First Book Interviews

#88 - Emilia Phillips

2014-11-05T11:52:00.001-05:00

How often had you sent out Signaletics before The University of Akron Press chose it for publication in 2013?

Almost counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and this question, so let’s say I sent the book out about twenty times. I sent it out to its first contest in the fall of 2011, and I heard back from the University of Akron Press in the summer of 2012. It received a few finalist nods elsewhere and was, after I withdrew it, under serious consideration with another press. But I found the right editor, Mary Biddinger, at the right time, and I’m pleased as a possum in a trash bin to be with the Akron Poetry Series.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Signaletics? Did it go through any other changes?

For a little while the manuscript was titled Latent Print after a sequence by the same name, but it soon became Signaletics. The only time I really doubted the title was when a Famous-Poet-Not-to-Be-Named upon hearing my title said, “Are you actually smart? Or are you just trying to sound that way?” What a blow! Fortunately, after a few nights of pacing and self-doubt, I had some reassurance from a mentor, and I have no regrets about it now. I do have to explain the title at readings often, but that just gives me a lead-off talking point.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

Money’s certainly nice, and that’s one reason one should certainly enter contests. (In addition to the fact that prizes often have tenured acclaim and publicity.) But I think landing a book with a press you respect for their other titles, their design, distribution, and marketing is more important. So, if you land with an editor you love outside of a contest, be grateful!

Occasionally, I’ll hear a poet who second guesses a decision to go with a press or not, especially after the new-car-smell of the book wears off. If you can find a great editor, hell, that beats the candy in the contest piñata.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

It’s difficult for me to locate what’s a draft versus what’s an iteration of a draft. The book didn’t come together in stages, as the term draft implies. I was always tinkering with it, from the smallest things to the biggest. Occasionally, I would swell up with an idea for a poem and have to write it down. Some of the collection’s poems were drafted as early as autumn 2009. The last was written in late spring 2012. I continue to tinker with the book until the final draft was due in early 2013. The biggest changes were with ordering. I’d say the book went through about four or five arrangements before it was picked up, two after. One of my peer reviewers suggested that the book was a little cold, lacking in emotion. At first I was defeated by this comment, but then I later realized that a reordering of the collection could help reveal the stakes of the poems. At that point, I shifted toward the front a few poems that contained the narratives or situations that make the emotional implications more clear. That’s when I knew the book was right.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I was very involved. My designer’s name is Amy Freels; she works for both University of Akron and Cleveland State University Press. She’s incredible. I sent her countless images of things I was considering, and she was very patient with me through the whole process. We finally settled on a historical photograph—a mug shot—from Sydney, Australia. We were granted usage rights for a small fee. From there, Amy composed the cover. After that, she wrote to me one day and said that she had an idea for section breaks, a small illustration from an antique book about public speaking gestures. It was exactly what I wanted.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

As I mentioned before, yes. I found the image in a historical trust’s online archives. Fortunately, my designer loved it!

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I wanted a majority taken by journals I admire before it went into the contest circuit. Once it was taken, I wanted all the poems to come out in journals before the book was published. I had about four or five left over, so I sent those out and placed them quickly. All the poems were published prior to the book’s publication.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

First of all, once the book was accepted, I asked Mary if I could add two poems. I sent her the manuscripts including the additions and she approved. The book next went out to two peer reviewers who both provided me with some excellent feedback. I’d say it went through two more rounds of reordering, a round of nitpicking, and a round of copyediting. Then it went into a draft with the interior design.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I was at Bread Loaf. The official release date for the book was September 1, 2013, but I had been accepted as a fellow to the conference, and in order to go as a fellow, my book had to be out. Akron rushed the printing of the books and got them out on August 11, 2013, the day before the conference started. The first time I saw the book was in the Bread Loaf bookstore where it was being bought by poets I respect and admire. Incredible!

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

I usually avoid this conversation because it leads to “I read a poem at my mother’s funeral and it helped me grieve” at best or, at worst, “People still write poetry?” So, when someone asks me what my book is about, I say something like “Well, they’re poems, so you can imagine that they can be about pretty much everything.” Of course, some people have the notion that poems can only be difficult abstract representations of love, nature, and death. If I’m feeling like I don’t want to evangelize them about how amazing poetry can be, what it can contain and be about, I say something like “forensics, my father, and anxiety.” If they pry any further, I’d say, “Wanna see a copy? I have one right here in my carry-on, and one in my check bag, and one in the seat pocket in front of me, and my agent and assistant have copies in the row behind us, and…” just to freak them out.

What have you been doing to promote Signaletics, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a lot of readings in the last year, some at my own expense. It’s not easy out there to book readings that pay, but I saved a little moolah to hit the road a couple times this last year. I have to say that, if you’re running a reading series, the least you should do is buy a visiting writer supper and let them crash on your floor. Oh, and make sure that at least a couple of copies are purchased. (A book raffle? Signed copies to donate to the library?) That’s all I want when I get out there. If there’s more, well, that’s gravy.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Take a clonazepam, and chill out. I think I got everything covered as best I could, but I obsessed over everything and caused a great deal of anxiety for myself. Perhaps I won’t do those sorts of things with the next book.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

Earlier this summer I sent off my finalized second manuscript titled Groundspeed to Mary Biddinger at Akron. It will go to the board for final approval in September. Also, since my return from working at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, I’ve written seven poems! How has that happened, especially since I said I would work exclusively on essays for a while . . .? Bad poet, bad!

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

For some people, and many of them already have that gravitational pull rocking their tides, and then there’s some that can be reborn in poetry, and then there will be some people that will never have their world changed by poetry, and we shouldn’t be sad about that. Earlier this year, a good friend of mine cried in front of a Pollack painting at the Art Institute of Chicago while I stood beside him, a little sleepy and sugar-doped from the dessert we had just before. Sometimes poetry can’t even change my world. I was recently listening to Joy Katz on the Poetry Foundation’s “Poetry Off the Shelf” podcast talk about how, after her mother died, she couldn’t find poems that could help her deal with that grief. There have been times when poems were the last things I wanted to read, and why? Because maybe right then I needed music. Or time with friends. Not poems. And this is healthy. It’s like not drinking for a while and then having one nice Hendrick’s and tonic and realizing that it all goes to your head much faster those days, and you feel giddy for it. That’s what I need some times, to be a lightweight with poetry, to not grow cynical. And maybe I’m not answering your question head on; maybe I’m talking more about how poetry can change people and how a person can change people by how much time they devote to poems. But, of course, a change in enough people changes what we call the “world,” the human world. Now ask me if poetry can terraform, and we can talk figuratively.

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Emilia Phillips is a poet. She is the author of Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013) Groundspeed (University of Akron Press, 2016) and three chapbooks including Bestiary of Gall (Sundress Publications, 2013) and Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, forthcoming in 2014). Her poetry appears in Agni, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of the 2013–2014 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg; 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal; 2nd Place in Narrative’s 2012 30 Below Contest; and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, U.S. Poets in Mexico, and Vermont Studio Center. She serves as the prose editor for 32 Poems, a staff member at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference; and an adjunct instructor of English and creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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#87 - Robert Ostrom

2014-11-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

How often had you sent out The Youngest Butcher in Illinois before YesYes Books chose it for publication in 2012?

I lost count. I remember that, for over a year, I spent a lot of money on contests. Broke and dejected, for nearly another year, I sent to contests occasionally. In the end, I got really lucky. I was just about to overhaul the whole schmear when Justin Boening, who was the acquisitions editor at YesYes, wrote to ask if I had a manuscript in the works.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been The Youngest Butcher in Illinois? Did it go through any other changes?

Titling the book was maybe the hardest part for me. Several years ago, I was listening to a This American Life episode entitled 24 Hours at the Golden Apple. The producer interviewed a man named John Zervas who, in 1979 at 8 years old, was the youngest butcher in Illinois. I knew I’d be lifting that for a title, although the poem has little else in common with Mr. Zervas. The Youngest Butcher in Illinois felt like the best title for the book, but I wondered if the title poem could shoulder the book. I made long lists of titles and sent them to friends who almost always chose YBI. In the end, it felt inevitable and right.

The contest system is a costly gamble. Advice? There’s something to be said for ushering your work into the world with reverence. After all, it’s cost you time and blood and tears and any number of other fluids, vitreous and cardinal. Don’t send to contests that haven’t published books you like. If you know who the judge is, don’t send to that contest if you know she or he won’t be into your work. Don’t waste your money. It’s helpful to get individual poems out into the world. Some people (who are not me) are really good at networking; that’s of use apparently. If you feel strongly that your book would be at home with a certain press, get your manuscript to them.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Out of the four chapters that make up the book, two sections constitute a long poem, To Show the Living, which had been published as a chapbook. In some ways, having this long poem made things more difficult for me— I was worried it dominated the book or that it was of its own world. I contemplated (and still consider) turning it into a book-length poem. However, I wanted the book to have formal variety with the poems still being sectarian or at least accomplices— I imagined many of the poems were just different trails through the same quagmire—so I had to ax quite a few sweethearts. On the same token, the need for unity produced its own poems. This is something Linda Gregg told me— that as she nears the end of writing a book, the book itself writes poems. In short, assembling the book had to do with arranging the long poem, cutting poems of different lineage and writing bridge poems.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

The mastermind and captain of YesYes Books, KMA Sullivan, told me to list artists whose work I felt was kindred to the book. This was both gracious and daunting. I’m pretty sure Dan Estabrook was the first person on my list. She liked him too. We looked at all of his work and chose some favorites. KMA took over from there: she chose the art and designed the book. Still, she involved me every step of the way. It was important to me that the paper wasn’t super white, and she honored that. Maybe because it makes my eye floaters go crazy, I really hate white paper.

Initially, I didn’t really care if I had an extensive list of journals in my acknowledgements page, but before the book was coming out, it did occur to me that this could be a good thing— a stamp of approval. And since YesYes was a very new press, maybe it’d be good for them too. I don’t know how these things work. And, like I said, the long poem had been published as a chapbook which meant half of the book had been published all at once.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I don’t feel like I edited the poems too much, but I recently found a very early draft and was shocked to see how much had changed. By the time KMA and Justin got their hands on it, the poems were pretty much as they are now. We did play around with sections. Also, YesYes asked me to cut two sections from the book, and I think it was the right choice. Those sections have been published as a chapbook and a pamphlet. One, Nether and Qualms, is available from Projective Industries. If you ask YesYes nicely, they might send you a copy of the pamphlet A Happy Idea.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember everything. I met KMA at the Myrtle-Wycoff stop, and we took the L train together. I’d been warned by her and others that it can be a bizarre experience. And sure enough, it was. I’m such an anxious person; the only thing I could do was worry about everything. Out of all the feelings I remember from that day, I believe the strangest was the sense that it was done. All that working and dreaming and rejection was over. I’m not sure why, but when I think back to that, I hear Hart Crane, “Is the silence strong enough/ To carry back the music to its source/ And back to you again…” It was strange to go through these emotions and to see my book for the first time in the presence of someone else. KMA and I rode the train together for a while, then I had to go to work with my first book in my bag. I was teaching an undergraduate workshop at Columbia that day, and though the book was all I could think about, I told no one.

I’m on an airplane right now. If I wasn’t so sheepish, I’d give it a try. I don’t love attempting to say what it’s about. In fact, I probably wouldn’t answer that question seriously ever. I’d half-joke that it’s about my mom and my ex(es). There are themes of family and displacement that run through the book. The can of worms if the worms are my obsessions. I think the guy sitting next to me hates me.

What have you been doing to promote The Youngest Butcher in Illinois, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Again, I’m really fortunate to have been published by YesYes books. KMA and her people really believe in their writers and work hard to promote their work. They set up readings, including a West Coast tour, and sent the book to a variety of contests and reviewers. I’m terrible at self-promotion.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I can’t think of anything I wish someone had told me. I had such tremendous support. Maybe this: Don’t make any last-minute changes to poems.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

I’m finishing up a second book, but that could take forever.

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Robert Ostrom is the author of The Youngest Butcher in Illinois (YesYes Books). He lives in Queens and teaches at the New York City College of Technology and Columbia University.

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#86 - Tanya Olson

2014-10-01T15:31:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Boyishly before it was chosen for publication by YesYes Books in 2013?

I sent that version probably 5 places before it found its home at YesYes. It was a finalist with the National Poetry Series and with Arktoi at Red Hen when YesYes asked to see it; I was thrilled that YesYes wanted to give it a home.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Boyishly? Did it go through any other changes?

It had always been Boyishly, but when I sent it to YesYes, I had changed the title. Their first question was about the title, so it went right back to Boyishly. They were right. The book had been close enough that I felt like some small changes might be the thing needed to get it published. The title wasn’t the thing that needed to change though.

Contests have certainly become the most common way to a book, which seems mostly unfortunate. I feel lucky that I didn’t have to follow that path, even though I did enter some contests, mostly because I felt like I had to. YesYes asked to see the manuscript because one of their editors knew my work. That struck me as a healthier relationship, like they were interested in me as a poet with a whole career instead of just picking a blind manuscript that was their favorite in the stack.

I don’t say any of that to be critical of contest winners or entrants though. I don’t think my poetry path should be prescriptive; I would say that there are other paths to a poetry career besides MFA programs, journals, residencies, and contests. If that’s the path you take, that’s great, but I don’t like the myth that those things are the only way a person can build a career as a poet.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I started writing in 2000, never thinking about a book. I just liked writing poems and I never thought about them in relationship to each other. In 2010, I started thinking about a book and started looking at all the poems I had, trying to figure out what they had in common, what questions ran through them. That was very hard. Once I had a stack together, I started to play with order and groups; I would put poems in as I wrote new ones that I thought worked and pull old ones out that lost relevance or no longer fit. The order shifted a lot; I physically spread the poems out and walked from one to the other to decide what followed what. Once I had a rough order I would spread them out on the conference table at work and shift them around. The first poem is the only poem I wrote specifically for the book; late in the game I decided I wanted an invocation to begin the text.

With the new book I am working on, I’ve been thinking of it as a book from the start and I’ve been aware of the main idea the book is playing with from the start. In many ways, this seems much easier, but I do worry that this method might be too artificial in some way, that the poems will be too stilted together.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I appreciated that KMA Sullivan, YesYes’s publisher, said from the beginning that she wanted my input, but her job was to make final decisions. That took a lot of pressure off; I felt free to say what I liked and what I didn’t, but I didn’t have to make any final decisions. Alban Fisher was the designer and I loved the fonts and designs he used. They were perfect.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

KMA sent me some artists links to check out. Eleanor Bennett was one of those and I fell in love with her photographs immediately. KMA contacted her (Eleanor is 17 and lives in England) and sent her some poems; Eleanor graciously offered to take a few pictures for us to look at as possible covers. Kids With Guns (the cover photo) was one of those and both KMA and I thought it was exactly right.. KMA and Alban figured out how to spread it across the cover and how to include the blurbs so the picture could be clean. I had asked about having a textural, non-smooth cover and they made that happen as well.

I’m not a big sender-out of poems. If people ask, I’m happy to submit stuff when I have it, but it doesn’t really do much for me. I’m interested in books and in readings much more than being in journals. That’s what helps me write and what helps me revise, know what’s working and what isn’t.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

Justin Boening was the lead editor for the book and KMA Sullivan also worked a ton with the manuscript. They definitely made it better. We pulled 2 poems out, moved a couple, and did some line edits. It didn’t feel like too much work but I felt like it made the book much, much better.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

The book arrived a couple of hours before the launch. There had been a fatal car accident at the head of my road and I was convinced that the FedEx guy wouldn’t be able to get through as the road was closed. Somehow though, he pulled up with the big box that afternoon. It was absolutely a beautiful moment to see them all there. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to see the real object; it was as emotional and as satisfying as I had hoped. My favorite thing is having a book to read from at events. It makes me happy every time.

I have a couple answers.. Sometimes I say it’s a collection of American voices that aren’t typically heard; other times I say it’s about alternative masculinities. They are both true. I always say it is a very American book.

What have you been doing to promote Boyishly, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been lucky enough to do a fair number of readings. YesYes has been very generous with putting together tours and sponsoring readings. We had a launch in Durham, NC, where I lived at the time, at the Pinhook, a great local music venue. It featured all kinds of local artists- Jim Haverkamp showed his amazing film, When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl, poet Chris Vitiello gave a reading while dressed as the Pope, the local slam team performed, and shirlette ammons tore the house down; we even had a house band to play all the artists on and off the stage. It was a great way to welcome the book into its Durham community.

Since then, I’ve done 2 YesYes tours, the first with Ocean Vuong and Keith Leonard in Portland OR, the second with Matt Hart, Phillip B Williams, and Roger Reeves in Oakland and San Francisco. For both, we lived and read together each night for about a week. Both were beautiful experiences. It’s so special to get to hear the same poets several nights in a row, especially when you are spending a lot of time together otherwise. I’ve done lots of other readings in support of the book; one of my favorites was at Dorothea Lasky’s Multifarious Array at Pete’s Candy Store.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I suppose I knew it already, but books are a slow process. Oprah doesn’t call on Day 2 and even though the thing you have worked on forever and somehow miraculously made exists, the world does not stop to notice. You have to show up and read and bring books and be a professional. Write poems because you love to write poems, not because you think poems will make you famous or popular or loved.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

I’m working on a new book, right now called Stay. It explores what it feels like when the world and its people seem to be moving further apart. That’s what interests me about America right now: the way way drones and fear and Guantanamo and inequalities make us drift apart, make us feel more alone, less connected. It currently consists of 2 long poems with 10-20 short poems sandwiched in the middle and isn’t nearly as didactic as that description makes it sound.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Absolutely. I think poets and poetry have real work to do in the world; when that work isn’t done, I think our world gets worse. I’ve never understood why poets aren’t invited on CNN to talk about things like the housing crisis and the World Cup and Flight 103 and drone strikes and everything else that captures our attention.. Our job as poets (I think) is to look into, travel into ideas and report back what we see. If I was Poet Laureate, I’d work on trying to restore the public job of poets; this is also why we need poets that do other things besides teach other poets.

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Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a Lecturer in English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013 and was awarded a 2014 American Book Award. She has always won the Discovery/Boston Review Prize and was named a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

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#85 - Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum

2014-08-01T17:11:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Ghost Gear before it was chosen as a finalist for the 2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize?

Man, I sent it out for a while. I “finished” my first workable draft of Ghost Gear in the winter of 2007/2008, a year and a half after entering the MFA Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I of course believed it really was finished finished at the time and sent it to fifteen prizes that year and sent to the same fifteen prizes for the next five years until it finally got picked up in the winter of 2012/2013. I revised it every single time it got rejected, and it got better every time. While all the rejection was heartbreaking (the book wasn’t a finalist or honorable mention or anything like that for any of the prizes until the winter it was taken), the process worked. It’s a much better book now than when I first started submitting to prizes, and I am grateful for that. Could it have happened a little sooner? Sure. But that’s life.

I’m now closing in on finishing my second book. I have what I like to call my first “non-shitty” draft, which means it’s not bad but it’s not particularly good. I’m not sure how to proceed. Send it to contests again and revise it every time it gets rejected until, at long last, it gets picked up? Or revise it on my own like crazy for several years and then send it out? The writing and publishing of books is a mysterious craft. I’m excited to see what it teaches me this go-round.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Ghost Gear? Did it go through any other changes?

The backbone of Ghost Gear is five versifications of stories my father told of his childhood (and, in the final two poems, of my childhood and his fatherhood). “Ghost Gear” recounts his near-death by tidal wave while tramell-net fishing in Alaska when he was in college. Ghost gear is a term for dilapidated nets and riggings and other such gear deep-sea fisherman used to discard in the ocean. All that gear drifted down into the ocean and caused all sorts of havoc. It was really big in the news ten years or so ago and the practice was made illegal. This notion of that which we believe we’ve discarded continuing to do its work below us is the controlling metaphor of the book: each poem an artifact of the past and present and future tangled up in the mind and body. I have to give my friend and colleague Curtis Hessel credit for making this connection for me after I told him I had changed the title to The Ever-chamber,” the second father-story poem. That title would work too, but Ghost Gear is infinitely better. I owe him a kiss on the lips for that and a punch in the gut for just about everything else!

I only sent to contests. Contests I really, really wanted to win. Contests that had published awesome books before me, books that taught me how to write poems. I did this because I felt it would give the book a little something to stand on. Who knows if this makes any difference or not. I didn’t actually win the Miller Williams. I got close but not quite. Luckily, Arkansas publishes the Miller Williams Finalists as well. I haven’t noticed that the contest makes any difference but being able to say I was published by the University of Arkansas Press clearly makes a difference. So here’s what I can offer: send your book to presses who have published books you love. Contests. Open submissions. Whatever it takes, it’s the press that makes the difference. I suppose that if I’d won the National Poetry Series, I might see things a little differently. But there are only a few prizes out there for first books (the Miller Williams is an open prize) anyone really cares about, and Ghost Gear is getting out there because I’m putting the work in and because it was published by an established and beloved press, not because it almost won a prize.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I just went back in my files. There are 97 drafts of Ghost Gear. I didn’t realize it was that many. Each was completed after the book was rejected, and I often revised more than once between rejections. Sometimes it looks fairly similar; sometimes it looks radically different. The poems themselves “look” more or less the same on the page, but the lines themselves are pretty radically different every five drafts or so, and the order of the poems is all over the place. I started chronological, then played with themes, then put the longest poem at the opening of the book and then moved it back to the end. “Singing” was always the first poem. “Ghost Gear” was always the second, third, or fourth, but everything after that was up for grabs it appears. The greatest amount of revision is in the poems themselves. Boy did they get better over time. I honestly can’t recall what it was like putting the book together that much. I remember swimming in the dark a lot. I sort of did it with a blindfold on. Sure, I had some idea of how the poems worked together, but I don’t think that became clear until two or three years after that initial draft. I had the backbone of the book in the father-story poems, thank goodness, and placed all the other poems around that backbone in an almost infinite shuffle. I also remember having a lot of help from Judy Jordan and from friends at my MFA like Jenna Bazzell, Martin Call, and Alexander Lumans. I owe them more than I can ever repay. I think understanding how to put a book together is probably a life-long pursuit for someone like me. I am at all times perplexed by…virtually everything around me. That’s why I write poems I think, to try to understand this life and the things in it a little better. I think I have a better grasp of how my second book works. Maybe the third will be a little easier, but I don’t put too much pressure on myself in that regard. I trust the process and just stumble forward and backward and in circles from there until things start to make sense. I think the process of assembling Ghost Gear was more the product of rejection than knowing what the hell I was doing and not know, this may sound strange, what I wanted to do. In the end, I settled on a more or less chronological structure. There’s a story told via the arc of the book that isn’t told in the poems themselves and people are catching on to it. But damn it took a long, long time to find that arc.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I was lucky enough to be given almost 100% control of the cover, which is beyond perfect. If you’ve read the book, you know the cover is exactly what the book is about. It’s an original piece of art I commission from Siolo Thompson, an artist out of Seattle who was a friend of a friend at the time. When I contacted her with the request for the cover, she asked me to send her three poems. I sent “Singing,” “Ghost Gear,” and “The Ever-Chamber,” and the cover, more-or-less as is, was what she sent back. I was just blown away. How someone I didn’t even know could read those poems and come up with that cover seemed impossible, but I think it’s a testament to the words and to her skill as an artist and reader. I couldn’t be happier with it. As for all the other design aspects, I had no input and really didn’t want to interfere with the good folks at Arkansas. It was the right move. They made a beautiful, flawless book.

