosophy; the work must not suck. We are open to established writers as well as emerging voices and for one to feel that one’s work is of quality is an important step in being a writer and we want to support that. But we also get work that just does not fit into our scope of publishing and in many cases I forward those writers on to presses that concentrate on their specialty. As of right now we have over nine hundred good quality manuscripts on hand and we continue to receive more. It is very exciting that there is so much great writing going on right now.

NA: You publish authors from around the world.  Can you talk about the International aspect of press?

GG:  We have published poetry and fiction books from many countries including Japan, Scotland, Ireland, England, Greece, France and Canada. We now have distribution to many of these countries through their local Amazon.com; which will help increase our exposure to these countries. So the press, through the wonders of the internet, has made leaps and bounds across the English speaking world. It is exciting to reach such a vast audience of readers and writers and I am looking forward to what can happen in the future. It has been a wonderful experience to work with writers from so many countries and I have learned a great deal. But one aspect is the same, writers have the similar concerns regardless of country; they all want a well designed book that reflects who they are as a writer and that their writing conveys in print what they envisioned in their mind.

NA:  I am a huge fan of one of your authors, Tom Clark.  How many books of Tom’s have you published?  I was wondering if you could say a few words about him.

GG:  Tom is awesome. We have just finished up on his fourth BlazeVOX book, Distance. We have also all available, the Tom Clark Set which includes all four of his titles, including At the Fair, Canyonesque and Feeling for the Ground. I am fond of all Tom’s books of poetry, novels, essays and biographies. He has embodied the literary life and it was a real honor to publish his new works, poems that seem to get stronger and stronger. He is on an incline right now and it might be time for a major retrospective of his life’s work. This is the reason I so enjoy being a poet and publishing poets, one can get old, is allowed to age with dignity in their field. One gets wiser, more refined in one’s talents and how one is able to achieve in a poem the lessons learned over a lifetime. It makes me look forward to what the future holds in store for us all. 

NA:  I am also a fan of Tom’s blogs, both his personal blog and the BlazeVOX blog.  He does such a beautiful job of linking poetry and art and photography.  How helpful is it for the press to have these blogs? 

GG:  I too enjoy Tom’s blog. Just today he has mixed wonderful black and white photos of downward facing staircases with a poem by one of our new authors, Beth Copland. There is a considerable readership of Tom’s blog, 2000 page views on a normal day. It is an excellent, non-traditional form of advertising, announcing, and directing to those who are interested in this kind of writing. Our blog is also the best form of announcing new publications and other bits of BlazeVOX information. Social media is in its heyday now and blogs are very much in the public eye. Our recent imbroglio, you can read about fully here in a recent Huffington Post interview. The whole event erupted and subsided in the blogosphere and on Facebook. It then took on a life in newspapers, essays and more traditional forms of media. Thankfully that has all been resolved favorably. But to actually answer your question about how helpful our blog is, I would have to say that our blog gives us an outlet, the ability to add a face, or rather a personality to the press. We are able to address visitors to the BlazeVOX site and deliver our latest information about new books, new reviews, book-tours and readings of our authors and other tidbits of data that might be of use. This way we have our web presence as a destination, a place to read and be current with all that is going on.

NA:  Could you say a few words about your newest authors?  Is there any one thing that might categorize them as BlazeVOX writers?

GG:  Here is a brief list of ten new and forthcoming titles that give a good idea of what we enjoy publishing. You can read a preview of these books in the new section of the BlazeVOX Journal – Book Preview. They are all available on Amazon.com, SPD and in our own online shop.

