Dante Di Stefano: How did Jacar Press come into being?
Richard Krawiec: I've been involved in writing and publishing since forever. Back in the 70s in Boston, I had a friend who mimeographed sheets of poems and stories in his 3rd floor garret. From that time on I was in love with the small press world. After my novel Time Sharing was published by Viking Penguin in 1986, I worked in a variety of sites that were mostly excluded, at that time, from literary programming - homeless shelters, women's centers, prisons - including death row, literacy classes, housing communities, drug treatment programs, ESL classes. I started a non-profit, Voices: A Creative Community, whose mission was to teach writing as a tool of self-empowerment in communities marginalized by the dominant culture, and to help people from those communities develop their writing and teaching skills, and I would then hire them as teachers. Through Voices I created Jacar Press, and we published a variety of learner-authored texts, including, in 1993, the first anthology of writing by people who were homeless - In Our Own Words. We also published a textbook, An Invitation to Write, which offered ways to set up participatory, learner-centered workshops in alternative sites to adult learners. I was told by the distributor that it was used in 31 countries and considered a seminal text in the field. Who knows?
When my wife at the time developed a serious illness, I had to step back for a while and take care of her and my two children. Other than publishing my own stories, poems, plays and non-fiction pieces, I didn't re-enter the publishing world until the 2000s. When Obama was elected in 2008 there was much discussion about the need for a stimulus program to jump-start the economy. I thought, writers could use some help too. So, I conceived of the idea of a poetry cookbook, an anthology alternating between poems and recipes written by poets and their friends: The Sound of Poets Cooking. I wanted all the proceeds to go towards providing stipends for writers to teach free community-based workshops. At first, I tried to give the book away to other publishers, but no one wanted to be so generous with the proceeds. So, I finally decided to revive Jacar Press. Interestingly, after a brief spurt during which Jacar Press did hire writers to teach workshops at a number of sites, interest in teaching in alternative sites waned so we began to donate our proceeds to activist groups we felt were working for progressive change.
DD: Could you talk about what it means to be “a community-active” literary press?
RK: We call ourselves a Community-Active press because we don't make any attempt to be profitable, preferring to invest our money in causes we value, while also supporting developing writers by offering free and low-cost writing workshops. We still offer free workshops, most recently to women in prison, and free writing and theater-based workshops for survivors of sexually assault. But another part of our community active vision is enacted by bringing visiting writers to NC to teach low cost craft workshops - $25 for half a day. We host an annual event, A Gathering of Poets, bringing some of the top names in poetry, elders and new voices, to NC and we underwrite most of the cost, so poets can, for $100-$125, take 4 craft workshops (and, also, get free breakfast and lunch) from people we'd otherwise never see in this state. This year, on March 30, 2019, we'll be bringing Marilyn Nelson, Li-Young Lee, Chloe Honum, Kaveh Akbar, Eduardo Corral and Renee Emerson to NC for our Gathering of Poets. In the past we've had headliners like Lynn Emanuel, Patricia Spears Jones, Dorianne Laux, Rickey Laurentiis, and others.
So we serve the poetry community by offering free outreach workshops, and low-cost workshops. We’re always open to suggestions from writers, any writers. Have a workshop you want to offer to an under-served community? Pitch us.
Lately we’ve been making a lot of direct donations from book sales. We gave $1500 to a young woman entering college in D.C. through a scholarship handled by the Urban League. This Fall we are giving $400 to help cover the costs of books for a writing major, preferably a person of color or non-binary gender. We have made cash contributions to, among others, the Black Art Futures Fund, Black Lives Matter, ConPRmetidos, Dakota Access Pipeline Fund, Doctors Without Borders, Durham Literacy Council, National Immigration Law Center, Orange County Rape Crisis Center, Raleigh PACT(Police Accountability Community Task Force), Song(LGBTQ activism), Syrian Refugee Relief, Women’s Theater Festival. Sometimes it's a straight donation. Sometimes the donations are geared towards paying for someone to attend activist training, or women's theater. Recently we donated $600 worth of books to an inner-city teen summer program.
Lastly, we are 'community-active in supporting the larger poetry and literary press scene by sponsoring the $500 Julie Suk Award for the Best Poetry Book published each year. We publicize extensively not just the winners, but all the finalists and their presses (as a way to support the independent press scene). Past winners have been Kaveh Akbar, Monique Ferrell, Rickey Laurentiis, Noel Crook, David Roderick, Susan Elbe.
DD: What common elements do Jacar Press books share?
RK: This is a tough one, and I have really tried to think this through. Our publications are diverse. We publish work by established as well as new writers. Betty Adcock, Gibbons Ruark, are masters at lyricism, and newcomers like Kelly Michels and Sharon McDermott are getting there. We publish the “hypnagogic” verse of Jaki Shelton Green (just appointed NC's first African-American Poet Laureate Yay!), rooted in the tradition of Troupe and Shange, as well as younger voices like Monique-Adelle Callahan D, whose work is fed by the community of Cave Canem. What do the finely crafted prose poems of Deborah Bogen have in common with the haiku by women from 6 continents in Wishbone Moon, or the ghazals of Shadab Zeest Hashmi? The delightful and fresh eye Adam Scheffler turns on contemporary America, with the 80+ voices, from teenagers to Pulitzer Prize winners, confronting violence against their communities in Resisting Arrest? What do Dorianne Laux and Cornelius Eady hold in common?