Nah. I just wanted people to read my shit and sent out like crazy until all the poems were taken. I didn’t feel the need to publish the entire book in order to get it published. That’s the nice thing about prizes: most of that info is omitted from your submission. Some of the prizes do require this information. While I respect the presses that do, that doesn’t make much sense to me.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I went back and forth with my editor, Enid Shomer, quite a bit on the final poem, “First Catch,” but the rest of the book was pretty easy to finalize. She has a great eye, and most of her suggestions made perfect sense, including cutting a monstrous poem that I wrote for the second book but felt compelled (for reasons I’m not entirely sure of) to include in Ghost Gear. The second she said we should cut it, I agreed, which I think helped ease the rest of the process for both of us. I am so very happy Arkansas actually edits their books. Some presses send off finalists to a judge, the judge selects a winner, and they publish that book without any further editing and even without copy-editing/proofreading. This is obviously a bad idea. I think I probably would have hired an outside editor to look at Ghost Gear if it were selected for a prize sans editor.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember that entire day. It was long as all hell. I knew the book was incoming on a UPS truck but had no idea when it would arrive, so I employed a few friends to distract me, hopping from bar to bar in my current home place of Denver, Colorado. When my designer texted me “Did you see the book yet?” and I texted back, “I’m waiting for it to arrive.” and he replied, “It’s waiting for you at your door,” I left the bar without paying the tab or telling my friends and raced for home.

When I got home, I took my time opening the slim vanilla envelope only to find the book wrapped in paper like a gift. I took even more time opening it from there. When it finally emerged from the packaging, I didn’t cry like I expected. I just held it and thanked it for coming and apologized to it for not making it sooner.

Then I went back out to show it to my friends who were waiting for me at the bar. Then I cried, right there in the middle of an NBA game, and received a lot of pats on the backs and lots of booze from lost of people I didn’t know and a few I did. There are two days in my life I’d go to war for: meeting my wife in a dive bar and meeting Ghost Gear for the first time.

Ghost Gear is a book about survival. The father-story poems tell the story of my father’s rural survival while the rest of the poems tell the story of my more urban survival. I grew up in a very rough neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve got matching scars underneath the fur of each eyebrow and countless scars on my knuckles from all the fights I was in as a kid. My dad’s scars include rope burns from the fishing nets in “Ghost Gear” and a burn on his knee from a forest fire he fought with his brother in Oregon. The book is about how we earn such scars and how they make us who we are. It’s a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age book of tall tales that are often true but are more true on an emotional scale than a factual one. Based on actual events but not factual in every little detail. You know…big fish stories. I suppose most first books are like this. But I really don’t care about doing something new; I care about being original in my own right. I wrote Ghost Gear. Not someone else. If it sounds like other books, I wear that as a badge of honor. It is definitely doing things in its own way, and I think there are people out there who see that.

What have you been doing to promote Ghost Gear, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Lord, what haven’t I been doing? I’ve been on a surprisingly large book tour since the book came out. Something like 35 readings in ten states so far. I really didn’t see that coming, but I work cheap, and I’m excited to visit classrooms and work with poets of all shapes and sizes and to share my work with people wherever they’ll have me. I’ve also work with quite a few writers as an editor and publisher and, thus, have relationships with writers all over the place who I think are excited for me and the book.

My first reading from the book was at AWP on the day the book was technically released. Afterward, at the book signing, I gave away buttons with either an image of the cover or an image of a badass unicorn on it. Most people took the unicorn button! It was a joke, of course, and people though it was fun and picked up a copy o the book as well. Who knew?

I also threw a big ass book release party with an open bar at a swanky art gallery where I live in Denver on my own dime and am throwing a release party in my hometown of Nashville in mid July at Parnassus Books, the only independently owned bookstore in Nashville that exclusively sells new books.

If someone asks me to do an interview (thank you, Keith!) or a reading or a radio show or a workshop, I always say yes, but I never try to “sell” or promote the book. I just share my excitement about it and finally having something to show for all this work I’ve been doing since, hell, virtually since puberty.

I’ve been writing poems since I was 13 years old and turned 33 a month after the book came out. It took 20 years to make this thing. 20 years. That’s a lifetime for most species on this planet, and many people never realize their dreams. I get really emotional when I think about that. For a long time there I was terrified I’d never publish a book, and I think I had good reason to fear this. Now that it’s happened, that’s all I really care about: it happened and now I’m having fun with it, which naturally translates into my promoting the book. I have a ton of energy, I love to travel and meet new people, my wife is awesome, and I love, love, love to talk about poetry, be it mine or anyone else’s, so this is really the best time in my life. I’m having a great time.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Honestly I got great advice the entire time. Countless people have been in my ear for years: poets, fiction writers, carpenters, chefs, politicians, family members, people I meet on the light rail, students, friends, voiceovers, Kevin Garnett…the list goes on an on. I believe that anyone doing good work is an artist and actively seek out artists every single second of my waking life, even if I never actually meet these people, even if I just see them in a movie or dunking a basketball. The message is always the same: WORK. Don’t talk. Work. Talk ONLY when you work—not if you work, when you work. If you put the work in, if you’re persistent, if you don’t give up, you will get there.

That said, here’s what I’ll say: Learn to take a break. You have time. Most people don’t just up and die out of nowhere. Statistically, most of us live long lives. I overworked in grad school. I literally wrote every weekday for three years. It was too much. I should have listened to my mentors who said I needed to breathe, that my brain needed oxygen, that my heart and soul needed a vacation every few months. Now that I have a book out and another almost finished (again, whatever the hell that means), I finally feel that I have time to, you know, not write. This is not sacrilege; this is common sense. I get a little tired of writers saying you have to write everyday to be a writer. That’s kind of like fighting fire with a bazooka. The sentiment is fine, but the reality isn’t quite there. Taking time not to write doesn’t mean I’m not writing. Of course not! I have to write to feed my body and soul. I write every other day on average, but I’m learning to stop worrying so much about not working, something I wish I’d known more about when I was working like a dog. Sure, it worked, but I can’t prove the book got published because I worked my fingers to the bone. So work hard but don’t work so hard you hate yourself or start gaining weight or have to do drugs to sleep. Listen to your body. Take a break when it demands one and trust the page will speak to you when you come back.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Anything can.

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Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum’s first book of poems, Ghost Gear, was released in 2014 with the University of Arkansas Press. His anthology, Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, was released in 2012; he is series editor of the Floodgate Poetry Series: Three Chapbooks by Three Poets in a Single Volume; and co-editor of Warning! Poems May Be Longer Then They Appear: An Anthology of Long-ish Poems, forthcoming in 2015. Andrew is also a freelance editor, Founder and Managing Editor of PoemoftheWeek.org, Acquisitions Editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books, Contributing Editor for Southern Indiana Review, and teaches college writing in Denver, CO. Andrew's work recently appears or is forthcoming in journals such as The Writer's Chronicle, Blackbird, Glimmer Train, InsideHigherEd.com, and Missouri Review. Read his work at AndrewMK.com.

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#84 - Tyler Mills

2014-08-01T16:40:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Tongue Lyre before it was chosen for the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award from Southern Illinois University Press?

I sent the manuscript to a few presses and contests each year after I completed my MFA in 2008. The manuscript wasn’t ready to be a book that first year, or even the second, but increasing its readership in this way helped me think about what it meant for the individual poems to become a book as I continued to revise them. I gradually cut and added poems, clarified the language, and re-ordered areas of the manuscript between 2008 and 2011.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Tongue Lyre? Did it go through any other changes?

Initially, the manuscript was called Tongue. Jon Tribble suggested that I might think about adding a second word to the title: we were phone conferencing about edits and brainstorming possibilities, and “lyre” was the winner. (One of the poems in the book is called “Cleaning Out the Lyre.”)

When I first began sending out the manuscript that became Tongue Lyre, I didn’t know all that much about the publishing industry for poetry. I sent individual poems out to journals that my university library had in their periodicals room, and I read calls for submissions in the Writer’s Chronicle for contests. I learned as I read, and I researched presses that published books I enjoyed spending time with. But I wasn’t as hooked into “the scene” as many MFA students seem to be now. I didn’t know about many other ways of having a first manuscript picked up other than through a prize, since most of the publisher’s calls for first books that I was seeing at the time were linked with first-book contests.

What advice would I give poets sending out their book now?

I’ve recently screened poetry manuscripts for a national prize, and it has been interesting being on the other side of the table. It made me think of the post-MFA me, and the manuscript I was circulating a bit too early at the time. I suppose on the one hand, I want to tell poets to send their book to as many places as possible. But on the other hand, I would also advise poets to ask themselves: “Is this manuscript really ready to be a book, or do I just really want it to be one?” Many of the manuscripts I screened were interesting and demonstrated a lot of skill, but as a whole, they weren’t coming together as a book quite yet. There is no prescription for when a book “is finished”: each book is different. But I would advise poets not to spend money on the contest fee unless they absolutely, honestly believe the manuscript is ready to be a book. That means making sure that on your end you have done all you can to make the manuscript read as a finished whole. I would also say that while Facebook can be a great way to connect with people and learn about news, I would warn poets not to let it trap them into rushing their work. Social networks can be great, but they can also exert a pressure to produce, as though you have to keep up. It’s important to look inward not get swept up in it.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Countless, obsessive revisions. I mean that. I lost count. Tongue Lyre builds off the structure of the Odyssey, which is a frame narrative. It drove me crazy—a good kind of crazy—figuring out how to incorporate that structure into the arc of my book. I re-arranged the poems many, many times. And the individual poems? Some have been through 40 revisions. Some many more. I have boxes of old notebooks and papers, and I recycled some of the preliminary hard copies of the manuscript recently because I just can’t hold onto all of that paper anymore.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

The press did a beautiful job with the book. I suggested some cover images, and some were suggested to me, and the designer did an amazing thing with the image we decided on.

Poets should stop worrying about this. It seems like there’s a mentality that once all the poems are taken, the book is “done.” Even if every single poem in a manuscript is published, that does not mean that a poet’s book is finished—no matter where all these poems have been taken. Think of a book like a giant poem. Ask yourself, “What does my giant poem want to be? How is it holding together, as a giant poem?”

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

My first inclination after Tongue Lyre was taken was to re-do the whole thing. I actually ripped the manuscript apart and spent an entire weekend rewriting it. The result? A terrible, terrible draft. I never sent that version to the press (I doubt they would have accepted it). I think that because I felt like a younger artist-“me” was behind the earliest drafts of some of the poems, I thought I had to make the project match the artist-“me” that answered the phone the day Jon called me with the wonderful news. But both “me’s” are not all that different, I’ve come to realize.

I ended up tweaking minor things in the manuscript before sending it to Jon, and then Jon and I talked about a range of edits to the poems that made a huge difference, but that were akin to taking a tiny brush to a painting to clean off the surface rather than soaking a rag in turpentine and wiping the canvas down with it.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

It was surreal. And amazing. I was very happy: I couldn’t believe it existed. But it was also a little weird, seeing a box of reproductions of the thing that I felt like I made only one of.

I would say it is a book-length sequence that gives voice to the myth of Philomela, whose tongue was cut from her mouth after she was raped. But it is also a book about representation in art and music that was deeply influenced by Joyce’s Ulysses. (An Odyssey series of poems threads throughout the book.)

What have you been doing to promote Tongue Lyre, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been reading from it a fair bit, in Chicago where I live (at Danny’s and the Dollhouse, for instance) and also in other cities and towns (the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD; the AWP Bookfair in Boston, MA; the Stadler Center in Lewisburg, PA; Bates College in Lewiston, ME; the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series in Madison, WI; the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN; the Women Write Resistance AWP Off-Site in Seattle, WA; the Split This Rock festival in Washington, DC, among others). Each reading is very different. The audience brings its own energy to the space. It doesn’t matter if two people show up or if the room is full: I try to think about how I can make the poems come to life for the people in the room each time I read.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Not to worry so much before giving a reading. I can get pretty anxious about it the day of. And also that things like this—this interview—take time. Once the book is in the world, a lot more of your time will be dedicated to talking about it in a public way. It’s energizing, and an honor. But it does take time.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

I’m working on my next manuscript right now. I don’t want to say anything more about it at the moment and risk jinxing it. The manuscript is similar to Tongue Lyre in some ways, but in others it is very, very different.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Yes. When I’m 85, I might be able to start answering this question...

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Tyler Mills is the author of Tongue Lyre, winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (SIU Press 2013). Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, The Believer, Poetry, and Boston Review, and her essays have appeared or is forthcoming in The Robert Frost Review and The Writer's Chronicle. She has been the recipeient of work-study scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center, and she is editor-in-chief of The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought. She lives in Chicago, where she is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

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#83 - Lynn Melnick

2014-07-02T16:34:00.002-04:00

How often had you sent out If I Should Say I Have Hope before YesYes Books chose it for publication in 2012?

I think I sent it out kind of occasionally for a few years. It was never anything I focused on or thought enough about so I don’t remember exactly. I was lucky that YesYes asked to see my manuscript, because I suck at this kind of stuff.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been If I Should Say I Have Hope? Did it go through any other changes?

It was for a while When California Arrives It Lasts All Year, which I still love, but the title was one of the few things my editor, Katherine Sullivan at YesYes, wanted to change about the book, and I get it. If I Should Say I Have Hope encompasses more of what the book is.

Those contests are a crapshoot, it seems. There are a hundred billion poets in the United States! I would advise poets to send to presses whose books they admire. I think one nice thing about going directly with a press is that you have more of chance that they’ll publish your second book, should there be one. A lot of contests are a one-off.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Oh gosh, I don’t know. I’m a slow-as-fuck writer and obsessive reviser of each poem. So it’s not like I had to choose which poem would go in a manuscript. They pretty much all did.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I’m a terribly un-visual person. My editor said to me, when we were first discussing the book, something like “I’m sure you’ve been thinking for years what your book cover would look like.” And I was embarrassed because I hadn’t at all. But YesYes’ designer, Alban Fischer, is a freaking wizard of book design and he made my book an astonishing beauty.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Yes. I decided I wanted an image of Los Angeles, of a certain kind of Los Angeles, but I just didn’t know what image exactly. I crowd-sourced my LA and art-world friends and I got so many amazing suggestions. My friend Merrill Feitell, who is a fiction writer, went to school with someone who is friends with the artist Zoe Crosher, and that’s how I came across her work. When I saw her photo series “Out the Window (LAX),” I stopped breathing. The image I finally went with “The LAX Best Western Suites, 2003” is exactly where my book lives, where my mind lives. I’m eternally grateful to Zoe Crosher for allowing us to use her work on the cover.

Ha, no, that would be so nerve-wracking for me, to think so methodically about publication strategy, although it’s impressive, those who do. I was also very fortunate that most of the poems had been taken by journals over the years before YesYes got in touch with me, so I guess I didn’t have to think about it, really. Then again, it took me about a decade and a half to finish my book and let it go, so there’s that.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I changed the title, as I mentioned, and I cut one poem that Katherine didn’t care for. I was only keeping it in there because it had hot pants in it. So I wrote another poem with hot pants in it, along with two other poems for the last section. Katherine felt I should get a little more hopeful toward the end of the book, and I tried. I also got the courage to remove a poem that I loved that just wasn’t right for the book. It was an elegy. The poem still exists online though.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

It was also the day of my book party and so suddenly I was in a room with my book and over 100 people, which was a mindfuck in so many ways.

Someone would have to strike up a conversation with me, I’m kind of shy. If I were to answer that question I guess I would say “love, sex, violence, death, and California.”

What have you been doing to promote If I Should Say I Have Hope, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been doing my best. I didn’t post on social media when my book was accepted for publication or came out for sale, and I suppose I should have but I was bashful. But I’ve gotten several nice reviews in nice places and I did a shit ton of readings in NY and also California and a few other places and I’ve been getting slowly better at advocating for myself and my work.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

“You will open yourself up to more personal scrutiny than you thought possible.” I think maybe it’s because of my subject matter, but I get a lot of trolls who get turned on by my book and/or seriously angry about it. Also people feel like they can ask you personal questions during Q&As, like they want to know why you look so sweet but you write about fucking and drugs so much. But, you know, this other weird thing happened, sort of the opposite. I was always so worried about feeling exposed, and I certainly feel raw and anxious about being public in any way, but then I realized that the sky didn’t fall in when my book came out, that I can write about certain things and put them out there and keep going. So my new poems are even more dark and explicit, I think.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

I’ve been writing a lot of poems, as well as essays and book reviews, and I’m also in the process of revising a novel. Also, a book I co-edited with the poet Brett Fletcher Lauer (whose terrific first book of poems, A Hotel in Belgium, came out last March) called Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation is coming out next spring with Viking.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?” – Alice Walker

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Lynn Melnick is the author of If I Should Say I Have Hope, named a Top 40 Poetry Book of 2012 by Coldfront Magazine. She is co-editor, with Brett Fletcher Lauer, of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Recent poems have appeared in The New Republic and A Public Space. She teaches poetry at the 92nd Street Y and works with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn. You can find her on Twitter @LynnMelnick

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#82 - Wendy Xu

2014-04-02T17:07:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out You Are Not Dead before it was chosen for publication by Cleveland State University Press as a finalist for the first book competition in 2013?

Unbelievably, CSU Poetry Center was one of the two places I ever sent my book. The other was Wave Books. I dropped those two manuscripts in the mail at the same time, fully prepared for the long road ahead of many more trips to the post office. I got so very lucky.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been You Are Not Dead? Did it go through any other changes?

It went through so many title changes, all of which I kept in chronological order in a word document that I am looking at now. Some funny (very real) highlights are:

STAR VERSUS SIDEWALK

SEVEN HORSES AND THE OCEAN

IN LIEU OF A STUTTERING LOVE LETTER

YELLOW PORCH POEMS

WE ARE BOTH SURE TO DIE

The few weeks before I sent off the manuscript, I would run downstairs almost every day, to knock on my friend Lech's door who lived in the apartment below me, trying out new titles on him. He vetoed so many bad ones, and talked me through other possibilities. Though it is only a matter of time I believe, waiting for a book's correct title to reveal itself to its author. I like to say I had no hand in it. Like letting your kids name themselves.

I guess I was concerned with the possibility of winning a contest, seeing as how I sent to one. The other place I sent was an open reading period. But mostly, no, I don't feel that any aspect of the first-book publication process should be prioritized over giving editors and presses you deeply believe in the opportunity to read your book. Your relationship with the contest ends when the contest ends. Your relationship with that press and publisher/editor is only beginning. When I look in any direction in my apartment, I see Cleveland State University Poetry Center Books. I have loved and admired them for so long. If I could, I would have driven to Cleveland and put my manuscript in Michael Dumanis' trash can, if it meant he might read it. The delivery method shouldn't matter, what matters is the dignity and love with which you're assured your book will be treated.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Many versions, many evenings of collapsing in and among its pages on my living room floor. Kind eyes of friends. Reminding myself to think less, intuit inter-poem relationships more.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I was given the opportunity to be as involved or uninvolved as I wanted, which immediately made me feel super comfortable. I do a tiny bit of book arts stuff myself for iO Books, the chapbook micro-press I publish, so I wanted to stay in the loop, but mostly my role was choosing between impossibly beautiful font pairings that Amy Freels (CSU's designer) sent me over email. They made me feel so taken care of, and they let me suggest tweaks and tiny revisions to things that were so-close-to-perfect.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

CSU generously allowed me to entirely choose the cover image, which is a collage by the wonderful Belgian artist Jelle Martens.

A secret is that it also appears on the cover of this beautiful contemporary collage book, Cutting Edges.

I mostly told myself I would begin sending out the book when it felt like a unit. A good number of the poems did end up finding homes in journals before that time, but, it was something I (surprisingly) did not overthink.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

The book went through two full cycles of editing, once for substantive edits, once for grammar. I learned that I have almost never spelled a hyphenated word correctly. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Frank Giampietro, CSU's interim director, pulling the book through the long process. It was amazing. We explored possibilities for almost every single poem, a better word here, a different line break here. The level of detail and attention was unbelievable. In the end, I chose to change or not change things based entirely on my own preference, and being given that kind of agency was really heartening.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

When the proof arrived in the mail, I cried and touched it a lot. When they handed me a final copy at AWP Boston, I made a series of absurd faces and I remember someone took my picture. It's the worst photo I've ever taken. I was too happy to remember how to smile.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

Oof, this question! For a while after it came out, I couldn't write any poems. Then I gave up trying. Then I stopped reading poetry altogether and just read novels for a while. The poems came back though, as they always do. The plainer answer is that I've had the opportunity to give more readings, meet more poets, and just generally "do more poetry things." Publishing a book has also revealed to me a desire to write slower. I feel calm, I feel like plodding along at a different pace.

This happened to me a few months ago, on my way to Cleveland to read. I said "feelings." Then I felt a little embarrassed, and offered something about "what happened to me when I became displaced and moved somewhere new." They were very satisfied with this second answer.