A N   A N A T O M Y   O F   T H E   N I G H T  by Clayton Eshleman (Poetry)

Comma Fork / Moving Parts by Ted Greenwald (Poetry)

“now, 1/3” and thepoem by Demosthenes Agrafiotis  
   Translated by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis (Poetry in translation)

Distance by Tom Clark (Poetry)

Transcendental Telemarketer by Beth Copeland (Poetry)

Mylar by Eric Wertheimer (Poetry)

Circles Matter by Brian Lucas (Poetry)

to go without blinking by Aimee Herman (Poetry)

Continental Drifts by Cheryl Pallant (Poetry)

Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins
   Edited by Barbara Henning (Fiction and interviews)

One aspect that binds these books together might be that they all push the bounds of what one thinks of as a poem and prose. That frayed area of what is possible is still an open frontier, one which we enjoy exploring. In picking books for publication we try to choose the best manuscripts available at the time. We try to not choose a school, or movement or any one aesthetic that would categorize the authors. That is a bit unfair to them and their work, as they write as individuals and their work stands independent of any one book. But there is overlap; communications between books and authors tend to develop in both positive and negative ways, this is unavoidable and we try to incorporate that as a form of serendipity. It is an unusual moment for poetry and it's production, but it is a glorious time as well and I am thrilled to be a part of it.

NA:  Can you talk to me about the fiction you publish?

GG:  We have an exciting list of great fiction titles from some of the best experimental voices writing today. You can see the list here, but some authors are Mark Wallace, Dennis Barone, Tom Carey, Christine Hamm, Norma Kassirer and coming out in the fall is a collected edition of fiction and interviews with Bobbie Louise Hawkins.

NA:  A lot of presses are funded by universities and/or contests, but I believe BlazeVOX is an entirely independent press. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an independent press?

GG:  We are an independent press and it is wonderful. Right now we are working on getting our not-for-profit status and we will be ready to meet the future with a bit more certainty and foundation. There are many advantages not being associated with a university. We have the absolute authority to publish any book we want while avoiding committee think. We have the ability to publish the ill-advised as easily as work from promising writers. We navigate blithely through political and artistic/theoretical differences so that the many voices of the innovative poet can have a safe refuge. There are as many disadvantages to being on our own that revolve around the instability of life. It is a precarious situation with no real salary, university grade health insurance, a form of tenure, and so on. But I wouldn’t trade this situation for anything. 

NA:  Could you describe some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press?  Feel free to provide links to reviews, events, readings, etc.

GG: The happiest moments of the press have been quite recent. Our survival through rousing support of writers, reader and scholars may be categorized as one or two of the saddest, bewildering, discouraging, resounding, glorious, hope-filled moments in my life. I am thrilled by the quality of work we publish and are able to live up to the standards we have set for ourselves in our mission statement. We have had over 50,000 books sold through several outlets and that is fine number of objects to place into the world, considering we are Print on Demand, there is a big demand for poetry and alternative forms of literature. I also base our success in how well respected and beloved BlazeVOX has become. It is a wonderful feeling to work with such talented writers, and I have been able to work with my literary heroes.

NA:  I was thinking it would be nice to end the interview with a quote or excerpt from one of your books to give us a taste of what BlazeVOX has to offer.

GG:  You can read a preview of ten new and forthcoming books in the new section of the BlazeVOX Journal – Book Preview. And here are two poems from two new books by Tom Clark and by Aimee Herman. 

From: Distance by Tom Clark (Poetry)

 THE ROCK

Again, and again
to return
to the rock
face, asking
the same
questions
of the mute
stone
oracle. How
long, then?  And
if not
now, when?

 

From: to go without blinking by Aimee Herman (Poetry)

go get yourself loved

 Ninety milligrams of side effects will not remove his lisp. On a Friday, he slathers Federico García Lorca over vocal chords like controlled cologne that reeks of Granada. Calls his tongue a Communist, as it slurs war into his teeth. Beside him, a girl grabs his knee and squeezes an erection off his taste buds. The swelling distracts his s’s; suddenly he is cured.  She took off her socks and climbed her way through stinging nettle and curious ivy. It was the histamine that took notice of her triangular bones jutting, the pull of skin, the color of cockleshells or plaster. Twenty-minutes later, she brought peeled fingernails toward ankles and itched the irritant away. She was not ready for a relationship at this time. What happened is this. She closed her eyes, which she pretended were moss—not the color but the plant—knees bent in the only way they could and found Braille between her legs. Upon further examination, she attempted amputation. Pink wigged man intrigues red haired lady at basement bathhouse. She drips oiled wax along the seam of his arm, which is veined like skirt steak and dotted with drops of hair. It is his birthday and buttercream-covered penguins decorate his cake. Her pale pink fingers press into his bleached and blotted forearm, his wrist, above his elbow. She nods when he asks her, “Do you like men who dress as women?” She shakes her head when he offers to tie her up like Christmas or roast beef.