I think it’s attentiveness to craft, distinct voice, a commitment to writing the best poems they are capable of, and the ambition to write poems that matter.
DD: Tell us about the literary journal connected with the press: One.
RK: One. Talk about herding cats. Ever try to get a majority of 8 editors to agree on a poem?
Seriously, One has been a joy. We limit submissions to one poem at a time so that our editors can read, reread, and discuss - as we often do - all the submissions. We have been fortunate to have received work from people who have won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and MacArthur Genius Awards, but we are just as open to newcomers. We have a global vision, and have published poems by poets in Nigeria, Ghana, Dubai, Lebanon, Ireland, Turkey, Scotland, Spain, England, India, etc. We were thrilled when Rasaq Malik, from Nigeria, won an Honorable Mention in the Best of the Net, and honored to have Claudia Emerson win that award. We read until we find 21 poems we reach a consensus on. We also have a Second Look section where we revisit a master poem each issue.
DD: What is one thing that American poetry needs more of, in your opinion?
RK: More readers. The number of people who define as poets seems to outstrip the number who buy poetry books.
DD: What’s on the horizon for Jacar Press?
RK: We have never been a regional press. I see that trend continuing. This year we are going to host 3 readings in NYC - Aug 22 at KGB Bar, Aug 26 at Bowery Poetry Club, and Nov 9 at Poet's House. We're looking into sponsoring events for our authors in Cleveland and Chicago and Boston. I will personally be travelling to Ireland this Fall, reading in Skerries, and participating in the Bray Literary Festival. In the past we sponsored Irish editions of a book by Gibbons Ruark, as well as readings in Dublin, and hope to expand on that. I will also be travelling to France, hosted by my French publishers in readings and conferences in Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse, and I plan on exploring possibilities for Jacar readings and workshops in that country.
DD: Could you end the interview by giving us a poem from a Jacar Press collection?
RK: I’ve decided to offer here the title poem from the late Kathryn Stripling Byer’s final manuscript, which we plan to publish in early 2019. The book was originally scheduled to be published by a well-known press, but they were not enthusiastic about publishing it after she died. Jacar, which had previously published two chapbooks of Kay’s, one in a hand-letter press fine arts edition, believes the book is arguably her best work and we are honored to be chosen to publish it. This poem was finished a few months before she died from lymphoma on June 5, 2017, and, clearly, she knew what was on her horizon.
Trawling the Silences
This end-of-March day, I’d rather watch hawks surf
the thermals than contemplate what lies ahead.
Or behind in its wake. In the few hours left, let me keep
my doubts shut, my windows wide open, their sheer curtains
billowing. It’s March, after all, having come in
a lamb and departing a lioness, stalking my back yard,
leaving her paw prints alongside the patient ephemerals
rising again out of leaf litter. Squirrel corn. Spring beauty.
The first rue anemone. Today I would rather
read field guides, repeating the whimsical names
of our niche-dwelling mussels about to be wiped out by backhoes
and bulldozers. Pimpleback, Snuffbucket. Monkeyface
Pearlymussel. Don’t let their names be forgotten,I’d pray
if I prayed, though just naming a thing is a prayer,
wrote Simone Weil, turning her face to the almighty
silences. The silences. Where would we be
without them, what were we, what will we be, oh to be,
and again be, that damn linking verb. I’d rather be tracking
my lioness up to the rim of that mountain top,
I’d rather let be and let go. Let the anemone
cling, the hawks soar, the lioness squander another day
trying to find what she’s looking for. Give her another day,
I ask the Almighty. Give the birds one more day
scolding the rapscallion squirrels stealing birdseed.
I rest my case, carapace, my own little voice trawling
the silences, the bully wind boasting its presence in present-tense,
no linking verb to shut down the show. Let
my lioness lounge in the sally grass. Licking her paws.
Richard Krawiec has published three books of poetry, Breakdown, She Hands Me the Razor, and most recently Women Who Loved Me Despite (Second Edition, Sable Books). His work appears in dozens of literary magazines, including Drunken Boat, Shenandoah, sou’wester, Lavure Litteraire, Dublin Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, New Orleans Review, Blue Fifth Review, Connotations, etc. In addition to poetry, he has published 2 novels, Time Sharing and Faith in What?, a story collection, And Fools of God, and 4 plays. His most recent novel, Vulnerables (Editions Tusitala, and Points Press), was published in France to widespread acclaim, even reviewed in the French edition of Rolling Stone. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NC Arts Council (twice), and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is founder of Jacar Press, a Community Active publishing company that also runs an online magazine One. He has taught writing to people in homeless shelters, women's shelters, prisons, literacy classes, community sites and elsewhere.
Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, forthcoming 2019). Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he is the co-editor of Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America (NYQ Books, 2018). All proceeds from this anthology go directly to the National Immigration Law Center.
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