What have you been doing to promote You Are Not Dead, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I made my best effort to do a lot of readings since the book came out, and make it to things whenever I could. Also the book was taught in a few classes last year at U. of Minnesota, Florida State University, and UMass-Amherst. But that had nothing to do with my efforts, it was all the kindness of other poets and writers. The experience of being tied to a literature-object in the world has been humbling. I won't ever get used to it.

In March I'm finally going on a reading tour, basically a full year after the book was published. It's "promotion" for the book, but it's also my best excuse for getting in a car with my friends Brian Foley and Luke Bloomfield, whose respective books will be out too, and driving around the country seeing faces.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I wish more people would have forced me to relax about aspects of the book coming out. It's amazing more people didn't hang up on me during that time.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

My language and my poems have been changing, and I'm working on some poems now that might eventually become a thing. They haven't quite taken on thing-ness yet, but, I'm excited about them.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Yes, always, yes.

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Wendy Xu is the author of You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013) and two chapbooks: The Hero Poems (H_NGM_N) and I Was Not Even Born (Coconut Books), a collaboration with Nick Sturm. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, The Volta, Columbia Poetry Review, and widely elsewhere. She co-edits and publishes iO: A Journal of New American Poetry / iO Books, and teaches writing at UMass-Amherst. Find more at http://extrahumanarchitecture.tumblr.com

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#81 - Natalie Giarratano

2014-03-18T15:05:00.001-04:00

How often had you sent out Leaving Clean before it was chosen for the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Award from Briery Creek Press?

I sent out a first version of Leaving Clean for about a year and a half—to over 30 contests and open submission periods—but didn’t receive so much as a nibble. I knew there was work to be done on the manuscript, so I spent the following year or so revising, reordering and cutting and adding new poems. That later version started to get some attention (three finalist nods) and after another round of 20 or so contests, Leaving Clean won the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry in 2013.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Leaving Clean? Did it go through any other changes?

The title has been through a couple of changes. Dancing near the Surface was first and, though it is a line from a pretty dark poem in the manuscript, I ultimately decided it sounded too light-hearted on its own for the subject matter of the book and for me. I also imagined some editors rolling their eyes after reading that title and never getting to the actual poems. This made me cringe.

I also sent the manuscript out with a bit gloomier title, Almost Washout, which is what the title was when it won the contest. However, the insightful editor at Briery Creek Press, Mary Carroll-Hackett, requested a new title and gave me options from which to choose. I thought Leaving Clean, with that gerund always in action and, therefore, the leaving always and never happening, was the way to go.

I definitely sent out to more contests than open reading periods, but mainly, honestly, because of my ignorance of open reading periods. Any manuscript needs to be sent where it might potentially belong. But my best advice is to admit, to know, that it’s all a crapshoot. Good work or no, it takes that one or handful of readers that dig your work to get your book published. No matter how much work you do in learning presses and others’ work, you can’t absolutely know their evolving architecture and how yours might fit with it.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Leaving Clean went through three versions before it was selected for publication. It began, essentially, as my MFA thesis and included many short poems that dealt with the grand “I” with which many first books deal. In many ways the final version does deal with what the original did but, I hope, in more complex ways. I think by the final version I had cut ten shorter poems, added two new poems—one of which is eight pages long—and edited the remaining poems and poem order, the latter pretty drastically. This is when it is great to have other writers and/or editors to see what you’re too close to see. My very good friend, Beth Marzoni, helped me put together this final version and was bold enough to suggest cutting so many poems and to suggest which newer poems to add. Without that other set of unflinching eyes, I might not have done what I needed to in order for someone to want to publish this manuscript.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

The interior design of the book is all Briery Creek Press, but I was totally on board based on the design of previous Liam Rector winners’ books that I had read.

As for the cover, when I signed my contract with the press, I knew I would have a choice of a handful of photographs taken by the students that help run the press. Having worked for a small press while in graduate school, I knew what beautiful work students could do. I ultimately went with the photo that is the cover because it was a bit more abstract and weirder than the other choices yet still works well with the poems.

Well, I sent out to all kinds of journals, as I’m sure most poets do. I’d say maybe half of the poems had been published prior to Leaving Clean being accepted for publication, but I never felt pressure to have most or all published. I think for most emerging writers working today that is a rare feat. Maybe some folks just work more diligently at the submission process than I do, though.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I did some light editing myself—commas turned into semi-colons, a dash added here or there—but most of the manuscript is in the same shape as it was when I sent it to the contest. The editor did not ask for any changes to the poems or poem order as we went through the editing process, just a new title. I don’t know if this is usual for the press, but it made me feel much better about all of the edits I’d completed for the manuscript over the years.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

It was unbelievable to see this thing that I’d been working on for, more or less, eight years finally in front of me. Something I had begun to think would not happen at all. I got to share that day with my husband, who knows those eight years well. Even the dog crazy-danced in the kitchen with us.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

Oh, you know, I get to pal around and talk shop with James Franco. So there’s that. Which is to say I lie more.

My initial reaction would probably be “you should read the book,” since what one person gets out of a book is not always what others do, which is one of the things I love most about the reading and writing life. I’m not going to make a lot of friends with that, though, so I might follow up with: often when we fight off the person we don’t want to become, we’re also fighting culture, religion, family, and landscape—all of which can come gunning for you as soon as you turn your back to them.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Don’t beat yourself up over what you have so little control. Dance. Be willing to let poems or a manuscript go or to work a lot more on them/it. And then dance some more.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

If anything, the publication of Leaving Clean makes me dare to think that perhaps my singular voice might be important to this world and, so, makes me want to keep writing and publishing because it might just matter. I’ve a near-ready-to-send-around second manuscript and have been thinking about a third that might have to do with cities of music during the Civil Rights Movement—a broad idea I had after visiting the National Civil Rights Museum and the STAX Museum on the same day while briefly in Memphis.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Yes, if even for just a few seconds at a time, yes.

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Originally from small-town Southeast Texas, Natalie Giarratano received her MFA and PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. Her first collection of poems, Leaving Clean, won the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry and was published in June 2013 by Briery Creek Press. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast, Isthmus Review, American Literary Review, Laurel Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. D.A. Powell selected her work for inclusion in the 2011 edition of Best New Poets, and she won the 2011 Ann Stanford Poetry Prize from Southern California Review. She co-edits Pilot Light, an online journal of 21st century poetics and criticism, teaches writing at American University, and lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, Zach Green, and their pup, Miles. Find more at

http://www.nataliegiarratano.com

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#80 - Mark Neely

2014-03-05T17:28:00.000-05:00

How often had you sent out Beasts of the Hill before it was chosen for the 2011 FIELD Poetry Prize?

I began sending out a version years before it was published—it was a finalist for a contest as early as 2004. But the manuscript has changed drastically since them, and I think it was fortunate that earlier version wasn’t picked up by anyone—I’m much happier with what it became. In its final form, Beasts of the Hill circulated for about two years before it was chosen for the FIELD Prize.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Beasts of the Hill? Did it go through any other changes?

The earlier version was called Dogs of Indiana, which was also the title of one of the poems. I abandoned it when I cut that poem from the manuscript. Beasts of the Hill comes from a poem I love, Theodore Roethke’s “In a Dark Time”: “I live between the heron and the wren / Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.”

When I started thinking about publishing a book, it seemed like contests were virtually the only to get a first book published. Even now, a lot of publishers still won’t look at first books. But I sent to open reading periods when it was an option. My rule was, will I be proud to see my name on a book from that press. If the answer was yes, I sent to them, regardless of the editorial system.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

This book began as my MFA thesis, but only about three poems from the thesis remain. Over the years I took out poems I thought were weak, or ones that didn’t fit thematically or stylistically with the rest of the book. Sometimes I think I would have been better off burning the thesis—I see now it was apprentice work—and starting over. But I’m happy with the result. It just took a long time.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

My father-in-law is a painter and the image on the cover is his. I showed it to Oberlin and they liked it. Their book designer designed the final cover and did all the interior design, which was tricky because of the weird formatting of some of the poems (four square blocks of prose arranged in a larger square, like a crossroads, or a four-pane window).

I think it helps to have a solid-looking acknowledgements page—it let’s first readers know

the poems have been appreciated by magazine editors, but no one’s going to publish a book based on the tastes of other editors. I’ve seen excellent books published with very short acknowledgements pages. Since this book took a while to find a home, quite a few of the poems were published in magazines before it came out. I don’t know if had any influences on the editors at Oberlin or not.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

Actually very little. My editors had some suggestions, which I took, and there were some minor things I changed, but I’d already been over the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb by that point, so most of it stayed pretty much the same.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

Joy. I ripped open that box of books and just stared for a while. Also relief that it actually happened.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I’m better able to take genuine pleasure from other people’s successes, which is good. Resenting other people’s achievements isn’t healthy, and in a small group like the poetry community, it’s deadly. Oscar Wilde summed up this attitude when he said, “It’s not enough that I succeed; my friends must also fail.” For a while there I felt like I was the last writer I knew without a published book and that was a frustrating feeling.

I also have an easier time imagining people actually reading the poems I’m writing now, which makes it harder to write in a way, but also gives me a greater sense of urgency.

I’d peek at whatever they were reading, then say the book was about a) the zombie apocalypse, b) a band of child warriors forced to fight for their freedom, or c) the American Civil War, depending on the book they were holding.

Or I’d say it was about love and death, and let my seatmate turn gracefully back to fiddling with his or her electronic device.

What have you been doing to promote Beasts of the Hill, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’m not much of a social media person, which I know is how you’re supposed to promote your work these days. Instead I did a lot of readings the year after the book came out. I met lots of cool people, caught up with old friends, and generally had a blast. It was amazing and encouraging to see enthusiastic audiences for poetry in so many far-flung places.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I’ve heard (and given) all the advice, and all of it is true and none of it means anything. If writing matters to you, write. Don’t worry too much about the rest. Of course it probably would take a lifetime of Buddhist training to not worry about the rest, but try. For a lengthier explanation of my thoughts on this, see here.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I’m just finishing up another poetry manuscript, and I have a nonfiction project in the works. I’m not sure having the book published has affected my writing much, but working on it all those years certainly has.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Yes and no.

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Mark Neely’s first book, Beasts of the Hill, won the FIELD Poetry Prize. He is also the author of a chapbook, Four of a Kind, from Concrete Wolf Press. His poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Barrow Street, Boulevard, and elsewhere. You can find out more about him at www.markneely.com

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#79 - Ash Bowen

2014-02-17T16:19:00.001-05:00

How often had you sent out The Even Years of Marriage before it was chosen for the 2012 Orphic Prize from Dream Horse Press?

I'm not sure. I've suffered two laptop implosions since 2012, so my records from that time are gone. I completed my MFA in the summer of 2008, and I know that I sent out that version of the manuscript a few times, but that was a very different manuscript that bears little-to-no resemblance to the book you see today. I got serious about revising the manuscript in 2012, and I sent out the revised version in late summer and autumn to three or four contests and three presses. The manuscript was a semi-finalist in one contest and a near-miss at one of the presses. I won the Orphic Prize at the end of December.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been The Even Years of Marriage? Did it go through any other changes?

The manuscript went through a bunch of different titles. Originally, it was called gravityANTIgravity, but that was when the book contained some poems that I ultimately yanked. Corey Marks at the University of North Texas really worked with me and taught me how to view the manuscript as a book and not just a collection of poems. He suggested that I comb the manuscript for phrases that jumped out as potential titles. I poured over the poems in a coffee shop in Denton, Texas, and that phrase seemed to work as a frame for the book.

At first, I just wanted my book to come out; I didn't care how. But then winning a contest became important because I'd been told a contest win was helpful on the job market. Since I was preparing to go on the market around that time, the contest route seemed the way to go. But these days, I'd be inclined to tell poets to be less concerned about contests and more focused on finding a quality press. Do a lot of research and find out which presses are publishing books that they'd feel honored to have their work sit beside.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I won't lie: assembling the book was very difficult. For months my partner would come home to a living room covered with manuscript pages I'd lain out on the floor. She'd find me on my knees, reading the poems aloud to find the poems that resonated against each other. After I'd shuffled and reshuffled the pages about 10,000 times, I enlisted the help of poets Sandy Longhorn and Anthony Robinson, both of whom made useful suggestions about the order and structure.

When I'd been an MFA student at the University of Arkansas, I'd studied under Geoffrey Brock. One day we'd gotten into a discussion about the impulse to arrange books of poems in a way that gave them a narrative arc. I can't speak for Brock now, but at the time, we were both heavily against this.

When I went to the University of North Texas to complete my doctorate, Corey Marks let me see that the way I'd been ordering my poems was hurting my chances of getting the book into print. He convinced me to approach the book's structure in a much different way, and I honestly believe that without his direction, the manuscript would still be sitting on my computer. His input was invaluable to me. He taught me a lot.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I wasn't involved in that aspect of the book—thankfully. I don't really have the patience for that kind of work. As for editing, J.P. Dancing Bear sent the galleys to me, and those went back and forth a few times. I shuffled the order of a few poems but nothing major. We did drop one poem, as I recall, and replaced it with another. But other than that, we mostly looked at spacing and such. I don't think I touched the poems at all.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Dream Horse Press makes beautiful books, which was one of the reasons I submitted my manuscript to them. When it came time to pick art work, Bear had a strong vision for the book. He has a lot more experience designing books, so I deferred to him. I've had loads of people tell me how much they love the cover.

Earlier you asked what advice I'd give to other poets, and I'd advise them to try to negotiate some control over the cover art. This might be something a poet might not even think about in the excitement of a press saying it wants to put your work out, but this is something that will certainly come up later. I personally know someone who ruined her relationship with a great press because of disagreements over the cover art for her book.

I once read an interview with Cleopatra Mathis where she said she didn't really send poems out much anymore because she knew the poems would eventually come out in a book. I suppose that I just don't have that kind of confidence. I wouldn't even consider sending out a manuscript until the poems had been field tested through journal publication (though one of my favorite poems in my book was never able to find a home). Having an acknowledgments page that shows publication in good venues doesn't seem like it would hurt a manuscript when an editor looks at it.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

Not much, to be honest. But I'm not really one to sanctify such moments. Plus, by the time the book arrived, it'd been close to a year since I'd won the contest. I was already deep into a second manuscript, so the book in many ways was like a relic, almost like it was someone else's book. But don't get me wrong: I was doing cartwheels on the day that I learned that I had won the book contest. I opened a 20-year-old bottle of scotch that I'd been saving for the occasion.

Honestly, that would never happen. Aside from my wife and my kids, my family doesn't even know that I have a book, so mentioning to a stranger on a plane that I have a book is hard for me to imagine. But I think I would describe the book as one of loss and regret. There are some moments of levity, but I resisted catharsis. I don't think there is catharsis in real life, which suddenly strikes me as something The Misfit might say in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

What have you been doing to promote The Even Years of Marriage, and what have those experiences been like for you?

All of my Facebook friends are tired of hearing about the book. I suppose I'm doing the usual things people with first books do. I'm getting book reviews lined up. I've scheduled readings. But I'm looking for new ways to pimp the book. I had some ideas that involved multimedia, but I'm still fleshing out those ideas. So not much, I suppose. Or not as much as some. I did just start a Tumblr page, ashbowenpoems, to help promote my work.

The experience has been very positive. I was invited to read as part of the Kraken Reading Series, a fantastic series run by the great Kyle McCord and equally great Trista Edwards. Though I had a terrible cold, I had a great time at that reading. I've also been invited to read at a college back home and I'm reading at the Arkansas Literary Festival.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Probably not to expect too much; that the book isn't really going to change your life all that much.

Are there any new writing projects in the works?

I'm pretty close to having a second manuscript completed. The new poems are different than the poems in The Even Years of Marriage. Two poems in The Baltimore Review are representative of what I'm doing now. I had a burst of creative energy last April when a friend of mine and I agreed to do the poem-a-day challenge. We swapped poems every day to keep each other honest, and I ended up with 30 solid drafts at the end of the month. Many of those drafts fell together into finished poems pretty quickly, so I was fortunate. I've been writing steadily ever since, but the drafts have taken longer to get to a usable state. One new poem went through 70+ drafts.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Absolutely, or at least your own part of the world. I remember reading Norman Dubie's poem, “The Pennacesse Leper Colony for Women, Cape Cod: 1922,” for the intro creative writing class I took as a sophomore. A feeling came over me that I've never forgotten. I tried to express the impact the poem had on me to my professor, but I couldn't translate the feeling into words. The world changed that day, for me anyway.

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Ash Bowen lives with his partner and step-children in Alabama where he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. His work has appeared in New England Review, Blackbird, Best New Poets, Quarterly West, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere in print and online.

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#78 - TJ Jarrett

2014-02-04T12:24:00.001-05:00

How often had you sent out Ain’t No Grave before it was chosen for publication by New Issues Poetry and Prose in 2012?

I’m happier not knowing how many places I sent my manuscript when I carpet-bombed the universe. It’s generally depressing. Let’s settle with ‘I sent it out lots’ and be done with it.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Ain’t No Grave? Did it go through any other changes?

In the book’s first incarnation, I called it The Moon Looks Down and Laughs after the Billie Holiday song, but as I was working through it, I thought that the title wasn’t really reflecting the direction of the book. A friend of mine is a musician here in Nashville and invited me to see a show. I protested, but when I got there, I saw Mike Farris & the Roseland Revue sing ‘Ain’t No Grave’—a cover of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I heard the first few bars, remembered the song and I knew right then that it was the title. Sort of like falling in love.

First: Charlie Sheen has ruined the word ‘winning’ for years to come. Fo’ sho.

I hear it’s completely possible to get a book published without being in a contest. But on the nature of ‘winning’: It feels so good to say that you ‘won’ something that it’s completely understandable that we fall into the trap that a contest is worth winning. We stop thinking about what kind of press and what kind of books they produce and have the all-consuming quest for ‘a’ book rather than focusing on either writing our best book or finding a press who best matches our needs and will produce their best book as well. So there’s that. There’s also the fact that there are several open reading periods that will also pick up a first manuscript and these shouldn’t be discounted.

But I’ve been lucky: I was runner up (see: not winning) for the New Issues Prize in 2012 and won one of the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize slots in 2013. Winning is not the point. Getting the work out at a press you admire and is a good fit for you is. I’ve heard tell of manuscripts that have a push/pull with editors. I’ve not had that at all and have had the most enlightening and constructive interactions with my publishers. If you want, you can call that winning.

I did a lot of complaining while I was writing the book—that it wasn’t picked up fast enough (which means instantaneously in my limbic brain) and that it wasn’t being written fast enough (which is crazy because it came together in about 18 months)—but if I had any real regrets, it’s that when I finally turned it over to my editor, it seemed too fast. I wanted more time. I always do.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Oh, I must have written and rewritten into it at least 3 or 4 times. Not to mention little things here and there that make the book hold together. There were edits into poems that directly spoke to other poems because it could fit into that specific place. That’s the most fun part of the whole damned thing. I wrote both of my books in a bar, so I would just go in there, get all that ambient sound around me and get to work. I still can’t really write a poem without that sound.

NB. I’m trying to write without a bar because I’d like to keep my liver. Even though sometimes I wouldn’t even drink at the bar, I’d still want to be able to write without smelling of smoke and bad decisions. Let’s see how long that lasts. I always seem to crawl back to the bar when I want to get ‘real’ work done.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

New Issues has a design department, so I gave general thoughts on what I wanted and they gave me two covers and I picked one. I said that I wanted the moon in the trees and I got that. Maybe I’m low maintenance about it, but I think they did an incredible job with the cover and within their style guides. Also, Marni Ludwig (the winner of the contest and a production cycle before me) won the war with getting a serif font, so I ended up getting all that I wanted.

In the sense that I think that having publications get you closer to writing better poems toward a book, I think publication is a means to get you on your way. I also think that’s the best way toward building public anticipation for a book. I never really thought of publication of poems per se as the measure of a good book. I’m fairly suspicious about using the fact that a poem is published as the only yardstick for whether it belongs to a manuscript.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

William Olsen told me when we first met about the book that first books are often over edited. He was fairly adamant that I leave the order almost exactly as it was. I did some small tuning of line and a few word choice changes I’d had in my notes, but besides that, I let it roll as I sent it to them initially. Besides copy edits, I wasn’t all that hands on with the text after it was picked up. My second book was the exact opposite. The text that won is considerably different than the text that I sent in for publication. I’d just done an overhaul of the book when they called me. I shipped the book up to Jon Tribble and he was quite gracious about the changes in direction of the book. I think Zion (my second book) is a better book for those changes.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I’d like to say that I had this overwhelming sense of accomplishment, but I just sat at my kitchen table and cried. Because I’m a poet like that and too sensitive to be alive.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I wish I could say it was completely different. I think my book sold me to my (admittedly awesome) new roommate. But really, I still buy my own groceries. I do my own laundry. I mop my own floors. Sometimes I take time off work to do a reading and I get a free meal. But then I’m back to my really dull, murder mystery BBC-a-thon that is my life.

I rarely bring it up, because every sonofabitch has a book in them and they all want to talk about it. I’m quite cagey about it, like when I used to go to bars and claim I was an airline stewardess because it was easier than admitting that I’m a software engineer. But when cornered, the synopsis is usually: This is a book about the nadir of race relations between 1880 and 1930 and what a southern black family does to resist and embrace the weight of history. But you know, in verse. The synopsis is true, and maybe the book is about a lot more than that, like death, malice between men, and the burden of the living and memory. But most (if not all) books are about that on some level, no?

What have you been doing to promote Ain’t No Grave, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I am travelling to places where I’ve been invited and doing readings and selling books. I want to do more, but I can’t because well, I have a corporate job and they have needs too. But I do like the fact that my boss and coworkers are always intrigued about the places I go and what I ate and we can chit chat about it. I’ve worked at places where I have to be a Fight Club character about my writing. In contrast, my current life is quite nice.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Dear pre-book Tanya:

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Run your own race, your own best time. Spend time with your words and enjoy them. This is your only first book. Don’t be an asshole; listening to the theme song to 8 Mile won’t make it go any faster. You’re not going to want it to go any faster in the long run. Writing a book isn’t about proving anything to anyone. Say what you need to say—no more, no less. There are so many things that are more important than this. Spend more time with your friends. Love them. The words will always be there. Get more sleep. Take care of yourself. Rest. Rest. Rest. Live fully, drink a little less, laugh a little more. Work is work and your overdeveloped sense of responsibility needs to understand limits.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I think I get a little bolder with each book I write. I don’t write from the ‘I wonder if I can write a book’ but from the ‘What is the most important thing for me to say’ place. That’s liberating.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Poetry rocks MY world. I think there are people to be reached and hearts to be touched and moved by words.