 

---

Geoffrey Gatza has received awards for his poetry from the Fund for Poetry and a Boomerang Award. He is the author House of Forgetting, Secrets of my Prison House (BlazeVOX) Kenmore: Poem Unlimited (Casa Menendez 2009) and Not So Fast Robespierre (Menendez Publishing 2008) and HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage Press 2008), He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now entering it's eleventh year.  His visual art poems have been displayed in gallery showing. Recently, OCCUPY THE WALLS: A Poster Show, AC Gallery (NYC) 2011 occupy wall street N15 For Ernst Jandl - Minimal Poems with photography from the fall of Liberty Square. And in, LANGUAGE TO COVER A WALL: Visual Poetry through its changing media, UB ART GALLERY (Buffalo, NY) 2011/12 Language for the Birds. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his girlfriend and two cats. Find out more about Geoffrey here.

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

Marilyn Monroe Pinup [by Nin Andrews]

Nin Andrews: How to Write the MFA Poem

Tom Clark, on his estimable blog today, posts Nin Andrews's must-read "Learning to Write the MFA Poem." (Click here.) We printed the poem in its entirety on February 22, 2010, as you'll see if you use this link, but I can't resist offering this excerpt:

there is a certain kind of poem I was taught to write
when I was earning what my husband calls my mail-order degree
from a low-res program in the Northeast.  And I guess
I would call this kind of poem an MFA poem,
though the truth is, I never learned to write one very well
(though this is one of them, or is trying to be),
but I do see them everywhere now, these MFA poems,
which I despise, not because the poems are bad
but because I was taught how to write them
by this asshole professor (he was such a creep)
who was abusive to women, mostly,
fucked with their heads if not their bodies,
you know the type.  Back then
the women took whatever he dished out
because he was famous I guess.
I hated that, and how he would write poems
about being an asshole, which he was and is,
and about everything and anything else
because, he would explain, everything is happening at once,
so everything is happening in his poems, and happening so fast,
that the past, present, and future are all there in the poems
though nothing is ever really happening
because the poems are usually in some static place

The next stanza takes the poem to that particular place and does amazing things with the set-up. It's a tour de force -- the truth, the poetry, and the parody are one. Mega kludos, Nin.

I remember writing a poem called "The Guggenheim Poem," aping the kind of poems people used to write on their fellowship year funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The poems uusally took place in Italy -- in Venice, often, but sometimes Florence or Rome, with side trips to Siena, and maybe Arezzo, and certainly Rapollo, and once in a while Naples. The poet had gone to a museum in a flimsy skirt in the fierce heat and the eyes of the men were upon her as she walked on the hot brick or cobblestone streets and she wore sunglasses and imagined she was Audrey Hepburn but all pretense and fantasy fell away when she came face to face with the Titian of Venus and Adonis or the David of Donatello in Florence or Piero's madonna and child in Urbino or a Giorgione self-portrait in Venice, which she saw as a vision of her father or her husband, she's not sure which, though she has spent many hours analyzing the possibilities, but this she knows this: it was a sudden flash, an epiphany even, like seeing a broken statue and realizing you had to change your life. -- DL

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Lisa Bowden of Kore Press

NA:  Kore Press was founded in 1993.  What specific event, or series of events, inspired you to start a press

Lisa Bowden

LB:  I had worked with another small press (Chax Press) for five years since my internship with them my senior year at the University of Arizona, learning letterpress printing, binding, typography, and literary organizing. Anything I could do, really---I loved it all and was inspired. I was ready to do my own thing at that point and wanted it to be just about women's writing. There were so much talent in Tucson at that time (still is) and such a paucity of women in the canon. My friend Karen Falkenstrom (poet, organizer) and I talked at length about the need for such a press, and over coffee at a cafe in downtown Tucson in 1992, the seeds of Kore Press were sewn. 