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TJ Jarrett is a writer and software developer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her recent work has been published or is forthcoming in African American Review, Boston Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Callaloo, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Linebreak, Rattle, Southern Poetry Anthology, Third Coast, West Branch and others. She has earned scholarships from Colrain Manuscript Conference, Sewanee Writer’s Conference and Vermont Studio Center; a fellowship from the Summer Literary Seminars 2012; a runner up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize and 2012 New Issues Poetry Prize; and her collection The Moon Looks Down and Laughs was selected as a finalist for the 2010 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Her debut collection Ain’t No Grave was published with New Issues Press in the fall of 2013. Her second collection Zion (winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition 2013) will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in the fall of 2014. Find more at http://www.tjjarrett.com
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#77 - Kristina Marie Darling

2014-01-03T14:53:00.000-05:00

How often had you sent out Night Songs before it was chosen for publication by Gold Wake Press in 2010?

Before sending out Night Songs, I had been publishing poems in small print journals, as well as online literary magazines, for years. I was just thrilled to have poems accepted, but after awhile, a few publishers expressed an interest in publishing a full-length collection. Although I didn't have one ready at the time, I kept track of the publishers who had invited me to submit. When Night Songs was finally finished, I sent it to approximately four publishers. Gold Wake Press was the first one to respond, and when I saw that my manuscript had been accepted, I was thrilled. I'm a fan of Jared Michael Wahlgren's creative work, especially his full-length book from BlazeVOX. He had also just published Zachary C. Bush and Donora Hillard, whose work I really admire.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Night Songs? Did it go through any other changes?

I had written a chapbook called Night Music, and I always thought that I would stick with the same title when the full-length version was ready. I realize now that Night Music is not a very good title, but at the time, it seemed alright. That all changed when I gave a reading in St. Louis at Dressel's Public House with Nick Demske and several other poets. Nick called my chapbook by the wrong name, and told me that he really enjoyed Night Songs. But I was so glad that he messed up my chapbook's title. I decided that Night Songs was a big improvement over Night Music, and that's what I ended up titling the full-length version. It still amazes me that accidents and missteps can be so important for the creative process.

I usually tell people that it's a thematically linked poetry collection, with much of the work being inspired by my love of classical music. I think that's accurate, but it's also very much inspired by my love of French prose poetry. The book actually drifts in and out of French in certain passages. I think that person on the airplane would also be surprised at just how strange the book actually gets. I even start erasing my own poems at the end, which usually surprises the non-poets or non-poetry readers out there.

Night Songs has just been reissued, correct? Can you tell me a little about the process of the how and why of the reissue? And why the new cover, font size, etc.?

When Night Songs was first published, I was just starting out as a poet, and it was also one of Gold Wake Press's first three titles. It's really wonderful and exciting to see how much the press has grown, and to see growth in my writing at the same time.

I'm so impressed with how Jared Michael Wahlgren has developed the press since those early titles in 2010. He's expanded the catalogue, publishing poetry as well as cross-genre work (like Kathleen Rooney's novel-in-poems and Joshua Young's play-in-verse) and some really fascinating collaborations. While the design of the books was always beautiful, Gold Wake Press titles have also become, in recent years, even more striking than those first few books.

The idea behind the reissue was to create an edition of the book that's more in line with the press's current aesthetic. When Night Songs was first published, all the books had glossy covers, and the back cover was always white. The visual presentation of the books is much different now. The current titles have matte covers and spine text, but there's also more room for the interior layout, cover design, and other visual elements to reflect the aesthetic of the manuscript.

I really love what Gold Wake Press has done with the design of the new edition of Night Songs. I feel like the design elements have breathed new life into my first book.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

One of the great things about working with an independent press is that you have more freedom and choice when it comes to design elements. I feel fortunate to have been asked for input about the cover artwork for both editions. It's really wonderful to have the opportunity to choose cover art that you feel represents the book and your aesthetic.

I never entered contests for financial reasons. When I was sending out Night Songs, I was studying continental philosophy, so I really didn't have the money to pay entry fees. But I think that open reading periods do have a distinct advantage over contests. I say this because editors take into account your track record publishing in magazines, how active you are in the literary community (in terms of publishing, but also editing, reviewing, etc.), and the potential readership for the book. These things tend to get overlooked in contests, where the submissions are completely anonymous. So if you have a good track record of publications, and are active as a reviewer or editor, I'd definitely suggest looking into open reading periods, because these are the first books that tend to have the best chance.

Even as a very young poet, I knew that journal publication was important for building audience. That's why I worked hard to publish nearly every poem from the book in a magazine. In my opinion, publishing in magazines is especially important for a first book. For one thing, it opens up opportunities for reviews, interviews, and features when the collection is released. And journal publication certainly helps generate interest in a new book. Even if it's not The New Yorker, publishing individual poems helps build a potential audience for your poetry, which can be challenging with a first book.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

In 2010, when the book was first published, I was a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. I had a nightmare before the copies arrived that I opened the box and the book was Xeroxed and stapled together crooked. I was so nervous to see the finished product, since I had never published a book before. When I saw the first edition, I was thrilled. I remember being so happy that I carried the book around with me everywhere I went. I literally wouldn't set the book down.

When I saw the second edition, I was even more thrilled. It helped me see the work in a completely new way. I had been working in more experimental forms since publishing Night Songs, but seeing the finished book made me want to work on writing prose poems again.

How has your life been different since your book came out? I know that you have many more books published since the original version of Night Songs is published. How do you find time to write so much and put together so many books of poetry?

I feel so grateful to Jared Michael Wahlgren for publishing my first book, since that one publication opened up everything for me. The other Gold Wake Press authors are so supportive, and have been really generous as I've worked to promote my poetry. After Night Songs came out, Cow Heavy Books published my second book, and the editor, Donora Hillard, is also a Gold Wake Press author. I was thrilled to work with Donora, since she's a very talented poet, and she also did some beautiful design work on my book. I might never have come into contact with her if it hadn't have been for Night Songs. Likewise, Erin Elizabeth Smith is the editor at Sundress Publications, and we're getting ready to release my new book, Fortress, in 2014. I also met Erin through Gold Wake Press. I feel fortunate to be working with a press that publishes great poetry, but also promotes poets who are active in the literary community working on exciting projects.

What are you doing to promote the reissue of Night Songs? How are you promoting it now versus how you promoted it when it was first published?

I feel like I've learned a lot about book promotions since my first book was published. When Night Songs was first published, I sent review copies directly to magazines, which resulted in very few reviews. Magazines often wanted to publish a review, but didn't have a reviewer. Now I definitely see how important it is to reach out to individual reviewers whose work I admire. I've also learned to focus more on web-based promotion, since a reviewer can be posted and reposted, and read by people in many different geographical locations. Most of my readings, on the other hand, have been attended mostly by my friends, who already knew all about my book.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

The fiction writer Christina Milletti gave me great advice about book promotion. She said that it's important to be your own publicist. This doesn't mean being aggressive, or overbearing, but you should definitely follow up with people. If someone mentioned that they'd like to review your book, you might check with them and see if they need help placing the review. I can't tell you how many times I had an interested reviewer, and a magazine that wanted to publish a review of my book, but the reviewer and the magazine didn't know about each other. So you can definitely steer reviewers toward interested markets.

For me, getting my books reviewed has been a really enjoyable process. I've made great friends, and even met a collaborator, when I was just trying to promote my books. Poets shouldn't be afraid to reach out, because one of the most rewarding aspects of poetry is being part of a community.

Are there any new projects in the works?

I'm working on a collaboration with photographer and costumer Max Avi Kaplan. It involves Polaroids, disembodied hands, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Stay tuned for details!

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I can't speak for other people, but poetry has certainly taught me to value things like community, collaboration, and dialogue. If you ask me, changing one individual's consciousness does create change in the world.

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Kristina Marie Darling is the author of sixteen books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and a forthcoming hybrid genre collection called Fortress (Sundress Publications, 2014). Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Poetics at SUNY Buffalo.

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#76 - Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

2013-08-01T17:54:00.002-04:00

How often had you sent out Chord Box before it was chosen for publication by The University of Arkansas Press as Finalist for the Miller Williams Prize in 2013?

The book was picked up pretty quickly—within the first six months of submitting it—but by the time I got the call from the University of Arkansas, it had already been rejected by 16 different contests or open reading periods. I had been a semi-finalist for a couple of contests, and a finalist once, which was enough hope for me to keep trying. I admit that I didn’t have a great sense of where my manuscript might fit in the publishing landscape—it’s a hard thing to predict, even if you’re reading a lot—so I blanketed the market, sending to as many places as I could manage. It was expensive to do this, and emotionally taxing to get the rejections, but I’m glad I invested.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Chord Box? Did it go through any other changes?

Chord Box was always my title. Alice Fulton, who served as my thesis committee chair in graduate school, suggested it. It comes from two lines in my poem “Echo”: “Lungs lift against the chord/box, stir its twin folds.” Because the book is primary about music and sound—with the guitar and the human voice being two of its major subjects—Alice’s suggestion hit home. The title, to me, seemed to suggest both the physical body of a guitar, as well as the voice box, or larynx, which houses the vocal chords.

Alice Fulton also gave me another helpful piece of publishing advice: it’s good to avoid having a title poem for your collection. A title poem puts a lot of pressure on that one small piece of the manuscript, and, if the judge or editor isn’t crazy about the poem, it could hurt your chances of getting published.

I’d suggest sending to both contests and open reading periods. My book was picked up, along with Joshua Robbins’s and Elton Glaser’s, out of the submissions to the Miller Williams Prize. Sometimes a contest judge or editor will feel passionately enough about your manuscript to publish it, even if it’s not the contest winner.

When you feel that your manuscript is ready to send out, I’d suggest that you send it to as many open reading periods and contests as you can afford. It feels terrible, and like a huge waste of money, but most of us have to reach a critical mass with manuscript submissions before our books will be picked up. I was lucky enough to have the book taken pretty early in the process, but I think that this was due to, at least in part, the fact that I was so diligent about sending our the manuscript from the very beginning. Because I initially didn’t have much extra money to write the contest checks, I moved into a cheaper apartment and took on a roommate for a year, thus cutting down on my monthly expenses. It was worth it.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Chord Box is essentially the same as my MFA thesis, though I added and subtracted some poems. The sections have remained mostly the same as they were for my thesis. The first section of the book is a long narrative sequence, and I knew all of those poems had to be in a section together in order for the story to make sense. The sequence is a very charged and morally ambiguous coming-of-age narrative, and while it initially felt like a real risk to have it come first in the book, my editor said that it was this section that really grabbed her attention. The middle section of the book was more assorted in its subjects and forms, and I played around with the order of these poems quite a bit.

The last section of the book is about living in China. The inclusion of some Chinese words, and characters is a challenge for some readers, and so I tried to arrange that section so that the first poem “teaches” you how to read the poems that follow it. I wanted to ease the reader into the more experimental/less transparent aspects of the book. When you’re submitting your manuscript, anything you can do to make it more user-friendly is good. Contest readers and editors will likely be tired by the time they start reading your manuscript.

For a while, I was worried that the last section of the book, because of its more experimental poetics, might be the start of second book, rather than the conclusion of this first one. However, what I learned is that it’s fine to have the last section veer off in a slightly different direction, so long as there are some resonances with poems earlier in the collection.

One thing I wish I’d known: the manuscript was much too long in its original form. I think it’s better to include fewer poems when you’re trying to get your manuscript published. Less can be more.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

University of Arkansas Press gave me a lot of freedom around how the book was designed, especially when it came to the cover. My friend Monica Burke, whose primary artistic field is lamp-making, designed the cover of Chord Box. We had a number of conversations and trial designs before coming up with our final pick. A lot of book covers are really drab, and I wanted something that was slightly outrageous. (My book cover reminds me of a paperback from the 1970’s.) I’m grateful that the press went with Monica’s idea, and kept an open mind, even if my book looks different than most of the books in their series.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

As I described, my friend Monica Burke was responsible for almost all aspects of the cover.

Yes, a fair number of the poems had been published in journals, especially in the middle and last section of the book. Publishing these poems was a way of testing the waters, seeing if my writing was resonating with editors and readers. I’m glad I did this. It gave me enough confidence to start sending out my book-length manuscript.

But the first section of the book, as I’ve described, is a long sequence, and so most of those poems did not place in journals, mostly because one really needs to read all of them together to make sense of the narrative. I’d published the opening poem of that sequence in a magazine, but that was the only poem.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

My editor, Enid Shomer, was a very thorough reader. We had two very long phone calls and went through each poem together, and from there I made occasional line edits, word adjustments, or omissions. I took most of her suggestions, though she left the final choices up to me. The best suggestion Enid gave me was to cut a number of poems from the manuscript. I was shocked to discover that, even after I’d cut a number of poems, the final manuscript is close to 100 pages. That’s very long for a first book of poetry.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

Oh man. I currently live in a very small town in rural Ohio, and no one gets mail delivery at their home; you have to go to the post office. When I went to look for the box, it wasn’t there. Because Kenyon College is a small community, I finally found the box at the office of The Kenyon Review, where I work. I opened the box immediately, and, yes, took a picture of the books! A mentor, Janet McAdams, instructed me to sleep with the book under my pillow that first night, for good luck. (I did.)

How has your life been different since your book came out?

It’s nice to know that those poems are officially “done,” and I’ll never revise them again! I also think that having published a book, for better or worse, affords some people’s respect, and can, at least on good days, affirm your choice to live a creative life. It’s also been nice to share my work with a larger group of people; so much of writing feels like talking to the wall. In theory, the book now means I’m “qualified” for a number of academic jobs, but it’s a very competitive world out there, so I have my doubts. I have a fellowship at the moment, so I haven’t entered the larger job market just yet.

It’s important to remember that everyone is on their own timeline when it comes to writing and publishing. Many people have to wait for years before their first book is published, but by the time that first book is taken, they have another fantastic manuscript completed, or they’re deeply immersed in a second project, and they’ve got a strong sense of identity as a writer. I was only 26 years old when Chord Box was picked up for publication, and not quite 28 years old when it was published. I’m grateful to have gotten this relatively early start, but it also means that my next project feels pretty nascent, and I still lack confidence about my ability to write meaningfully and artfully. I’ve felt a little bit unmoored for these past two years, often worrying about whether or not I’ll publish another book, and when it might happen. I suppose this is a common experience.

For the most part, my life is the same as before the book. However, it’s been fun to do some readings, and to have the book to share with new and old friends. I’m grateful.

It’s hard to talk about your own work, but I think Chord Box a buildungsroman in every sense of the word. It’s also a book about music, identity, and geography. Martha Collins, who was good enough to write me a blurb, says the book is about “the language of sound, and the sounds of language.” That is pretty astute, I think!

What have you been doing to promote Chord Box, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a string of readings—mostly places where I’ve lived or know people—and that has been fun. I’ve also promoted the book, to some extent, through Facebook. I haven’t had much luck getting reviews for the book, which is a bit of a disappointment, but it’s still early; Chord Box has only been out since February. Reviews are hard to come by for your first book, or so I’ve heard. In general, I think I’m not so good at self-promotion, but I’m working on it. It takes a lot of energy, and it’s not very conducive to writing itself.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

As I mentioned before, I’ve really struggled with confidence around my work, and, unlike some of the thicker-skinned among us, I don’t deal with rejection very well. Luckily, someone did give me the important advice: just focus on the work. Write what you need to write, even if it isn’t as hip or clever as what your peers are writing. And if you really want your book published, you’ve got to keep sending it out. If it gets rejected many times, this doesn’t mean anything in particular; it’s common, and the chances of getting published are always slim, even if you’ve got a strong manuscript. The more you send out, the better your chances will be.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

After writing so much about music, sound is now the primary sensory operation in most of my poems. It’s more important than the visual, even, which is usually the dominant sense in writing. But in regards to most of the poems in Chord Box: it was a different era of my life, and I can never write like that again. The new poems are more global and political in their scope, and are less about identity or history than the ones in Chord Box. They are also formally different from my old poems; my sense of the line continues to evolve, and I find that the ultra-terse, tightly-wound lines that I used to write don’t seem to be serving my words any longer. Form is holy to me, so the old habits have been hard to break.

In some ways, the new poems are more ambitious, which means they often fail or don’t quite live up to their potential. Writing is really hard! Every time I sit down to work, I feel like I’m trying to reinvent the wheel. But I’m still at it. I’ve had a writing fellowship for this past year, which has been great, and has given me time and space to think and try new ways of writing. Some experiments fail; others produce interesting results. And, in addition to poems, I’ve also begun to experiment with a new form altogether: essays.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I hope so? As Whitman would say, “Great or small, your furnish your parts towards the soul.”

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Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers is the author of Chord Box (University of Arkansas Press, 2013). Her poems appear in The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Crab Orchard Review, AGNI Online, POOL, and other journals. Born and raised in North Carolina, she is a graduate of Oberlin College and the MFA program at Cornell University, and also spent several years teaching in rural China. She is currently a poetry fellow at The Kenyon Review, and lives in Gambier, Ohio. You can read more about her poetry on her website: www.elizabethlindseyrogers.com

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#75 - James Pollock

2013-07-15T12:33:00.001-04:00

How often had you sent out Sailing to Babylon before it was chosen for publication in 2012 by Able Muse Press?

I was fortunate; I did manage to get eighteen submissions out the door, but to my delight the manuscript was accepted only three months into my submission process. I had planned to send the manuscript to about a hundred presses in the U.S. and Canada over the course of a year. At the time it was a little bewildering because one of the places I submitted it to, Able Muse Press in California, had indicated in its submission guidelines to expect a six-month wait for a response, but in fact they accepted it just twelve days after I sent it to them. It was thrilling, of course, but this was essentially a new press (they’d only published three or four books at the time), and I wondered if I ought to wait to hear from some more established presses first. But I asked around and got some advice—the poet Eric Ormsby’s good word was especially decisive—and ultimately I gladly accepted the offer. Though not before I’d heard back from some other publishers first. The book was a semi-finalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award. McGill-Queen’s University Press in Montreal was interested, but the editors wanted me to make the manuscript longer by twenty-five pages and submit it again within five months, which didn’t strike me as the right thing for this book. And some presses sent letters of praise that nevertheless didn’t make me an offer, including Graywolf and Etruscan in the U.S. and Gaspereau in Canada. The most whiplash-inducing of these was from someone at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, whose words are forever burned into my memory: “Your verses are lyrical, your images exact and moving, but our small poetry list is booked for the foreseeable future.” Alas! But in the end I’m very happy the book was published by Able Muse, for a variety of reasons. For example, many small presses have trouble with distribution, but that’s not an issue; it’s not hard to get your hands on the book. It’s also in my contract that, as long as the press stays in business, the book will never go out of print. That’s hard to beat. And my editor at Able Muse, Alex Pepple, has been a pleasure to work with.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Sailing to Babylon? Did it go through any other changes?

The working title for many years was Northwest Passage, which is also the title of two of the poems in the book. But when I finished the manuscript it didn’t fit. The phrase lacks the mythic resonance outside of my native Canada that it has there. And on the other hand it’s been so well-used in Canada that, there, it’s almost a cliché, at least for the title of a book. What I wanted was a title that would place the book in the main stream of Western literary tradition, and one with several layers of meaning—in this case, an image of a sea voyage, an ironic or disputative allusion to Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” an allusion to the several Babylons of history, the Bible, and nursery rhyme (“How many miles to Babylon?/ Threescore miles and ten./ Can I get there by candle-light?/ Yes, and back again.”), and so on. I wanted a title that would be inviting to readers at first glance, and resonant with new dimensions of meaning later on: a complex symbol. I myself keep discovering new ways of thinking about it even now, and I like that very much.

Book contests, with their reading fees, are simply a business model many poetry publishers rely on in the U.S. in order to keep publishing books, and they’re a perfectly good one. But there are also plenty of publishers that call for open submissions, and in fact a lot of them, including Able Muse Press, do both. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to choose one over the other, because just about every manuscript that gets published—as opposed to self-published—is the winner of a competition with other manuscripts, whether it’s called a book contest or not. As for me, among the eighteen presses I sent the manuscript to, six involved contests, though I was planning to enter many more.

And anyway, after a book is published there are also plenty of post-publication book awards, the point of which is to publicize the book, to find readers for it. I’ve entered some myself, and my publisher has entered my book in some too, fifteen altogether. When Sailing to Babylon was named a finalist for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award in poetry, a major honor in Canada, it gave the book a big boost in visibility. There was a $1000 prize for each finalist, and a finalists’ reading in Montreal which meant a lot to me. The book was named the runner-up for the 2012 Posner Poetry Book Award, in Wisconsin. And now I’ve learned that it’s been shortlisted for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada’s most prestigious poetry award, and the publicity for that has already been extraordinary. Each finalist will be given $10,000 for doing a reading at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto on June 12, 2013. And the winners—one Canadian and one international—will be announced at a gala the next evening, and given another $65,000. I’m overjoyed, as you can imagine, and filled with gratitude.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I sent it out in one version. It took me about fifteen years to write the poems, but once I had finally written enough good ones for a book, it didn’t take long to put it together—just a few days. I spread the poems out on the floor and read them all, putting the ones that seemed to belong together into piles, then ordering the poems in each section and putting the sections in a natural order. Granted, there are only eighteen poems in the book—the last one is twenty-three pages long—so arranging the poems was probably not as difficult in this case as it might have been otherwise.