NA: Why a women’s press? 

LB: When I was going through the University, I was exposed to fewer women writers than male writers. I was hungry for what women had to say about just about anything. We did some research and found very few women's presses, and none in Arizona. We both knew a lot of female poets and writers and started publishing those writers whose work we knew and admired.

NA:  Have we come a long way as women authors?  And do we still have a long way to go?

LB: Check out vida.com for the most current and up to date statistics on how women are fairing compared to men when it comes to being published or being reviewed. Which isn't to say women are writing, or going into MFA programs. We figured at one point a few years ago that, if you accept that an MFA program is one indicator for how many folks are becoming writers out there at any given time, that there are an equal number of men as there are women taking up the craft, if not a smidge more women. The numbers start getting disparate along the gender lines when things like money and who is making editorial decisions come into play. We see a helluva lot fewer women having by-lines in the most prestigious journals and newspapers, as we see fewer women in the best-of lists each year, and in the major publishing house lists.

NA: How has the press evolved?

LB: I used to set moveable type by hand, mix inks, and print each page by hand on 19th c printing equipment in an old warehouse house that leaked when it rained. The interns and I worked regular jobs at night so we could be in the studio during the day. I crawled on top of the old metal roof to fix a squeaky swamp cooler, and fixed the presses when they didn't work. It took over a year to bring our first book out, and I used to run to poetry readings with the ink still drying on broadsides that we pretty much just hot off the press.

We asked friends to empty their pockets to help us buy paper and get things going the first year while we formed an organization that could apply for grants. 19 years later there are still marks of being a small press, which are primarily about resources, but we are staffed by a few part-time employees, interns from the University, and a volunteer Board. 

We have garnered national recognition in the past year with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Book Foundation. We were picked by the local arts agency for excellence in the category of established arts organization. Judges of our Poetry and Fiction Awards are world class, and we produced and toured a play based on writings by women in the US military--a first ever book of its kind (published by Kore).  Our after school writing as social activism workshop for girls and transgender youth is being studied by a research collaborative at the University of Arizona as part of a project funded by the Ford Foundation. We are currently in the midst of our first major donor campaign, and we are about to undergo intensive planning and strategizing conversations to explore national expansion.

NA: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a feminist press?

LB: You are always forced to make a case for yourself as a feminist press (aren't identity politics so 90s??) and forced to explain what it means to be feminist, which is a variable, changing thing. For Kore, it is about making a contribution toward closing the gender gap in a very particular field (literary writing and girls education), which happens to be connected, I think, to just about everything else. 

NA: How many books do you publish each year?  How does one become a Kore author?  

LB: We currently publish about 6 titles/year, including broadsides and chapbooks. A writer can submit to Kore through one of our annual contests (First Book Award for Poetry and the Short Fiction Award) as well as through our annual open submissions period where our team of reader-writers comments on/responds to each manuscript if it is not recommended for publication. We sometimes receive manuscripts from previous authors and editors who are championing another author or manuscript. Even more rare, do we solicit work from a particular writer. 

NA: How do you promote your authors?

LB:  We work collaboratively with all our authors to promote and market the books through a big web presence by getting reviews on blogs and in print, by helping authors set up websites, facebook pages, or even blogs. We go through our mailing lists, media contacts, bookstore lists, alumni mags, etc---anyone who will help spread the word of the book or help sell it. Our distributor is IPG. We sell to individuals on-line; we attend the AWP, and sometimes host authors and generally try to be creative.

NA:  I was wondering if you might say a few words about your current and forthcoming books.  Maybe provide links to any interviews, reviews, or events?

LB: We have three great new titles coming out this month: Jennifer Barber (editor of the journal Salamander) second book of poems, Given Away, is due out in a few weeks; Michelle Chan Brown's Double Agent, 2011First Book winner selected by Bhanu Kapil, is forthcoming soon as well; and Patricia Grace King's short story "The Death of Carrrie Bradshaw"---winner of the Kore Press Short Fiction Award, selected by Antonya Nelson in 2011. We also are issuing a limited edition broadside of a poem by Niki Herd with a photo by Mamta Popat. 