The hard part was writing it. I wrote many more poems than made it into the manuscript, and I was ruthless in deciding whether a given poem was good enough. Hence the fifteen years. The last thing I wrote was the long poem, “Quarry Park,” and when it was done I knew for the first time that I had written a book.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

One perk of publishing with a small press is that you have some input on these matters. The book was designed by my editor and publisher, Alex Pepple, and he did a marvelous job. There was plenty of consultation, lots of back-and-forth, but in the end my main design contribution was the color of the cover—blue instead of the original beige. Other than that, my publisher gets all the credit for the design, which I love.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I suggested several images that involved ships at sea, and Alex chose an image on his own with a similar theme but a more abstract style. It’s a photograph called “Sailing Ships from Heaven,” by a French photographer named Roger-Michael Goerge, and he seems to have done something to the camera lens. I think I read somewhere that he smudged it with petroleum jelly to make the image dream-like.

What about the publication of the poems in journals and magazines prior to the book’s being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have most of the poems published before you sent out your manuscript?

Yes, indeed. I understand that some editors read the acknowledgements page very carefully to get a sense of the caliber of journals the poems have appeared in, especially for a first book. The more prestigious and difficult to get published in, the better. And editors also have a clear sense of which journals tend to publish the kind of thing their presses specialize in. In such cases, where you’ve published affects the editor’s attitude, and perhaps how much time he or she is willing to spend on reading the manuscript. If she hasn’t heard of any of the journals the poems have appeared in, or if they’re just the wrong journals from her point of view, she may well give it short shrift—because editors are nothing if not overworked and short on time.

But the main reason to publish your poems in journals is to test your work against the standards of the editors. It helps you see which of your poems are the best, and which either need more work or just aren’t good enough. And of course, you do it to find readers for your poems. So I spent many years getting the poems published in magazines. In the end, all but two of the poems in Sailing to Babylon were published beforehand, and one of those two was “Quarry Park,” which was just way too long for most journals.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

Quite a lot. The process delayed publication for about a year, but I wanted to make sure the book was the best it could be. A few months after the manuscript was accepted, and with the blessing of my editor, I went to the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference where I received some invaluable advice from Joan Houlihan, the poet and critic, and Jeffrey Levine, the editor of Tupelo Press and also a poet. I’d applied and been accepted to the conference before my book was accepted for publication; I had thought my submission process would take longer than it did. But by the time the conference happened, as I say, the manuscript had been accepted by Able Muse Press. I went to the conference anyway because I wanted to make the manuscript better, and I’m glad I did. I ended up removing two or three poems, revising some others, and changing the order of the poems in a few cases. So it added up to a significant improvement.

My editor, Alex Pepple, made some helpful suggestions about a few poems, as well. And a few months later I was very lucky to have the unofficial editorial services of my friend Carmine Starnino, a very fine editor, poet, and critic in Canada, who, I was happy to find, only suggested some judicious cuts to the first three pages of “Quarry Park.” He’s a famously tough editor, so I knew from the scarcity of his suggestions that the book must be getting close to ready to go to print. After I made those changes, my wife, Stormy Stipe, who had been responding to drafts of the poems all along for years, signed off on the manuscript again too.

That just left the proofreaders. I think my editor and publisher, Alex, in his remarkable thoroughness, hired six, some of whom had reputations for being very tough—which is just what you want in a proofreader. They each caught several different things, some of which were debatable and which got resolved according to the press’s house style. But one of these proofreaders—an older man from Europe, I was told—made a suggestion that really helped the ending of a poem called “Weekend in Vienna.” He said something about how everyone knows that a certain kind of doorless elevator in Europe that doesn’t stop at your floor—you have to step onto it while it’s moving—everyone knows it’s called a “paternoster elevator.” Well, I didn’t know that, but what a perfect name! It was just right for the ending of the poem. So, many a thank-you to that anonymous proofreader, whoever he was.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

It was early July, a bright, hot day. I carried the box in from the front porch and set it down on the living room floor, and my son Felix, who was six, kept pushing my hands out of the way and saying he wanted to open it himself. And when we finally managed to get it open with the scissors, my wife picked up a copy and felt the cover and smiled and said it felt like flour, and then she went off to read it. I read some of it to Felix, too, the parts about him, and he was very excited. It was all very domestic and joyful. The book looked beautiful. But I remember thinking, what am I going to do with all these books? There were fifty copies in the box. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of doing several readings, so by now I’m happy to say I’ve sold my way through box number two, and I’m about to order another.

It’s full of poems about exploration and discovery, from wilderness explorers like Henry Hudson, John Franklin and David Thompson to mental travellers like Northrop Frye and Glenn Gould. And it ends with a long poem about hiking through a wooded park with my two-year-old son in Madison, Wisconsin, and what we find there. On another level, it’s about spiritual journeys, and ultimately about making a home for yourself by engaging imaginatively with the history of the place you find yourself in. It’s an allusive book, written in a clear style, and with much attention to the sounds of words.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I spend a lot of time now promoting the book, along with my book of essays that was published a few months later (You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada.) Several doors have opened—readings, interviews, invitations from editors and translators and festival directors, and things I’m now eligible to apply for, like fellowships and grants. And I’ve made quite a few new literary friends. It’s like being welcomed into a tribe. But on a deeper level, my long apprenticeship in the art is finally over. I’m filled with confidence, and excited about starting a new book.

What have you been doing to promote Sailing to Babylon, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been submitting the book to contests, as I say, and applying for fellowships and grants, and scouting out reviewers, and having review copies sent to anyone who’s interested. I’ve been developing and maintaining a Web site, and networking on Facebook and other social media sites—making announcements and responding to people who have contacted me to say how much they like the book, which is always a pleasure. I’ve been doing readings, and getting my book into local bookstores and even a national chain in Canada. And doing interviews, both online and with journalists at newspapers. And so on. It’s like having another job. But it’s been such a pleasure to hear from readers and audiences and reviewers and other poets. So far the response has been wonderful.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I gathered so much advice from so many sources—including the interviews in this series—that I feel I was pretty well prepared. The best advice I can give is to be ruthless with your book, especially after it’s been accepted by a publisher. Make it the best it can be.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I published a book of essays a few months later, as I say, and between working on that, and promoting both books, and teaching, and so on, I haven’t written much poetry. But I do have some things I’m working on. I’m also editing a volume of selected poems by Daryl Hine, who just died last year, and writing a review-essay on the poetry of Stephanie Bolster.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Great poetry not only can, but does, yes. All the time. It happens on a much deeper and more enduring level than many other things in the world, and it takes time for it to happen, sometimes a long time. But just think of the influence of Homer, Sappho, Dante and Shakespeare on world culture, and you’ll see what I mean.

I have some things to say about this in the closing paragraphs of You Are Here, which come at the end of a long essay on poetic value. “Truly great poetry,” I say,

is one of the most powerful of all manifestations of language. Its object is ultimately the formation, and transformation, of the human self and community. Its power to do these things is not different in kind from the power of ordinary language to do them; it’s just greater in degree. This is because great poetry is a fusion of reason, emotion, sensuality and imagination, bringing to bear all these powers of the human soul at once, whereas other uses of language are usually more specialized: rational but cold, passionate but stupid, beautiful but shallow, effective but ultimately meaningless.

A lot of people—let’s call them Philistines—say this is all nonsense, that poetry is a marginal and specialized kind of playing with words, a strange kind of niche entertainment, of no interest to serious people, and certainly with no real power to make or transform anything. “Poetry makes nothing happen,” in the words of W. H. Auden, who, while not otherwise a Philistine, was channeling one, I’m afraid, when he wrote these words.

In response, I can only appeal to my own experience as a reader. Great poetry gives me pleasure. It stimulates my intellectual, emotional and imaginative powers. It deepens my understanding of myself and other people, and helps me pay closer attention to my life. It gives me the power to perceive things more clearly, to feel not only more intensely but more subtly and precisely. It resurrects the dead world I live in, and the dead words I use, and makes the sources of strong value in my life resonate again.

I know from experience, however, what it means to be part of a community without a great poetry of its own. Whitman and Dickinson are not quite the central figures in American culture that Shakespeare is in British culture, or Homer in Greek, or Dante in Italian; but as a Canadian I feel exquisitely the lack of such a major poetic figure in my own country. An important part of the community of Canada, and therefore of the self of every Canadian, has not been fully formed. Now, everyone knows achieving that level of poetic power is extremely difficult. But we also know it’s not impossible.

I want our poets to try.

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James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012), a current finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award in poetry, and runner-up for the Posner Poetry Book Award; and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada (The Porcupine's Quill, 2012), currently shortlisted for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, Poetry Daily, AGNI, and other journals in the U.S. and Canada, and listed in Best Canadian Poetry 2010. His critical essays and reviews have appeared in Contemporary Poetry Review, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. He earned an Honors B.A. in English literature and creative writing from York University in Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston, where he held several fellowships in poetry. He was a John Woods Scholar in poetry at the Prague Summer Program at Charles University in Prague, and a work-study scholar in poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is an associate professor at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, where he teaches poetry in the creative writing program. He lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin. You can visit him at his Web site at www.james-pollock.com.

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#74 - Jeff Newberry

2013-07-15T12:10:00.002-04:00

How often had you sent out Brackish before it was chosen for publication in 2012 by Aldrich Press?

I spent a solid three years sending out the manuscript. In that time, I was continually revising and reshaping the manuscript, cutting out poems, adding poems in, and rearranging the order. Several of my writer friends read it and offered me all kinds of advice on it. Particularly, Al Maginnes and Justin Evans gave me some feedback that helped me re-see the manuscript.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Brackish? Did it go through any other changes?

The original title of the manuscript was Where Brackish Water Flows, a reference to the landscape I’m writing about: North Florida. I shortened it to Brackish after a while. I like how that word sounds. I love that it has a hard “k” right in the center but ends with a soft “sh.” Of course, for me, the word is also a metaphor: fresh and salt, life-giving and life-taking, sacred and profane—just like the places I write about in the book. I like to think my poetry as brackish, too, one the one hand firmly lyrical, musical poems and on the other hand firmly narrative and grounded in a particular place.

I think that contests give you name recognition. And I don’t say that to put contest down. Rather, I think that winning, say, the Miller Williams Prize, gives your book some legs that help it on its journey. I entered several contests: the Miller Williams Contest, the Backwaters Press contest, the Crab Orchard Review contest. At first, I really wanted to win one. I thought that I had to in order to get the book out. I thought that no one would read it otherwise.

But then, I started looking at alternatives, particularly presses that had open reading periods. Aldrich Press is a small press, and when I sent to them, I had no idea that Karen Kelsay would pick the book; and when she accepted it, I was a little nervous at first. Alrich is a print-on-demand press (like Dream Horse and many others), and I worried that it might be vanity publishing. After doing some research, I found that although it is small, Aldrich is a widely-respected publisher whose books have been reviewed in many journals. I am more than pleased with Aldrich. They’ve been amazing. I was involved with every aspect of the publishing process, right down to the font choice for the manuscript (it’s Goudy Old Style, by the way).

My advice? Read the market. Know the market. Send to places that publish books you like. I think that some poets have this idea that a contest is the only route. Contests are great (and lucrative, sometimes), but they’re not the only route by any stretch of the imagination. I’d keep an eye on open reading periods of small presses. Broaden your net; send to several places. Understand that winning a contest is a route to accolades, but not the only route to publication.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I really struggled with the architecture of Brackish. I didn’t know how I wanted the book to look. I knew that the book was about a place—a specific place—but I didn’t want it to be limited by its geography. Instead, I wanted the geography to enhance it. Two books really helped me to see the structure of Brackish: Richard Hugo’s The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir and Jake Adam York’s A Murmuration of Starlings. Hugo’s poetry has a profound influence upon my own, and his book taught me that geography is in a large sense a psychic landscape. Charles Wright once said that “All forms of landscape are autobiographical,” and I agree wholly. So, the geography of Brackish is very much the geography of both the literal place (North Florida) and my mind (my conception of the place). The book begins with “How to Come of Age in a Mill Town” and ends with the image of a drowned boy in a riverbed. The journey is from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience. In that way, the landscape is secondary (but certainly not incidental).

Jake Adam York’s A Murmuration of Starlings includes a longish poems about Sun Ra. Jake had organized that long sequence so that each section of the poem had its own page, its own breathing room, and its own white space. The concluding poem in Brackish is a long poem entitled “North Florida: An Autobiography.” I broke the poem into un-numbered sections and put them on separate pages in an attempt to capture the breathing white space that gives so much life to Jake’s poem, “At Sun Ra’s Grave.”

An aside: I still miss Jake, an amazing poet whose work and presence gave life to the world. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I was very involved with the design of Brackish. I had an idea in my head about what I wanted the book to look like. I’d originally laid the book out in Cambria font, but I didn’t like how that looked. Then, I switched it to Garamond and then to Perpetua. Finally, I settled on Goudy Old Style. Karen Kelsay indulged me on every change.

I chose the cover image. It’s by a South Georgia-based photographer, Steve Robinson. Though the cover looks like a painting, it’s actually a filtered photograph of a beach scene in Apalachicola, Florida. Steve is amazing. You can find more his work here.

A great many of the poems in Brackish were published in journals. Early on, I worried that if I didn’t have enough of the poems published, no press would consider the book. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that some publishers look at the little magazine market as a proving ground. So, in a sense, I did continue to send the poems out, even as I was shopping the manuscript—that is, even as I was submitting to contests and open reading periods. I didn’t worry about the majority of the poems being published as much as I wanted them published.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

Karen and I worked together on the manuscript. She did the layout, emailed a PDF proof to me, and I sent her back corrections. Since she lives in California and I live in Georgia, I worried that this kind of back and forth would get tedious. It didn’t. Karen is a consummate professional. She made any changes very quickly. I was quick to read my proofs, as well.

I did edit some of the poems, but overall, the book looks exactly as it did the day I sent Karen the manuscript. I didn’t want to drop a wholesale rewrite on the book after she’d accepted it. In fact, the contract for Aldrich Press asks that poets not completely rewrite the book. I think the only major change I made was to drop one of the poems (a very weak poem) from the second section of the manuscript.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

Aldrich shipped my author’s copies, but they were slow in freight. The book appeared on Amazon and at Kelsay Books’ website before I actually had a copy. A writing student of mine got a copy before I did, and he posted a picture of the book to Facebook. I remember sitting in my office, staring at my book on my Facebook wall, and thinking that this had to be the most surreal moment of my writer’s life.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife had actually ordered a copy of Brackish from Amazon. She brought it to me later that same day. So, I purchased a copy of my own book before I even saw my author’s copies. It was an amazing experience. In many ways, I’ve been writing Brackish my whole life. To see the book in print finally was very much a cathartic experience.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

Honestly, not much different. I’m still teaching, still writing, still fighting the good fight. I do feel that the book have given me a measure of credibility in the writing world. The Gulf Coast writers I call friends are a wonderful group, however, and never dismissed me before the book. It feels good, though, knowing that I’ve carved out my place.

I do find myself working hard to promote the book. I’m constantly emailing people and constantly calling folks trying to arrange readings. I update my website much more than I used to. I think that one thing the publication of Brackish taught me is that it’s definitely up to me to ensure that the book finds an audience. I work very hard at getting the work into the hands of appreciative readers.

What have you been doing to promote Brackish, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I have my website, and I’ve asked several people to review the book. The Florida Book Review and Apalachee Review have published reviews of the book, both favorable. Several friends (both writer friends and non-writer friends) reviewed the book on Amazon.com. I’m active on the conference scene in the Southeast. I serve as the president of the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers, and at our conference in March of this year, I read from the book and sold several copies of it.

In addition, the town where I live—Tifton, Georgia—has an active farmer’s market. This past December, I was invited to sell and sign books at the annual holiday market sponsored by the Wiregrass Farmers Market. It may sound odd for a poet to be selling books at a farmer’s market, but let me tell you: I sold a lot of books. People of all stripes were very kind, asking me questions about my writing and my past. These weren’t academics, mind you. These were people from all walks of life. Wiregrass Farmers Market draws in a wide variety of folks, from older country-type to young hipsters interested in sustainable living. Since my writing is concerned with natural environment, I think that selling books at a farmers market is incredibly appropriate.

That’s an interesting question. On the one hand, the book’s about my past. I make no apologies for writing autobiographical poetry. On the other hand, the book is about the environment of North Florida. Furthermore, in an oblique way, the book is also about music—the music I grew up with (classic rock and blues) as well as the music of the landscape, those syllable-twisting town-names in North Florida: Apalachicola, Wewahitchka, Sopchoppy, names like that.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Take it slow and take it easy. Don’t be in a hurry to publish. Some young poets see publication as a route to a job. I find this a very troubling view of writing poetry.

Back when I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia in Athens, I was struggling to put together my dissertation, which wound up being a very early draft of Brackish. I remember asking my mentor and advisor, the poet Ed Pavlić, how I should go about writing a book of poetry. How, I wondered, does one put together an entire book? His answer still resonates: “Line by line, man. Line by line.” Sage advice indeed.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

The big news is that Snake Nation Press will be publishing an anthology that the poet Brent House and I are coediting, The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast. The book should appear sometime this summer. I’m excited about the anthology. I’ve long wanted to edit a collection about the place that’s given me such inspiration over the years. Brent’s a wonderful co-editor, too. He has a keen editorial eye and a deep understanding of contemporary poetics.

I’ve continued to write new poems, as well, and I’m building a body of new work. My new poetry isn’t as autobiographical or place-focused as the writing I did before, so I’m interested to see what a new manuscript will look like.

I’m actually working on a novel now, tentatively titled A Stairway to the Sea. Since I teach a heavy 5/5 load of courses, I don’t have the energy to devote to a novel during the semesters, so I work on the book during the summertime, when I teach only one course. I’m probably 45,000 or so words into the book now, though I’m not sure how much of that is actually usable prose. I hope to finish a solid draft in summer 2013.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I’m going to quote a better poet than I’ll ever be. I think that poetry is a way of happening, a mouth.

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Jeff Newberry is the author of Brackish (Aldrich Press, 2012) and A Visible Sign (Finishing Line, 2008). With Brent House, he is the co-editor of The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast (Snake Nation Press, forthcoming). Recently, his writing has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature. He serves as the president of the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers. He teaches writing and literature at Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton, Georgia, where he advises Pegasus, a regional undergraduate literary magazine. Jeff lives in Georgia with his wife and son. Find him online at http://www.jeffnewberry.com or Tweet him at @NewberryJeff

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#73 - Catherine MacDonald

2013-06-17T15:00:00.001-04:00

How often had you sent out Rousing the Machinery before it was chosen for the 2012 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize?

I had sent the manuscript out in 2008, I think, to just one contest, The Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. Nothing came of that, and I didn’t send it out again until late fall 2010. That year I sent it to a bunch of book contests.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Rousing the Machinery? Did it go through any other changes?

The manuscript went out with the title Leda at Work in the World, but once Arkansas took it, the series editor Enid Shomer and I went back and forth about other possible titles, including Sleeping House, Morning Sky; Blue Strobe; Offshore; and The Signs for Fire, Ocean, Air. I still like all of those titles, but Rousing the Machinery is the best choice for the book. I think it's a one-of-a-kind, too. There are no other books out there with that title as far as I can tell.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

Was I worried about winning a contest? No, not worried. My feelings might be better described as resigned. I knew that once I started sending out the manuscript, I would be competing with many talented and original writers, all of us trying to find our way to print. I also knew that this was a serendipitous and unpredictable process that probably wouldn’t lead to publication right away, if ever. There’s so much poetry out there! I felt like I was standing around the crowded gym at a high school dance hoping to be noticed. Not a particularly pleasant feeling.

I am now a beneficiary of the contest system, but the challenges of the contest system are obvious; for example, it’s expensive both financially and spiritually. Yet winning a contest equals publication, attention, a payday. I think an ethically run contest is good for poets and readers because it makes public work that might otherwise remain mostly unknown. So if you can afford the fees and the wear and tear on your spirit, you should enter contests.

As for open reading periods, I didn’t send my manuscript to any of those, but I would have if the manuscript hadn’t found a publisher that year. My advice for those who are sending manuscripts out to contests or open reading periods is to choose the venue carefully and vet your work ahead of time with honest, savvy readers whose judgment you respect. Then let the process run its course and don’t obsess. It’s out of your hands.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The first version I sent out back in 2008 was basically my MFA thesis with all the typos corrected. Although I had begun to teach composition full-time by then—and there’s nothing like turbid undergraduate prose to clog the pipes—I wrote new poems and continued to tweak older poems. I kept the revision process going right up until I submitted the manuscript to contests in fall 2010, and even after that.

Also, in 2009 I published a chapbook, How to Leave Home, that includes many poems from Rousing the Machinery. Ordering the chapbook contents allowed me to develop a structure for the full-length manuscript. Good readers and friends such as poets Kathy Davis, Claudia Emerson, and Leslie Shiel read the full-length manuscript and helped me figure out how to make it better. So, basically, there was really only one version of the book, but I’d been hammering away on it for a while.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Graphic designer Liz Lester handled the project, inside and out, which made sense to me since I’m not a designer. I saw proofs at each stage and had opportunities to comment.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Yes, I had a lot of influence on this aspect of the book’s design. The painting on the cover, George Tooker’s Bird Watchers, is one I brought to the press’s attention and they obtained permission to use it from the museum that owns it. I’ve loved Tooker and this painting for a long time, and I hope it conveys some sense of the book’s concerns and its aesthetic.

I think maybe a third of the poems had been published prior to the book’s publication. Frankly, I’m terrible at sending out poems. Once a poem feels finished, I sort of lose interest in it, and this means I’m not thinking about it any more or sending it out to journals. The engaging work is figuring out the poem, not placing it somewhere. (I know this is not a good business practice.)

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

A month or so after the book was accepted for publication, I had two long conversations with series editor Enid Shomer. She felt that the manuscript was well ordered, so that didn't change, and we agreed to eliminate two poems from the original manuscript. The editing process with Enid was both affirming and helpful, and the manuscript benefitted from her attention and experience.

Further along in the production process the astute copy editor at Arkansas, Brian King, asked great questions that led to simple but significant revision on a couple of other poems, including the change of a single word in the title poem. Then, during a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, I polished some of the newest poems a bit more and researched possible cover art, before sending everything off for production. Working with the press was a great experience from start to finish.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

You know, I don’t remember feeling any special thrill in seeing it or holding it for the first time. I was glad it was done; I thought it looked great. However, because I was so involved with the production of the book—seeing two sets of page proofs and several images of the cover—I knew it well long before I held a physical copy. Plus, it’s a long process from the first poem to a published book, and I’d moved past those poems in many ways.

Now getting the news that the book won the Miller Williams/Arkansas Poetry Prize was exciting. On Valentine’s Day 2011 I got an email from the University of Arkansas telling me that my manuscript was one of four selected for publication, and that poetry series editor Enid Shomer would be phoning all four finalists later that day to inform the winner of the of $5,000 prize. Needless to say, I was stunned to learn I had won the prize. For a few days afterwards, I was afraid that I had misunderstood the conversation.

Although the question hasn’t been asked of me on a plane, I have answered this question in other settings, though never very well, I’m afraid. Rousing the Machinery is about men and women, work and class, resiliency, and more broadly, history and inheritance.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

No different in the day-to-day, but knowing the poems are out there is at once unnerving and satisfying. I’m married to a librarian and I love libraries, so I especially like to imagine the book on library shelves. WorldCat is wonderful on-line tool to see where the book has landed in the world.

One of the best things to come out of winning the contest is that I was able to use some of the prize money to go to Italy. I’d never been out of the United States before, three weeks in Florence and Milan, thanks in part to the poems, felt very good.

What have you been doing to promote Rousing the Machinery, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Promoting poetry is very humbling. Audiences are small and the external rewards are few. I’ve done the usual readings and talked about the book with other writers who are studying poetry. It’s especially fun to talk with students who are beginning to write poems. Their responses to the book are sometimes surprising and give me insight into how a poem is received by a reader who has no prior knowledge of my life or me or even, sometimes, poetry. These conversations remind me to write as well as I can, to do my part in the conversation as well as I can.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

For me, the process was without serious bumps, and I suspect that the best advice comes from people who have had a harder road than me. My advice is to take from the experience what will help you move on to the next poems. Try thinking of it as just one very interesting thing among many that will happen to you.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I don’t think the publication has affected my new work too much, though it may have improved my work ethic a bit since intense revision appears to have paid off.

These days I am working on a couple of things. One is a poetry manuscript tentatively titled The Unkept House. I’ve been reading Edith Wharton’s early nonfiction about home and garden design as well as writing by contemporary geographers such as Doreen Massey who think about how space and place shape us. Other people’s housekeeping habits and domestic travails enter into many of these new poems. I’m not really a project-centric poet, but these are the poems I’m writing now.

I am also writing a nonfiction piece about work I did as a guardian ad litem (an advocate for abused and neglected children). I’m messing around with a possible fictional treatment of this subject, too.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I can’t go so far as to say it can change the world, but poetry has certainly deeply engaged and changed me. As a reader I go to poetry for music, form, and content conveying precisely and urgently something of another person’s singular experience. When a poem delivers that, it’s a quite remarkable thing. Though some argue that the culture has moved on, leaving poetry behind, I think there will always be an audience. For the reader who is open to it, reading the right poem at the right time can be, in that moment at least, transformative.

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Catherine MacDonald is the winner of the 2012 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize for her collection Rousing the Machinery (University of Arkansas Press). Her work has been published in Washington Square, Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, and other journals. She has also received scholarships and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Ropewalk, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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#72 - Johnathon Williams

2013-06-05T19:02:00.004-04:00

I spent about a year sending the book exclusively to contests — probably a dozen or more — with absolutely no luck at all, not even a finalist mention. I was finishing my MFA at the time, and sending to contests was the thing that everybody did. But then the next contest season rolled around, and I couldn’t stomach the expense and absurdity of it anymore. I knew other poets with terrific manuscripts who had been doing the same thing for four or five years, spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars in the process, with no end in sight, biding their time and waiting their turn to be the next recipient of the Backwater Review’s Now You Qualify For A Tenure Track Position Award. I’m not sure what you call the ability do that year after year (patience is perhaps the most generous word), but I knew I didn’t have it.

The problem with the contest system is that it’s a side effect of the academic takeover of contemporary poetry. I’m not hating on MFA programs here, because mine made me a far better writer, but, in an environment where 9 out of 10 poets hope to make a living by teaching, the lockstep relationship between contests and publication and teaching jobs is restrictive and absurd. Too many good books sit around for too long. I make this complaint as a reader as much as a writer – I want to buy and read those books sooner rather than later.

Anyway, I was fortunate in that I already had another way to make a living (I’m a web programmer), so I didn’t have to live and die by the length of my CV. As luck would have it, my friend and teacher Davis McCombs mentioned that Antilever was seeking manuscripts at about the same time I gave up on contests.

I suppose my advice would be to avoid the contest racket if you can. It’s a huge sink of time and money, and the benefits outside of academia are negligible. But anyone who would take my advice about publishing should probably check whether his health insurance covers psychiatric care.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been The Road to Happiness? Did it go through any other changes?

The title was originally Sawdust, which was taken from another poem in the manuscript. Most of my writer friends were lukewarm on that title, so after the book failed to place at five or six contests I changed it. In hindsight I’m glad I did.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The book went through two or three minor revisions as I was submitting it, most of which involved substituting newer, stronger poems for some older ones I fell out of love with.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I had no input on the interior design, but I did approve the cover image after my editor suggested it. (I struck out trying to find a cover image on my own.) I’m very happy with the look and feel of the book — the folks at Antilever did a fantastic job.

I didn’t care about having the majority of the poems published, per se, but I was desperate to see at least some of the poems appear in journals or magazines, especially those poems that were written during my first year or two of grad school (the Arkansas MFA is a four-year program). I’d been writing and publishing prose as a journalist for years, but writing poetry was new to me — most of my first real efforts as a poet were included in my application packet to my MFA program. I needed those first publications in journals and magazines to prove that I wasn’t wasting my time.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

My editors at Antilever, particularly Dillon Tracy, gave the book a tremendous amount of attention after accepting it, and we went back and forth on everything from the order of the poems to rewriting stanzas within individual poems to whether certain poems should be included at all. That attention to detail was gratifying and humbling, and the book is better for it.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember more about the beginning of the day than I do the end of it. My wife and kids were out of town visiting family the day my author’s copies arrived. So I came home after work to find this box sitting on the stoop and no responsibilities claiming my time before the next morning. I picked the box up and carried it, unopened, to my favorite bar, where I ordered a double pour of mid-shelf whiskey and opened the box and began signing books and giving them away to anyone I had ever met or anyone who made the unfortunate decision to ask about the contents of the box. I gave away 19 signed copies that night. I have a vague memory of standing in line at Jimmy John’s around 1 a.m. and asking the register lady to please give me the poet’s discount on my sandwich. I woke up the next morning on my couch with a wretched hangover and the empty box clutched in my arms and my final remaining copy sitting next to an empty bottle of bourbon on the coffee table.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

It hasn’t really, although there have been a few perks. Every now and again a random friend-of-a-friend will mention that he read and enjoyed the book, which is nice. The book’s presence on my shelves is strangely comforting when I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I forget to pay the electric bill. Oh, and every year on my birthday before the book was published I used to get really drunk and lament the fact that I was a year older and still hadn’t joined the author’s club. I suppose this year I’ll have to get drunk and lament something else.

The awful truth is that I’m terrible at explaining what the book is about. I have a canned paragraph that I send out when people insist, but it isn’t very good. Katrina Vandenberg’s introduction to the book explains it better than I ever could. I don’t know whether Katrina and I share a blood type, but if we do and she ever needs a kidney, I’m committed to giving her one of mine.

What have you been doing to promote The Road to Happiness, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a couple of readings, and a Skype appearance for a classroom or two, and this here interview, and… so fucking little. I have no idea how to effectively promote a book of poetry. My only comfort is that no else does either. It’s not that I mind promoting the book — honestly, at this point I’d get naked on television if I thought it would help.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Related to the above, I wish someone had told me to have a marketing campaign ready to go as soon as the book was available. Also, I wish the same person had told me what an effective marketing campaign for a book of poetry looks like.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I believe that poetry can create change in the individual human heart. And I believe that is enough.

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Johnathon Williams is a writer and web developer living in Fayetteville, AR. He publishes the online journal Linebreak. Find more at his website: http://johnathonwilliams.com

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#71 - John Estes

2013-05-16T15:27:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Kingdom Come before it was chosen for publication in 2011 by C&R Press?

I would not even want to go back and count. Some version of the book had been making the rounds for a year or so; it had been a finalist in several contests and had received a few of those rejections that helps you believe in a book more than disbelieve in it. But I did a major revision in the summer of 2009, and shortly after that it was picked up. There are aspects of the older manuscript I miss in the published version, particularly its less overtly narrative structure and that it was, as Schlegel might have called it, a book of “mixed means.” Insofar as one wants a first book to declare one’s intentions and range as an artist, I think the previous version did that more comprehensively, more forcefully. But it did become a tightly coherent book, and readers have responded to that.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Kingdom Come? Did it go through any other changes?

The title prior to that revision was Sufficient Wildness, which is a phrase of Thoreau’s from “Walking” and also a poem in the book. I was attempting to capture some essence of the compromises at the heart of the book. On one hand, the personal compromises involved in marriage and family, the site—or presumed site—of many of the poems. And on the other hand, the aesthetic compromise at the heart of the book, between my typical language-centered mode the shift—part chosen, part innate brought on by the threshold I was crossing—toward biographical narrative. The poetics were attempting to track with a deeper immersion in and acceptance of my own material existence, a thing unavoidable when one founds a household. It’s something like when James Gatz first kisses Daisy: he feels that love draw him irrevocably into his humanity such that “his mind will never again romp like God’s.” (As if). It may also be the inevitable discovery getting older that the mind of God—a figure for freedom—is not opposed to but rather dependent upon being sunk into the midst of one’s life, which becomes possible in new ways once others are bound to you. Poetry is one means of navigating those attachments.

Considering that honor is the coin of our mostly-coinless realm, yes, I had hoped to win a contest. One reason is purely pragmatic: as you know, the majority of avenues for first-book publishing are through contests, and many publishers, even if they end up publishing some finalists, still don’t consider other books outside their contests. We must enter then, even though it can become quite expensive (and heartbreaking). Also, considering the near non-existent marketing budgets of small presses, the exposure that comes from winning a contest—people do notice—is difficult to replicate. And I don’t think wanting to win an entirely selfish desire, either; we all know we’re not entirely the authors of our poems. Any worthy poem comes in part as a gift in whose fashioning we are fortunate enough to participate, and the same can be said of our books. So the hope of seeing that work honored is a natural hope. One merely needs to keep it all in perspective.

But this wish was not without its flip-side; one knows contests are something of a racket, something of a crapshoot, and come (usually) without any commitment beyond that book. Most contest publishers publish a book a judge chose and not necessarily a book they would have selected, and so it’s no surprise that they feel no longterm investment in the work or career of that poet. This is a pretty odd situation if you think about it, and just the kind of transaction money is good at instituting. I am romantic enough that even as I pursued this end I would often say that I’d much prefer to have the book picked up by a publisher who believed in the work and wanted to see it exist in the world, and that’s what happened.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

As I said, the book evolved over a couple years, but at its kernel was a chapbook, called Swerve, that had won a Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. That little book traced in a brief arc my movement from an ascetically-minded artist to a husband and father struggling to keep hold of my artistic-practice-as-I-understood-it in the midst of those new conditions. But I wanted to build on that, and had more poems in that vein, so the book was an exercise in expansion (some have said too much expansion) into an arc that now spans five sections. I gave the sections somewhat jokey titles (structured after the chapters in A.A. Milne’s books), which I have some mind to revise in a future edition, but they do serve one primary end—to remove all doubt about the narrative structure. One chooses the work one wants a reader to do, and I realized that trying to unearth a buried narrative was not the thing I wanted readers attending to. So I try in each section to trouble what might initially feel like excessive clarity as much as possible, which I’m sure attentive (or patient, whichever) readers notice.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Somewhat by accident I was more intimately involved than is anywhere near normal. The press’ book designer was out of the country for an extended trip when it came time to start assembling the book, and since I have experience in design they allowed me to get the process started and I just kept going. So my influence on the book’s look and feel was complete. I’m happy with how it turned out; people pick it up and call it a beautiful book, which is gratifying and about all I could hope for.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

The cover image—these are always a treasure-hunt, aren’t they—was discovered on an airplane back from an AWP conference, when I happened to be sitting next to a photographer who was organizing photos on his laptop. We fell into conversation, he sent me some pictures, and I chose the aspen stand which wraps it front to back, which I felt was not only striking but significant enough.

This was, and I suppose remains, an obsessive concern, yes.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

The unique design situation meant that I had control of the poems far longer than is typical and I took advantage of it, revising poems up until it went to press. One long poem that serves as the book’s climax remained to be written (or it occurred to me needed to be written) after the book’s acceptance, but the others kept shifting—largely in response to each other—and I felt truly satisfied by time of publication that I’d taken every poem as far as I could take it. It was an especially instructive exercise in the assembly of a book, to see just how deeply one can or even must get to know one’s own work, which helped me to discover and solve problems I didn’t even know existed with some of the poems. If it hadn’t been for that year and a half of revision that took place during the design process (a process delayed, too, by a major move from Missouri to Ohio and the start of a new job) it would be a different book, maybe a less complete figure. But again, there is always something to be said for the unfinished quality of everything, which I hope it retains.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

You hear so many stories about the thrill of that unboxing, but I was terrified to open the box for fear of finding a problem and didn’t do so immediately. Well, as befits my karma and my intuitive expectation, there was a printing error with that first press run and that moment I’d worked toward for almost 10 years was much more disappointment and grief than pride, relief, joy or whatever at that moment. Fortunately we got all that fixed and the finsihed book finally arrived, but you just can’t recreate a first time.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

One thing I was not prepared for was the sensation that having a book can be a kind of burden. It has an independent existence and it can—if you let it—exert (or extract) certain demands. I made a choice in the summer after the book came out to try and promote and sell the book rather than, as I really wanted, to start work on the next one. This meant putting together a tour, finding ways to promote it, etc. I enjoy doing readings—even the ones done for just a few people—and it’s always gratifying to find readers (and they must be searched down). While more reviews and sales are always to be hoped for, I have felt that in some small measure the world registered my offering. The book is a gentle tyrant by and large, and we co-exist peaceably.

But having a book published does impose changes, at least insofar as ratifying your identity as a poet or writer; here is proof, beyond the fantasies of your imagination and a hope in a distant event, that you are what you say you are. At least for now. It makes getting work possible, and it relieves a lot of psychic tension bound up in those uncertainties. One hopes that it’s a good book, and that it encourages more, even better, work. In my case, the choice not to dive into the second book right away—coupled with a busy job, a young family, everything in between—has meant two years passing before I had another manuscript ready. I try to trust that the delay, which has not been without its pain, has been a good investment all around. We’ll see.

Funny, since as I told you above that actually happened to me and I got a cover photo out of it. This is a question I duck as much as possible; it’s impossible not to be reductive and I wouldn’t want to be guilty of confirming anyone’s worst assumptions about potery. But because of the way I’ve structured it and the presence of those domestic concerns, the book is about something. There is an attempt to speak to various common experience—marriage, child-birth, art, ambivalence about these things—and it was for that reason I worked as hard as I did to find an audience for it. Nonetheless it is poetry, and so my success at finding those readers has been mixed at best. But the good thing about a book of poetry is there is no hurry; poems wait around for a reader to find them.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

More than any advice what I could have used was pretty practical information: a more efficient means of getting the book disseminated to people and places that might be willing to buy or stock it or host readings. The library system is a black box, and the independent booksellers are geared almost entirely toward fiction and non-fiction. One is left to a lot of email writing, a lot of guesswork, trial and error. Even after being pretty industrious about all that, I’m pretty willing to let the marketing department take over.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I have a new book in manuscript, called Stop Motion Still Life that is starting to be sent out, another one in development. I started a film project last summer, which may or may not amount to anything. I can’t claim that the book has influenced later writing, except insofar as it let me deal squarely with some matters that I don’t feel the need to address again any time soon, at least not so dead on. Life keeps going. There is that phenomenon called The Empty Attic of Achievment, which is good to see filling up again with the next thing. Maybe that’s about as good as one can say about finishing a book, is that it gets out of the way so that the next one can emerge. And so forth.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I think poetry changes poets, and that kind of certainty is enough for me. I’m suspicious of mass movements, and probably wouldn’t like a world created by poetry anymore than I like the world created by all the non-poetic forces at work on it. And certainly individuals are transformed, or at least informed, by reading, and the world would be a better place if more people read better things (including me). So my ambitions are fairly modest; if a poem were to instigate even one reader to tilt her head at even a slightly new or different angle to the universe, then it has done a lot, maybe all that it can do.

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John Estes is director of the creative writing program at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. Recent poems and prose have appeared in Tin House, New Orleans Review, Southern Review, Crazyhorse, AGNI, and other places. He is author of one book of poems, Kingdom Come (C&R Press, 2011) and two chapbooks: Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoön (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Swerve, which won a 2008 National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. Fine more at his website: http://johnestes.org
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#70 - Joanna Pearson

2013-05-02T14:01:00.002-04:00

How often had you sent out Oldest Mortal Myth before it was chosen for the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize?

It’s hard to say because I never had a very programmatic plan for trying to publish a book of poetry. I had impulsively sent a [haphazard] bunch of poems to one or two book contests a couple years before, but never with the thought that I actually stood a chance. (In fact, I was always a little appalled at the jumble of poems I’d sent off immediately afterwards.) For a long time, I had individual poems I liked, but I didn’t feel like I had enough to pull together a full manuscript. It wasn’t until 2010 that I really thought I had something that seemed like a book, and then I entered this one book contest I really admired (because I had a prophetically good feeling about it). My manuscript didn’t win (proving my powers of prophecy to be faulty), but I was a finalist, which gave me hope. So then the next fall, with significantly more thought, revision, and consideration, I found a handful of book contests I liked, including the Donald Justice Prize, and sent out my manuscript.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Oldest Mortal Myth? Did it go through any other changes?

In one very different, earlier incarnation, I called it Animal Afterlives, which is the title of one of the poems included. As a book title, it had very little to do with the overall manuscript—other than the fact that I liked it and thought it sounded kind of cool Once I decided on Oldest Mortal Myth, though, I knew it fit the book, in a lot of ways.

It’s very likely I was one of those poets operating under that misconception! In truth, I hesitate to give advice because I feel like I was ill-informed about the process of publishing a book of poetry. It didn’t really occur to me to submit to open reading periods. In retrospect, I think sure, yes, do all of the above—send your manuscript to contests and open reading periods, send it wherever, as long as you sense there’s some kinship between your work and that published through that contest or press.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

It reminds me a little bit of the good old art of mixtape-making. I think by the time I was actually ready to assemble a book, it mostly fell together in an intuitive way. By then, I’d written enough poems that certain themes and connections were apparent. The toughest part for me was plucking out the poems that didn’t belong because I felt sorry for them. I have this tendency to overinclude. I want to cram everything in, even my most terrible poems, those poor little stray dogs. In the end, though, (hopefully) I was appropriately selective.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I got to choose the cover image, a photo taken by my brother-in-law, who is a young yet absurdly talented artist. (His name is Daniel Alexander Smith, and you should check out his website. Look out for this guy!) I was really happy with how the book turned out. All credit and thanks to Jamie Smith and Kim Bridgford and the family of Iris N. Spencer and everyone else at the West Chester University Poetry Center!

It was never really a concern, but I had published a number of the poems in magazines or journals already. I’ve always really loved reading around in various small magazines and journals, so it was always exciting for me also to send work out and feel like I was part, even in a very small way, of that dialogue. It’s wonderful to discover a gem of a poem by someone whose work you don’t yet know! So, yeah, I’d been submitting individual poems for a while and reading journals, but not with any thought towards how that would or would not affect assembling a book-length manuscript.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I did make some changes here and there, and I got some helpful editing/proofreading from the kind people at the WCU Poetry Center. But on the whole, once I feel an individual poem is “finished” I usually leave it alone. I tend not to want to revisit older poems and tinker with them. I have the gift or curse of not being overly fastidious. So mostly I was proofreading and making the final keep-or-cut decisions about poems.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

It hasn’t really been. I’m so happy the book exists, and I feel lucky and grateful, and it’s a very nice thing, a thing I always wanted (a poetry book! a real, live book!), but the book came out just as I was entering into one of the busiest stints ever in my work. I’m a psychiatry resident, and I was heading into this period of working these month-long stints of 12-hour shifts in the emergency room, and half of them were night shifts. It was pretty grueling. There weren’t a lot of poetry-related thoughts in my mind, as a result. But maybe that’s a good thing, in a way? There’s nothing better to reframe one’s appreciation for the time and opportunity to read and write poetry than spending every waking hour in the emergency room of a large, urban hospital....

Carnival freaks and Greek mythology and ghosts and religious doubt and kidnappers and gunshot testicles and visual disorders and metamorphoses and the human body.

What have you been doing to promote Oldest Mortal Myth, and what have those experiences been like for you?

So far I haven’t done very much, but I’m looking forward to participating in a couple readings coming up.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I would still like that advice, if someone would like to give it to me.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

Only recently has my schedule eased up a bit so that I can start writing some again. I’ve had a few little bursts of poems here and there, but the main thing I’d like to try first is another YA novel. That’s what I’m working on at the moment.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Maybe so.

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Joanna Pearson's first book of poetry, Oldest Mortal Myth, was selected by Marilyn Nelson for the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. She is also the author of a novel for young adults, The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills. She currently lives in Baltimore where she works as a resident physician at Johns Hopkins. Her website is joannapearson.com.

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#69 - Rebecca Hazelton

2013-04-18T13:23:00.005-04:00

How often had you sent out Fair Copy before it was chosen for the 2011 Ohio State Press / The Journal Poetry Award?

According to my spreadsheet, I sent Fair Copy out one hundred and eighteen times to various contests or open reading periods from 2009 to the first month of 2012. I was a finalist ten times, a runner-up three times, and a semi-finalist five times. Looking at those numbers really brings back the feelings I had during those years, that I was yelling into the wind. Also, that I had no money.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Fair Copy? Did it go through any other changes?

It’s always been Fair Copy.

I would say that Fair Copy is a conceptual book. Can you explain what that means to you, and what the challenges are of creating a book? Do you think things like format, structure, and arc change significantly with a conceptual book versus one that’s not?