NA:  Would you describe some of the worst and some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press? 

LB:  I am very proud of what the work of the Press has done toward making other's lives better: the writer's whose careers the Press helped launch; the healing for the writers in and the readers of "Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq" (and the subsequent play based on the same work). Happy moment: receiving the Innovations in Reading Prize from the National Book Foundation last November at the Ford Foundation in NY, and the gala NBF Awards ceremony where it was announced  that Nikky Finney, who is judging Kore's First Book Award contest this year, won for "Head Off and Split" for best poetry. Happy moment: feeding 40 people at an early Kore fundraiser with a meal created from 200 pounds of tuna I caught with my father in Baja and drove across the desert, on ice, in a little read pick up truck.

Worst: there are as many of these as there are good times, over 19 years, but the sting seems to fade in the telling: over-glued spines/manufacturer's defect in a box of books that arrived from printer days before a national book launch; computer crash the day of an NEA grant deadline; grant writer crying on the post office floor when she realized she'd missed the last postmark (in the days when grant were snail mailed); lost files; lost friends; lost funding; lost sleep; lost love; having to stop printing by hand; selling the presses. . . the passing of heros: Allen Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, Adrienne Rich, Akilah Oliver.

Lisa Bowden, Publisher and co-founder of Kore Press, is the editor of Autumnal: An Audio Collection of Contemporary Elegies, and co-editor of Powder: Writing by Women in Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq. Recently Lisa co-adapted, directed, and produced Coming in Hot (a play based on Powder). An award-winning graphic designer and a poet who works improvisationally with dancers and musicians, Bowden's poems have appeared online in Spiral Orb and Backroom Live!, and have been read outloud in the subway systems of Washington, DC. She is the recipient of the 2011 Maryanne Campau Fellowship for Poetry from the University of Arizona Poetry Center and a 2011 Women on the Move Award from the YWCA. Bowden serves on the advisory board of Girls Write Now, NY, and is a graduate of the University of Arizona. Lisa has lived in New Jersey, London, Barcelona and is a long-time resident of Tucson, where she resides with her partner Eve and daughter Djuna. 

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow her on Twitter: @NinAndrew.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy of Two Sylvias Press

Annette Spaulding-Convy

Kelli Russell Agodon

 

NA:  You decided to start a press called Two Sylvias Press, right?   Will you talk a little about the process of creating your press? 

KRA/ASC: The idea for our press’s first project, Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, came about on a ferry ride to meet a friend in Seattle for brunch. We were intrigued by eBooks and we noticed that very few poetry collections were available on electronic platforms. In talking about the anthology, we realized that if we began our own press, we could publish the eBook exactly how we envisioned it, without having to compromise and wrangle with other editors.

What’s interesting is that neither of us had ever said, “You know, I’d like to start my own press.”  We are both editors at Crab Creek Review  and we know how much work goes into putting together a literary journal. We are also poets ourselves, so we appreciate time for our own work.  Our press organically evolved from the realization that we could publish our projects ourselves without asking permission from anyone and that we could determine our own subject matter, style, and deadlines.  Once we decided to create the Fire On Her Tongue anthology, the logical next step for us was to publish it ourselves, and that’s how Two Sylvias Press came into being.

NA: How did you come up with the name, Two Sylvias Press?

KRA:  We wanted to combine the editorial business savvy of Sylvia Beach (who began Shakespeare & Co. in Paris) and the literary brilliance of Sylvia Plath.  We feel that these two women represent the two sides of our press and parts of ourselves. Although the two Sylvias were not contemporaries, our logo (painted by Nancy Lou Canyon) depicts them sitting at a table, editor and poet, discussing a book.

NA: Will you only publish e-books? 

KRA:  We plan to continue publishing eBooks and several upcoming projects will involve print books. Because we publish Crab Creek Review twice a year, we are familiar with the production of printed books and have learned the details of the process. We recently read an interesting article predicting that “bundling” eBooks with a printed copy will become popular among publishers, so we are intrigued by that possibility. We are still a new press and we are definitely open to new ideas in the publishing arena.

NA: How does your partnership work?  Have you worked on other projects together?