The book is conceptual in that there is a formal element uniting the poems, but it happened almost by accident – one day I wrote an acrostic off a line of Emily Dickinson’s, and then thought to keep going, choosing every 29^th poem in my Collected Emily Dickinson. I knew doing so would provide me with a book length amount of material, but I didn’t for a moment really think I’d do it. But if I consider the book in terms of the subject matter, the book is less conceptual. Many of the poems in Fair Copy have different voices or speakers, with different agendas and concerns; if the formal framework weren’t there the book would be a more jagged affair. I think of conceptual books as more unified in subject matter, like American Busboy by Matthew Guenette, where all the poems center around a restaurant and its wait staff, or almost any book by Jenny Boully, a poet who really unites the concept and the conceit. But that may just be me thinking of “conceptual” in a limited way, like an album (do we call cds albums anymore? Do we even call them cds?) – Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or Joanna Newsom’s Ys.

You also have your second book, Vow, being published in 2013 by CSU Press, only a few months after Fair Copy. Though this is rare for poets, it does happen. Tell us about trying to write two collections at the same time—if that was the case of course. Which do you consider your real “first book”? And what are the advantages and disadvantages, do you think, of having two collections coming out within months of each other?

I didn’t write them at the same time; I’m not that good of a multi-tasker. Fair Copy was completed by the time I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a year as the Jay C. and Ruth Hall Poetry Fellow. During my year there, I wrote Vow in around nine months. I wouldn’t consider either to be my real “first book.” I wrote a manuscript for my MFA thesis called Hinx Minx; that was my first book. It was not, however, good. I sent it out to a few contests, and then realized when it placed in one that I really didn’t want it out in the world. So I shelved it.

Having both books come out at almost the same time is very strange. I feel like I haven’t had a lot of time to get used to Fair Copy being my first book, because the demands of the second book are very much present – editing, cover questions, marketing, etc. I have readings scheduled, and don’t know whether I should just read one book at a reading, or try to read parts from both books at a reading –how does it work?

I submitted both to contests and to open reading periods. Fair Copy won Ohio State University Press’s contest, and Vow didn’t win Cleveland State’s contest but was selected by Michael Dumanis. I had good feedback from open reading periods, but no success. I would certainly suggest poets try both, but my experience was just that there weren’t a lot of open readings available compared to the number of contests. Passing through the screenings of a book contest is a matter not just of skill – you get the right preliminary screener, and not the one who has a chip on his/her shoulder against your aesthetic. You get the right second round screeners. You get the right final judge. You get lucky, in other words, but you get to be in that lucky position because you have skills as well. I assume these things apply to open reading periods and well, though I haven’t been on the other side of those as I have for contests.

The contest system is problematic, but it’s hard to know the way out. Contests help support small presses and journals, and whenever I wrote a check I told myself that’s what I was doing (sweetened a little when the contest actually included a subscription or copy of the winning book). I just told myself it was a donation. But knowing that the money helped support things I cared about still didn’t make the system any less expensive, and there were definitely other things I wanted that money for, like car maintenance and repair, or living in a less terrible apartment. The only way I made back (most of) the money I spent on contests over the years sending it out was that I won a book contest with a slightly larger than average prize. The fact remains that these contests are most accessible to people with some cash to burn – so how many voices are we not hearing because of that?

Friends of mine suggested that I try and pick the judges I thought would appreciate my aesthetic, and there were times I placed in contests where I thought that was the case – and just as many where my dream judge passed me by. Really, you’re just hoping that your judge is someone who can see past his or her own preferences, and there’s no way of knowing if he or she has that kind of breadth.

For what it is worth, my advice is to only pick the presses you would be proud to be a part of. There’s so little compensation for poets, monetarily or otherwise, and we are continually doing work for free – books reviews, interviews (thank you again!), untold hours at journals and presses that are labors of love. We do these things because we love them, and because we believe in poetry, but we shouldn’t then think that our work has no value. We at least need to realize that our own work deserves a proper setting, among other poets you respect.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Ordering poems in a manuscript is not my strength. Everyone has different methods, and after a while, I felt as if I’d tried them all. The initial order was simply how I’d written them – every 29^th Emily Dickinson poem – but that was terrible. I tried ordering via narrative – one of a child growing into womanhood (ala Satan Says), or a relationship taking a downward trajectory – but it felt forced. I tried ordering by linking words from poem to poem, so that a poem ending on one word might match up via word or them to the following poem, but that was overly precious. I tried ordering by mood, and no surprise, I’d reorder it drastically whenever I was in a bad one. I tried thinking of it like a mixed tape. I finally returned to the narrative angle, but it is a fairly buried one.

The book went through many revisions, but because of the formal constraints the revisions could only be so radical and maintain the form. There are lines that changed drastically, and some poems I almost entirely rewrote, which was often a better, though exhausting, tactic to take rather than jimmying with one stuck line. Mostly, the style of the book changed a lot from the initial draft to its final incarnation – when I started I was very interested in jamming in as much as possible – I kept telling people I wanted the poems to be rococo! – and over the years a lot of that playful excess got stripped out, as fun as it was, because it was distracting. So weirdly, as time went on, the book gained a more Dickinsonian spareness than less.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Ohio State asked me to send them several possible images for the cover, but it wasn’t guaranteed they’d choose one of my suggestions. I sent in a number of Victorian and late nineteenth century illustrations. I actually didn’t know they’d chosen the Kay Nielsen illustration I’d suggested until they sent me a preliminary proof, so it was a good surprise! I wasn’t involved in any of the other design aspects for the book, but they did an amazing job – I love the cover’s font.

I never thought about it. If I had, I suppose I would have sent the poems out more often. I certainly had some publications, and some journals, like Field and Pleiades, seemed to really respond to these odd poems, and I am so grateful for that support. I’ve had more poems taken from Vow, but I also sent out more from Vow, and more often. It’s only in the last two years that I’ve started submitting more regularly, basically because friends of mine said I needed to do so.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

With Fair Copy, the changes were minimal. The book had been through a lot of revisions by the time it was taken.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

That it felt so strange! I felt as though I were watching myself. For my entire adult life –even when I was a teenager – I’d imagined being a published author. So to have that dream come true felt both amazing and surreal. When the box arrived, my husband and I opened it together, and he took a picture of me. The expression on my face looks a little like a kid whose had too much sugar at the fair: happy, but also possibly about to barf.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I feel a little more exposed to the world, which isn’t a bad thing, but is uncomfortable. A lot of poets, myself included, have a drive to be noticed and to be read, but also a deep discomfort with public scrutiny. You toil away for so long as a poet, generally, and are so used to being unnoticed, that to have someone suddenly take a look at you can feel really alarming. After the book was published, I was more aware that other people really could read the things I write. I don’t know why individual poem publications didn’t trigger that for me, but they didn’t. It’s a good thing my subsequent book as taken so quickly and unexpectedly – I think if it hadn’t, I could have second-guessed the work in that book to death.

That would be a pretty self-punishing thing for me to do – I’m actually talking to a stranger in this scenario? We’re breathing each other’s re-circulated breaths? Terrifying! Well, assuming the braver, less flight phobic me is in this situation, I would probably tell them it’s about domesticity and desire, and the difficult of understanding the truth of either. Then I would quickly pick up the Skymall catalogue and become very interested in mobile stairs for arthritic dogs.

What have you been doing to promote Fair Copy, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve got a number of readings scheduled in the next few months, and the experience has been awesome so far, although I’ve just gotten started. I got to read in the Kraken Series in Denton TX, and back at my alma mater, Davidson College. I’ve been impressed by the strength of reading series in cities across the country.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I actually think I got all the good advice! Several of my friends warned me that the experience of having the book published was in some ways anti-climatic. So I was prepared that I might not feel as excited as I felt I should feel. I was also warned that publishing a book wouldn’t change my life, so I managed not to wake up the next day expecting unicorns. All this sounds a little bleak –it’s not, I promise! I only mean that it’s easy to think, “I just need to get this book published and then…” – and to fill in that blank with whatever secret desire you have about your life. But the publication of the first book is not a panacea for your anxieties. That first book is just a first step if you want to keep writing poetry and to keep publishing it. So my advice is to celebrate – break out the champagne! – then figure out what’s next for you the following day.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

Before the book was taken, I felt conscious of it as not finished – for me, finished was to finally be in print. I had moved on to different work, but every couple of months, had to look at Fair Copy again, polish it further, send it out again, etc. I wanted very much to be done with it and completely free to do something new, but I continually had to try and dip into the book again and again, editing it while trying to be true to the book’s beginnings. It was hard to maintain those very different ways of thinking: my previous aesthetic and the work I was trying to create.

As for new projects, Vow is coming out, which is quite different from Fair Copy. No formal constraint to speak of, a number of series with implicit narratives, a lot more frank in terms of subject matter. I’m also working on a series of ekphrastic poems based off the works of contemporary female artists’ self-portraits: Cindy Sherman, Terri Frame, and Julie Heffernan, some of which are included in Tender Trapper, a digital chapbook from Floating Wolf Quarterly, and some of which will appear in Bad Star, forthcoming from Yes Yes Book’s Vinyl 45 chapbook series. I’m also working on a series of poems called “Homewreckers,” which look at disruptions to the home, both literally and figuratively, and which have been surprisingly fun to write. It’s fun to bring down buildings. It’s fun to break plates.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

It depends on the world. I’m unlikely to write a poem that makes the entire planet take notice – why would it? I write out of a very particular set of circumstances and privileges, and I’m fooling myself if I think my poems might fulfill some universal human need. There are poets that have come to mean a lot to particular countries – I think of Inger Christensen, or Pablo Neruda, but that’s rare, and often breaks down under closer scrutiny. But. But. If we think of the world as a smaller thing, if we think about the worlds we carry within ourselves – absolutely. There are poems I can honestly say changed the way I thought about my life and my place in it.

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Rebecca Hazelton is the author of Fair Copy (Ohio State University Press, 2012), winner of the 2011 Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award in Poetry, and Vow, from Cleveland State University Press. She was the 2010-11 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Creative Writing Institute and winner of the “Discovery” / Boston Review 2012 Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Southern Review, Boston Review, Best New Poets 2011, and Best American Poetry 2013. Find more at http://rebeccahazelton.net.
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#68 - Joshua Robbins

2013-04-02T14:28:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Praise Nothing before it was chosen for publication as a finalist for the 2012 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize?

The manuscript submissions process was, for me, as I’m sure it is for many, an anxiety-filled labor of love. I obsessed over it: compulsively checking email, refreshing my browser in hopes of even the tiniest update on press websites. I found that the only way I could cope with waiting was to fashion my submissions neuroses into an online spreadsheet. Consequently, I can answer your question with precise numbers.

I submitted Praise Nothing sixty-two times between September, 2010, and February, 2012. I withdrew the manuscript from ten presses after I received “the call” from Enid Shomer, the Poetry Series Editor at the University of Arkansas Press. I won’t divulge how much money I spent on supplies, postage, and reading fees, though that’s part of my spreadsheet. I’m also not going to count all the times I stripped the manuscript for parts and submitted those parts as chapbooks. I will say that no matter how I crunch the numbers, I feel fortunate to have been able to work with all the talented and kind people at the University of Arkansas Press.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Praise Nothing? Did it go through any other changes?

The manuscript had a few other titles—“Collateral,” “Against Forgiveness,” “Field Guide to the Second Coming,” among others—but those were really just placeholders and a way for me to explore different organizational strategies. I only ever sent it out with the title Praise Nothing.

My main concern was placing the manuscript with a press I admired, a press that had published poets I admired. The University of Arkansas Press’s Miller Williams Prize was among the dream contests at the top of that list. Most presses offer contests and so I entered them, but I also submitted to open reading periods.

My only bit of advice is to not fall prey to the temptation of settling for a press that you think might publish your manuscript just because you feel the urgent need to get the book out. That said, I was privileged to be in a position where I could send my manuscript to what I thought were the best places, the best fits, and not settle. My wife provided me support and had a steady income, I had some job security as a graduate fellow at the University of Tennessee, and I had manuscript submission money set aside from some earlier prize winnings. I had it pretty good. And still do. Even now, and especially after publishing my first book, I struggle to make sense of the crapshoot that is manuscript submissions. There are so many deserving poets out there.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I finally arrived at the closest approximation to the book’s current form when I had the chance to leave Tennessee and return to Lawrence, Kansas, for a period of concentrated work on the manuscript during the summer of 2010. Before moving to Knoxville, I lived and worked in Kansas for a few years and I yearned to get back to the Sunflower State.

For two weeks: just me, the stack of poems, a tiny loaner cottage, and the Kansas summer heat. Getting to the final order took a process of spreading all the poems out on the living room’s dusty hardwood floor, assembling a draft, and then reading and rereading. Wash, rinse, repeat. And repeat and repeat.

In many ways, the assemblage process was similar to my poem revision process: making pass after pass over the draft, tinkering with the count and measure, culling superfluous lines, improvising and moving the puzzle pieces around until I finally recognize the picture. I was also fortunate to have a few poets read the manuscript and offer their affirmations that I was heading in the right direction.

A few months after “the call,” I had several thoughtful conversations about the manuscript with Enid Shomer. She is such a careful reader and she encouraged me to be certain I could justify everything about the book: the title, the section breaks and order, every poem, every line, every figure. I ended up taking out three poems and slightly revising a few.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

As for design, I didn’t have any significant involvement with the interior. I trusted the talents and experience of the design staff at the University of Arkansas Press. They did an amazing job.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I was given the opportunity to suggest an image for the cover, which ultimately came down to two options. The first was an image from what is now known as the Heidelberger Totentanz, the first book in which the dance of death was portrayed, published in 1488. The second was a piece by Andrew B. Myers I’d seen in the journal Sixth Finch that summer I was in Kansas. After talking with Larry Malley, Director of the University of Arkansas Press, I did a gut check of what I really wanted and confirmed that the Myers piece was right. But picking the cover art is only one step and so I am deeply grateful to Liz Lester for her care and talents in designing the perfect cover.

Like everyone else, I want my work to be read. Poetry ought to be written for the public sphere. I can’t say I felt like I had to publish the individual poems before publishing the whole manuscript. That wasn’t part of my strategy, but it did work out that way.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember my wife said I looked like I’d just had a baby: tired, overwhelmed, deliriously happy. I just remember a feeling of profound gratitude.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

There was a deep satisfaction that settled on my heart once I held the book in my hands, but I can’t say my life is any different. I think the publication line on my CV is helpful in terms of the job market, but my main concern is working on the new poems. Arthur Smith gave me some advice shortly after the release of Praise Nothing: “Enjoy the moment, then get back to work.”

This actually happened to me last year. I was flying to a funeral in California and was seated next to a woman from Arizona who was traveling to examine some beachfront property she’d recently purchased. She told me she’d just been informed by her doctors that her breast cancer had gone into remission and that she’d decided to build an artist’s retreat near Long Beach where she could pursue her printmaking. We had an intense conversation about how grief and faith translate into art. When the conversation turned to my work, I described my book as being about faith and doubt, about the Problem of Evil, and about interrogating the differences between what is and what should be. She later mailed me a print and I sent her a book.

What have you been doing to promote Praise Nothing, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I created a new website and try to reach as many people as possible via social media. I’ve sent out many review copies and copies to contests. I’ve got some regional bookstore and university readings lined up and I’m working on scheduling more. Hoping to get back to Kansas for some readings. Also hoping to head back to the West Coast where I grew up and to do some readings in the San Francisco Bay Area, L.A., and the Pacific Northwest. There’s also a signing at AWP in Boston.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

This is a tough question because I received so much great advice from friends and mentors who’d been through the publishing crucible before me. I don’t think I was sufficiently prepared for the emotional ups and downs of transitioning from those first book poems into the new work. I guess I wish someone had told me something like, “Once your book’s out, you may feel compelled to pursue an altogether new direction in your new work. This is good. Don’t worry about the old poems. They can take care of themselves.”

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I still get up at 4:30 most mornings and write. I am trying, though, to push myself, to break away from the formal constraints I place on my drafts, to free myself up to wander and be more Negatively Capable. My poem “Exchange,” published in a recent issueof Anti-, is a good example of what I’m trying to do now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake off suburbia or my Christian background, nor would I want to. But I’m more aggressively pursuing, both creatively and critically, the connection between lyric poetry and theodicy.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I don’t know about “change,” but maybe “resistance.” In her book Suffering, liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle offers a theodicy that does not attempt to explain the acceptance of some suffering for the sake of some good. Instead, she argues that Christ’s passion provides a model for how suffering and doubt can be experienced in solidarity with others. Suffering and doubt are not redemptive, but are forces that must be resisted. I believe the lyric poem is a tool of such resistance.

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Joshua Robbins is the author of Praise Nothing (University of Arkansas Press, 2013). His recognitions include the James Wright Poetry Award, the New South Prize, selection for the Best New Poets anthology, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, and a PhD in English from the University of Tennessee. He is currently a Lecturer in English at the University of Tennessee, where he teaches literature and poetry writing. Find more information at his website and blog. ******************************************************************************************

#67 - Jeff Simpson

2013-03-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

How often had you sent out Vertical Hold before it was chosen for publication in 2011 by Steel Toe Books?

I was extremely lucky. Steel Toe picked it up in the first round of contests I entered.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Vertical Hold? Did it go through any other changes?

At one point I was going to call the book Crybaby, but Vertical Hold was actually the first title I came up with. Growing up we had this old TV set that had been struck by lightning a couple of times, and you really had to fiddle with the v-hold dial to get the picture right. I always loved the sound of those words together and how the act of image stabilization is a perfect metaphor for writing poems: You put language in vertically running columns and try to assemble this flood of images into something steady and meaningful. Plus, I make a lot of movie references in the book. For me, it’s a perfect title even if no one younger than 30 knows what the hell “vertical hold” means.

I agree it’s a misconception. There are a dozen or more ways to get a book published, and I think you have to consider them all and weigh them against your expectations. As much as we want to believe publishing is this romantic enterprise in which the best work gets noticed and supported, it’s just not the case. Like anything, publishing is a game, and every avenue of publication has its own set of rules and practices and competing sets of outcomes.

I was very concerned about contests before sending the book out because that’s how most poetry titles are published. I love independent presses, and the open reading model that many of them use feels less dirty than the contest model. Still, most small presses can’t offer advance money or marketing support, whereas a contest can, on reputation alone, help market the book on top of providing a few dollars in prize money that can be spent on shit like book tours, etc. It’s all about looking at the pros and cons and choosing which route best fits your goals.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

At least a dozen or more. Besides editing on the screen, I spent three days looking at the page-by-page layout on my living room floor trying to decide if poem A should come before poem B or where to put the section breaks. I agonized over the smallest details, trying to create these complex patterns that would work like a concerto, knowing all the while that most readers wouldn’t notice the arrangements (or give a shit if they did). Ordering is essentially an arbitrary thing, but when you think of your book itself as a large poem assembled from its individual parts, you can drive yourself crazy trying to create this intricate design. Having gone through the process, I think I now know how to approach the next one without wanting to kill myself. It’s like what they tell novelists about learning to write a novel by first writing a failed novel. It’s the same thing. You have to put together 37 bad versions of your book before you figure out the right order…or at least the order you settle on.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I was heavily involved. Steel Toe was super great about letting me have a say about the design. They were fine with me choosing the cover image so long as the photographer didn’t charge a fortune for the rights. After I picked the cover image, the designer, Molly McCaffrey, sent me design proofs of the covers, interior design, etc., which she nailed. Steel Toe has treated me unbelievably well, and the best part of working with them was how open they were to letting me have a voice on the design and editorial changes.

There was a time when I was really concerned about publishing as many poems in journals as I could, but that was largely due to worrying about building a CV for future academic employment. I think it’s important to publish early in your career in order to make a name for yourself and start building an audience. Besides that, I don’t think poets need to worry about publishing 80 or even 50% of the poems in journal form prior to publication. There’s something to be said for creating an expectation with your work in journals so you can exceed those expectations with the quality of your book. There are a handful of poems I purposefully left out of print prior to the book release so they’d stand out and offer something new to the poems that had already been read. You want to create movements and rhythms and moments of surprise within the book, and it’s tough to do that if all poems are archived on the Internet.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

A ton. Another great thing about working with Steel Toe was that my editor/publisher, Tom C. Hunley, had me go through six or seven proofreading drafts, which gave us lots of time to fine-tune and catch typos. I also wrote three new poems (about 10 pages) that were not in the original manuscript, so there was a lot of writing and editing happening before the final proof. I’m obsessive-compulsive about editing anyway, so the drafting process felt right at home. And it’s great to have an editor who’ll work so hard to make sure everything is as close to perfect as possible before going to print.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember how surreal it felt to open a box with 20 copies of my book inside. It took a good month or two before the idea of having a book felt real.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I have a slightly bigger audience, and I get to say, “I have a book” at parties and social events. Everything else is pretty much the same.

This is a tough one because the book is about so many things. I grew up in rural southwest Oklahoma surrounded by farming and ranching, and Vertical Hold is broadly about growing up in a particular time and place with a particular kind of family. I had one foot planted in this western, blue-collar world of combines and cattle shoots and the other submerged in books, music, video games, and HBO. I find the tension between high and low forms of culture—physical labor and questions of ontology—and the ways in which these things intersect our personal histories, endlessly fascinating. But my wife said it best in her introduction for the book launch party: “Vertical Hold sings not only of what we might have lost in this postmodern, media world of our own creation, but what we’ve found, offering a space to move forward, taking Bruce Willis by one hand and Barry Switzer by the other.”

What have you been doing to promote Vertical Hold, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I try to read as much as I can to expose new audiences to Vertical Hold and the poems I’m writing now. Besides readings, I have a website and use Twitter and Facebook like every other writer I know. I love giving readings, but I wish we still lived in the heydays when presses took care of the marketing side of things. Even though social media is a profound tool for communicating with readers and friends, most days I wish it were never invented. I’m a little sick of the endless marketeering writers feel they have to be engaged with to get noticed and sell books. I know it’s just how things are, but I’m careful about not letting book promotion steal too much time from the actual ass-in-chair writing I’m supposed to be doing. The poet Todd Boss co-ran a book promotion blog called Squad365 for awhile that I think is now defunct. He argued that book promotion should be a year-long event in which you’re always reading, posting, and showcasing audio and video recordings of yourself. 365 days is excessive and a little too Ringling Bros. for my taste, but I’d also say it’s damn effective.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Start the promotion 4-6 months before the book comes out. I wish I had lined up more reviews of the book prior to its release, but I didn’t. No one sensible wants to be a ham about having a new book out, but you also don’t want to treat it like a secret and wait until it’s on shelves to start promoting.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

You always want the second book to be different than the first. Most of the poems in Vertical Hold are longer, narrative-driven pieces, which I guess is sort of my shtick. And while it feels comfortable having the “Jeff Simpson formula” down pat, I want to push my work into new territory. Even though I’m still writing longer poems, some of them narratives, I’m trying to work my way out of the habits I’ve created…within reason.