ASC: Kelli and I have been friends for over ten years. We have co-edited Crab Creek Review for four years and have worked as co-founders of Two Sylvias Press for nearly two years, and we’re still friends! I think the success of our partnership is best illustrated by cupcakes and hard-boiled eggs: Kelli likes the frosting and I like the cake. Kelli likes the white and I like the yolk. As we began to co-edit Crab Creek Review, we soon realized that the very task one of us despised turned out to be the task that the other one enjoyed doing.

Another aspect that makes for our successful partnership is that we share a common vision in terms of the importance of poetry and art in society, a common drive to give women artists a voice, and a similar philosophy of how important it is to balance our personal lives when it comes to family, writing, editing, and alone time. We also make our work meetings fun by discussing Crab Creek Review and Two Sylvias Press over coffee at a funky café or a plastic cup of wine in the ferry galley. And, importantly, we’re both willing to take creative risks and we both have a sense of humor about everything.

NA:  Your first book is a wonderful anthology called Fire on Her Tongue.  Could you talk a little about Fire on Her Tongue?  (Please feel free to provide links to any reviews, readings, or Amazon.) 

KRA/ASC:  Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry is the first electronic collection of poems by women writing today. It features over 70 extraordinary poets from a variety of backgrounds and whose ages span from thirteen to ninety-one.  We showcase some of our favorite poets and their well-crafted poems, which explore the contemporary woman’s experience.

A great review of the anthology just appeared on Rattle.

We currently have the anthology available for many eReaders, but it can also be read on your laptop or personal computer. Here are some links if anyone is interested in purchasing a copy:

Kindle   Nook   For Kobo eReaders    To order on iBooks   For other eReaders or to read on your computer or laptop  

And coming soon to IndieBound.org

NA:  Was it a huge undertaking, putting the anthology, Fire on Her Tongue together?  

ASC: I’ll begin to answer this question by quoting two lines from our Editors’ Note for Fire On Her Tongue:

Could we, editors of a print journal, publish the first eBook of contemporary women’s poetry? We were innocent in our questioning, humorous in the belief that “anything is possible if you don’t know what you are doing.”

It was indeed a huge undertaking that took a year to complete from our initial call for poems to the moment we downloaded it for the first time on our Kindle and Nook. We contacted our favorite women poets and received a tremendous response and because we loved so many of the poems, we ended up publishing two to four poems for each poet—over four hundred pages in the first proof.

The technology for publishing eBooks is rapidly changing, so we researched and learned all we could about the difficult task of formatting poetry for electronic platforms. Part of the appeal of eReaders is the flexibility and choice the reader has as far as display and font size, but in terms of formatting poetry, this is a nightmare, as line breaks and spacing suddenly become fluid. This is one reason why some poets, such as Billy Collins, have been so vocal against the distribution of poetry on eReaders. We were determined to tackle this problem and part of our solution is simply to instruct our readers on the first page of the eBook as to what size font maintains the poem’s integrity. We also approached a company called Publish Green to help us in the final stages of formatting and to assist us with the distribution of the anthology so that it would be available not just on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but on the websites of independent bookstores.  It was important to us to create the anthology with as little stress on the environment as possible, so we handled all submissions, correspondence, contracts, etc… electronically without the use of paper.

By far, the most time consuming part of the production process was proofing four hundred pages of poetry and maintaining our sanity as we measured each space between words and stanzas, noted every period and comma, each italic and ampersand. At times, one correction would undo a line that had previously been fine. We persisted and cried, but in the end, we are absolutely thrilled with Fire On Her Tongue and how it turned out. I’m not ready to do another four hundred page eBook of poetry in the near future, but like having a baby, I’m sure I’ll forget the pain when the next fantastic idea comes along!

NA: How did you go about finding the poems and poets you wanted to include in the anthology? 

KRA:  Annette and I made a huge list of women poets whose work we loved.  Then one-by-one we worked on finding these poets and emailing them to see if they’d be interested in submitting to our anthology.  In our email, we asked them to send their most favorite poems that they held the copyright to (this was to help us avoid reprint fees).