I have two manuscripts I’m currently working on: One’s a typical poetry manuscript, and the other is a giant, book-length poem that’s unruly and strange. It’s one of those projects I’m not sure I’ll finish, but anymore I don’t get too excited about writing unless the degree of difficulty or risk of collapse is pretty fucking high.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I believe poetry can create change in an individual—change that may move someone to do good in the world. But can poetry single-handedly change the world? Probably not. I’ve always seen poetry as more a means than a means to an end—a way to communicate about the things we don’t talk about socially. I don’t expect anyone to be fundamentally changed by my work. I just hope readers get what I’m saying and enjoy the ride.

Jeff Simpson grew up in southwest Oklahoma. He is the author of Vertical Hold (Steel Toe Books, 2011), which was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. His poems have recently appeared in Forklift, Ohio, No News Today, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, and others. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he works for Poets & Writers Magazine and edits The Fiddleback, an online arts & literature magazine. Visit him at jeffsimpson.org

#66 - Alex Dimitrov

2013-03-07T14:37:00.003-05:00

How often had you sent out Begging for It [view the trailer for the book here] before it was chosen for publication by Four Way Books as a Stahlecker Selection in 2013?

I had been seriously sending it out for a year and during that year I was constantly changing it so different versions were sent to different publishers. I tried to forget who I had sent to once I had. I didn’t want to focus on my expectations for the book, I wanted to focus on having exactly the book and the poems I wanted.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Begging for It? Did it go through any other changes?

The title was American Youth for the first three years I was working on it—I began writing the book in 2007 and I finished it in 2012, though it was taken in 2011. I wrote a chapbook called American Boys during that time period but I had changed the title of the book to Begging for It well before the chapbook. And none of the poems in the chapbook are in the book—they are very different projects.

America is one of the big things I think through in Begging for It, which is full of lovers, America being one of them. So for a while, it just felt like I needed to include America in the title. But ultimately I decided against it. America, You Darling was also a possible title. That’s a poem in the book. I don’t know, I’m not Andy Warhol so that title didn’t quite work for me. I like what I went with.

I actually have always wanted an editor to take my first book as opposed to having it win a contest. Obviously it’s an honor however one’s book is taken. But I’m happy that it was taken by Martha Rhodes.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I was changing the book until the last possible moment. I can’t tell you how many versions it went through—probably over twenty. I took out many poems, it was originally a longer book, but I had a rule that I needed to absolutely love every single poem in the book. No filler. No poems that were a “bridge” from one poem to another or from one section to another. Every line, every poem had to stand on its own and together with the others. And that took a long time and was difficult for someone like me who is not patient at all. But I knew I had to be patient because my poems are the most important things to me. And so I waited until I had exactly the book I wanted. You only get to debut once.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I wanted a photograph from David Wojnarowicz’s “Rimbaud in New York” series. I knew that. When I first moved to New York, in the summer of 2007, I would look at those photographs and think about Rimbaud and being an artist and New York and Wojnarowicz. That series was very instructional to me. Those photographs were an education. So for the book cover, it was a matter of getting permission from his estate, and they ended up giving us permission.

Everything about this book, from the design to what’s in it, is very personal to me. It’s all been thought through really carefully. So yes, I was involved in the design process. I can’t imagine not being involved. I’m someone who’s concerned with both depth and surface. Visual presentation and aesthetics are incredibly important to me. But I mean, they are to most artists, right?

Almost all of the poems in the book have been published in magazines, journals, anthologies. I never set out to do that, it just happened. I don’t think it matters either way. The only thing that mattered to me was that I was happy with the poems. There are a few poems in the book that haven’t been published anywhere, and they are some of my favorites, and I think some of the best. So what does that tell you.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I never stopped editing. Before it was taken, after it was taken, a day before my final proofs were due. I have a hard time letting go of work.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I was sitting at my desk at the Academy of American Poets and just looking at the envelope. I sat there and looked at it for a few minutes and allowed myself to have those last possible thoughts about the book before it existed in the world, before it was real, in front of me. And then I opened the envelope. And I loved it. I’ve worked so hard and for so long on this book. If I don’t love it, what’s the point.

Begging for It is about youth, love, and sex in America. It’s also about the past, religion, death, obsession, New York. It’s about people. It’s about me.

What have you been doing to promote Begging for It, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’m doing a lot of readings this spring at NYU, New School, Harvard, Yale, Poetry Society of America, a lot of places. And I’m also going to San Francisco. I want to go to LA and I want to go to Portland because I’ve never been there and the poetry community there seems great. I’ll go anywhere. This is not a New York book. So many different kinds of people from different parts of the country have written to me, and I want to give them these poems, physically, in person.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I don’t really wish for things like that. Wishing is mostly a waste of time. I’m lucky, my teacher in graduate school was Marie Howe, who as well as teaching me how to make my poems better, taught me how to be a person in the world. She’s one of my best friends. And I really value all the advice and help Brenda Shaughnessy has given me. I love those women. They care and they’re such role models. And so many other friends have helped me as well.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I don’t think the book being published has had any influence on my writing. I am working on a few projects—one is a series of poems, some of which are portraits that I wrote about people I have never met from the internet—people who answered a questionnaire I wrote, consisting of 26 questions, which I posted on my Tumblr, and which asked them about love and death and what they really want in life. Here is a link to it if people want to read it.

I am using their answers to write poems, to make something out of the lives of people I don’t know, but also out of feelings, their feelings, that I often relate to quite a bit, and other feelings I don’t relate to at all. And I’ve also been seriously working on new poems, the internet project aside. Right now I feel like the internet poems/portraits will be a part of my second book, a section perhaps. I’m not entirely sure but I’ve been writing a lot. I also throw away a lot. The world doesn’t need bad poems. Or poems just for the sake of poems.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

If I didn’t believe that I would have a very difficult, impossible time, justifying my life.

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Alex Dimitrov is the author of Begging for It, published by Four Way Books. He is also the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City. Dimitrov’s poems have been published in The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, Poetry Daily, Tin House, Boston Review, and the American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize in 2011. He is also the author of American Boys, an e-chapbook published by Floating Wolf Quarterly in 2012. Dimitrov is the Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and frequently writes for Poets & Writers.
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#65 - Noah Falck

2013-03-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

How often had you sent out Snowmen Losing Weight before it was chosen for publication in 2012 by BatCat Press?

Snowmen was sent out about 3 times a year for about 5 years, in various incarnations, before BatCat picked it up.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Snowmen Losing Weight? Did it go through any other changes?

The original title was The Snowmen Are Losing Weight. Then it was briefly called The Gods of Standing Room Only, and later Traffic Islands of Our Youth, but none of those gave off enough light. Eventually, I came back to Snowmen, but decided to simplify it to Snowmen Losing Weight.

Your book recently went into a second printing, correct? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages to a more handcrafted book versus a collection with a more defined press run?

Yes, it went into a second printing in December 2012, seven months after the initial printing.

The advantages of handcrafted books are they feel more like friends than third cousins. Not that there is anything wrong with cousins. Well, not really. When you hold a handmade book it makes you feel good about yourself and the world. Like driving in an eco-friendly vehicle or better yet, a bicycle. It gives you a completely different reading experience.

Contests are catapults. Winning one will put your name and work in certain circles, and I respect that. I was not at all concerned about winning a contest, but I still sent Snowmen on the contest tour in hopes of getting noticed. And it was a finalist in enough places to make me smile. But I don’t think you need to win a contest to generate inspired work.

The only advice I have is to send your work to presses you admire, places that are publishing work that excites you. I don’t think it matters if it is through a contest or an open reading period.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I had nothing to do with the design. It was all BatCat Press. I didn’t actually see the book until the release party in Midland, Pennsylvania. When I first saw the book my heart skipped a few beats, similar to the way it did when I first saw my wife. It was sexy, and beautiful, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands all over it. That didn’t come out exactly right, but you know what I mean.

I like sending work out and I like hearing from editors and presses no matter what news they bring. I wasn’t concerned at all with publishing any percentage of the poems. I did want to have some of the poems picked up, but there was no special number in mind.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

The BatCat crew and I went back and forth over a period of 3 to 4 months discussing poems, order, punctuation, and all that fun stuff. None of the poems were heavily edited or rewritten. Working with the editors at BatCat was truly enjoyable. And it felt particularly special working with BatCat because it is a student run press. The student editors (Alison, Jane, & Robin) did a fantastic job. They were very considerate in regards to the layout and thoroughly thought out how people would interact with the book. And Deanna Mulye, who oversees the projects at BatCat Press, must be some sort of saint teaching her students the art and craft of bookmaking.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

There was a lot of sweaty palms and more applications of deodorant to my underarm region. Also, there was a nuclear power plant and margaritas.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

A lot has happened in my “life.” I took a job in Buffalo, New York, working as Education Director for Just Buffalo Literary Center. Before I was teaching 4^th graders in Dayton, Ohio.

So I’ve moved to a new city, which I am slowly falling in love with, and working a gig that puts me in a more direct conversation with literature and the arts. I also am writing more than I ever have. I am on more of a schedule that permits me to focus my creativity energy.

Ha, people on airplanes. I would tell them that the book is about you and me, and this shared air, and the baby crying its body to sleep in the arms of a young mother ahead of us.

It’s about all those moments you want to remember forever. The moments you wish you had on film so you could watch them again in slo mo. It’s also about the moments you don’t want to remember, but are somehow thumb-tacked somewhere inside you and you can’t shake them off.

What have you been doing to promote Snowmen Losing Weight, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been doing little interviews, and reaching out to reviewers and other writers to let them know that the book exists. I made a book trailer, which was fun. I’ve also been trying to participate in as many readings as possible, though I haven’t had the time to really travel or “tour,” but I’d like to. I like road trips of all kinds. Particularly, road trips that are focused around reading poems.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Be patient and believe in the process. Keep at it. Don’t let it get you down. Never surrender. And ride your bicycle near the river, the ocean, the greatest of lakes.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

The publication of the book has only made me want to write another book. So that’s what I am doing. I am working on a new manuscript right now. Mostly prose poems.

I am also shopping around a chapbook collection about celebrity dreams, aptly called Celebrity Dream Poems. And I just finished a collaborative chapbook with the poet Matt McBride, tentatively called Vocal Air.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I think poetry can act as a sort of communication vessel for the soul. A vessel that highlights both the quandaries of the everyday, and shares the dreams of the intellect. Can such a vessel change the world? Absolutely!

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Noah Falck is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press, 2012), as well as several chapbooks. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Jellyfish, Sink Review, Paper Darts, Fact-Simile, interrupture, and elsewhere. He works as Education Director at Just Buffalo Literary Center in Buffalo, New York. Visit him online at noahfalck.org

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#64 - Seth Brady Tucker

2013-02-19T12:25:00.002-05:00

How often had you sent out Mormon Boy before it was chosen for publication as a winner of the Elixir Press 11^th Annual Poetry Awards?

This collection went through a couple of incarnations (and titles) before it made it into the current form, so I have to guess that it was out there for about three years total. The first year, I sent it out to about ten contests, and didn’t get any responses from the publishers. I gave the manuscript a global revision, restructured, basically started from the ground up, sent it to fifteen or so contests, and was a finalist in seven of them. Man, I was over the moon! I gave it another tightening revision, made sure it was perfect, and sent it to twenty more contests, and… crickets. I remember being a bit down about it, to say the least, and on the very day that I was laid off from a dreadful job in sales by a computer auto-call, I got a call from Dana Curtis from Elixir with the great news. It was a terrific day. Who needs a job, right?

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Mormon Boy? Did it go through any other changes?

Honestly, the title changed a couple of times during the submission process—. It started out as “Mormon Boy, then went back and forth between that and “We Deserve the Gods We Ask For.” Actually, that was the title of the manuscript when it won the Elixir Prize, and before we went press I settled once again on Mormon Boy. For some reason, WDTGWAF seemed too, what, academic? And, I thought that Mormon Boy told a better story of the book and the tenuous narrative thread meant to exist between the poems. By that time, I was also close to finishing my second collection (which is currently a finalist in a couple contests), and the title of WDTGWAF was growing on me for that new manuscript.

I’m not sure I have any real advice in this regard. For me, the choice for submitting to contests was a professional one. Most of my academic peers recommended winning a contest with a manuscript as a way to shore up a CV. I will say this: I’m seeing less and less open reading periods from major and minor presses, and many more contests from those same presses, so it may be the progress of the business model that makes that decision for some poets. Ultimately, it’s just about getting your book published, because it is one of the hardest things a poet will ever do! Keep working, keep writing, and someday the world will notice.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I spoke a little to this point earlier, but this is the most important aspect of getting a book published, in my opinion—if you are a real writer, someone who studies craft, someone who feels that writing is essential, my guess is that the poems are already there. So, when it comes down to it, how do you assemble them into something that feels like a book? The answer, for me, was through trial and error. I had wonderful and generous readers like Jane Springer (read her books), Matt Bondurant (read his books), and Toni Lefton (someone needs to publish her book!), who all saw the fifteen or twenty renderings of this book. I shuffled, I rearranged, I spread it on the floor, I hacked it up, reassembled it from spare body parts, hit it with electricity, everything. And maybe that’s a good metaphor for the process? Maybe it should feel like creating Frankenstein’s monster-the love, the hate, the isolation, the wild abandon, all stapled together and smudged and blood smeared and reeking of amniotic fluid? My only hope was that it wouldn’t have to hide under floorboards, be chased by villagers with pitchforks and torches, all to die, alone and forgotten, in some frigid expanse. Holy shit. That analogy got away from me. Readers of poetry: don’t let my book end its days drifting away on arctic waters!

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Thankfully, I didn’t have much required of me in this regard—-I did revise the whole manuscript again, which Dana Curtis was happy to allow me to do, but once everything was in order, Dana and I simply sent it on to Joel Bass, who did all the heavy lifting for the design. Personally, I think the book is beautiful, and the quality of the paper and cover is exactly what I hoped for—I couldn’t be happier.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Again, credit Dana with her confidence in her authors—she asked me if I had any ideas, and as soon as I sent her a pdf of the artwork from a number of my favorite artists, she latched onto Glenn Brown’s “Shallow Deaths.” I had stumbled upon Browns work while living and teaching in London in 2000, and I had a print of the painting in my office. I never imagined that Glenn would agree to let me use it (especially considering there was no way we could pay for the artwork), but I knew I had to try. The hardest part was finding him—it took me about six months to track down his agent from the dozens of places all over the world that his work was being hung, and then deal with the language barrier. Mr. Brown is from the UK, but his representatives are most often not! Ultimately, he couldn’t have been nicer, once I did track him down—-he was happy to support a small press and a new author with his work. He even had a representative send a lovely, inscribed book of his work that currently sits on my coffee table.

I think it helps to have a good representative portion of a book already published in good journals. Many contests allow for an acknowledgements page, which I suspect gets flipped to in the early stages of selection—editors like to have their tastes confirmed, is my guess, so some proof you are a serious writer helps move you along, perhaps? Either way, it wont hurt a manuscripts chances—I think maybe 50-60% of the poems from Mormon Boy were already published, and I was happy to have a chance to thank all those editors who gave my work a chance as I was making my way in the poetry world.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember thinking, I hope what is inside the book is as good as the outside of the book! I couldn’t believe it was finally there in the flesh-all the hard work and love and despair and fear and doubt bundled up and packaged for a real audience. I suspect most first books feel this way to their authors—will readers see what I was trying to do? Will they like it? Where is my Pulitzer? Or, alternatively, will these books molder in some back room at Elixir Press, until one day, they are all accidently thrown out on the curb for recycling? My wife is always the voice of reason, however, and she carefully laid out my author copies on our kitchen table, popped a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne, and we sat there sipping wine and staring at the books, marveling, proud, relieved. Then, when I woke up the next day, I started thinking about the many ways I would revise it, if given a chance. The process truly never ends, if you love the work.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I don’t feel like much has changed, to be honest. I did start wearing a velvet robe around the house, and I took up smoking a pipe, and I now call my students “minions” and my peers at the University of Colorado seem ok with the fact that I address them as My Dear Fellow/My Dear Lady. I tend to stare off into space thoughtfully when asked direct questions. I fill my lovely and profound soliloquies to minions and subordinates with long pauses. And then there’s the collection of boaters, trilbies, and pork pie hats, and the bowties. I discuss my oeuvre, and refer to myself in the third person. That was cute, Seth.

Anyway. I do get asked to do readings now, which I used to have to pursue on my own, and I have been fortunate to be asked to get involved with some inmate literacy projects and veterans affairs workshops, and I suppose it has given my teaching some legitimacy. Personally, though, it has given my writing a bit of confidence and momentum that may have been lacking—since Mormon Boy was published I have finished a second collection of poetry, finished a short story collection, and abandoned one disastrous time-suck of a novel for a creative memoir that feels promising. Validation can be a great motivator.

The answer to this question all depends on whether I want to be an asshole or not. If I want to be an asshole, I would tell them it’s a teleological treatise on the solipsism of the anti-book, spoken through the dissonant voice of cultural ennui. In other words, I’d make up something to make them regret ever asking the question, and settle back into my seat with the knowledge that they would very likely not care to speak to me again. My great mentor and friend Mark Winegardner once told me that if he didn’t feel like talking about his book, he would simply tell them it was a love story, and that would be the end of it. And maybe that is a bit closer to the truth, if I’m giving an honest answer—the narrative voice within Mormon Boy is meant to resonate with Mormon dogma and Mormon guilt, but it isn’t supposed to be about Mormonism in any real way. This is a book about a narrator who learns to forgive himself by finding love (sometimes in all the wrong places). Like all great books, it endeavors to be a love story in some way, even if it fails. In this sense, it is a series of poems devoted to the tragic and the comic aspects of self-love, a journey through war and loss and loneliness, ending with a cease-fire that I hope feels like forgiveness. Rather than tell interested parties that it is a love story, like Mark does, maybe I will just provide the short answer that it is a book about learning to forgive oneself. Either way, I doubt they will be interested in the longer discussion regarding whether a poetry book can be “about” anything.

What have you been doing to promote Mormon Boy, and what have those experiences been like for you?

It has been a lot of fun doing readings around Colorado, and it has taken me a bit to get used to the fact that people actually want me to sign a copy of my book. I had to develop a signature! My handwriting looks like a five year old (with palsy) scribbling with a crayon, so I had to figure out a signature that looked like something authentic. Otherwise, I think I have had the traditional experience of doing poetry readings that most (I hope) poets have—I’ve shown up to read for large audiences one week, then I’ve read for an audience of three (counting my wife) the next. Thankfully, poetry readers are gracious and kind. I am also learning to be a proponent of my own work (a requirement for poets given the lack of marketing money for the genre), especially online (thanks again). I’ve built a website and an author facebook page and a twitter account I won’t bother linking because I still don’t understand why the hell I would ever need to tweet something.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I was lucky to have great writers in my corner who also happened to be wonderful, generous, and kind-David Kirby, Mark Winegardner, Julianna Baggott, Jane Springer, Toni Lefton, Matt Bondurant, Roger Reeves, innumerable more, who all gave me great advice on what to expect, how to prepare the book, etc. The only thing I wish I would have been better about had to do with marketing myself—I thought that it would be premature to start a marketing campaign before the book came out, but I now know that is when the bulk of it needs to be done. I didn’t know, for instance, that you can send galleys to journals and magazines for pre-publication reviews, which would have saved me a number of headaches.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I believe I am a better, more confident writer. I believe in my writing like I never have before. Again, validation is a great motivator. I hope that’s a good thing? Either way, I have been more prolific than ever before, even while I devote huge amounts of time to teaching and service projects, so I’m therefore as happy with being a writer as I’ve ever been. My new collection is a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize, and my fiction was a finalist for the Jeff Sharlet award from the Iowa Review, so I am hopeful that there will be continued success. But as always, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop—depraved Fortuna has had a good time finding ways to teach me humility whenever I start thinking too much of myself!

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

It can and does. It changed my world, anyway, in a shallow foxhole in an observation post on the border of Iraq. A tattered copy of William Carlos Williams Selected Poems open next to my M-60, and the next morning I started writing stories and poems and haven’t stopped. I love telling my students that poetry is the most important thing in the world, even when it isn’t. Where our poetry fails, however, is when it alienates and obfuscates. I can’t stand poetry that cares nothing for its audience. Thomas Lux once said that, “poetry should entertain.” I don’t know if this is always the case, but I do believe that the poet should give a shit about the reader, and should endeavor to enrich the world rather than outsmart it. I often tell my writing students that it is easy to write poems and stories about you that are yours. The difficult task is to write poems about us that are ours. There is a ton of poetry out there that confirms for the occasional reader their prejudice that poetry is, as Jane Springer has said, a “festival of [and for] the dead.” I believe that those writers who write with an eye on what is at stake for themselves, as well as what should be at stake for the reader, are changing the world every day, a lonely character at a time.

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Seth Brady Tucker is a poet and fiction writer originally from Lander, Wyoming, and served as an Army 82^nd Airborne Paratrooper in the Persian Gulf. His first book, Mormon Boy, won the 2011 Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize, and was released in 2012. His writing has been nominated for a number of Pushcart Prizes, as well as the Jeff Sharlet Award, and is forthcoming or has appeared in the Antioch Review, Verse Daily, Connecticut Review, Chautauqua, River Styx, Indiana Review, Rosebud, Iowa Review, Witness, Rhino, Crab Orchard Review, and many other fine journals and anthologies. Seth has degrees in Creative Writing and Literature from San Francisco State University, Northern Arizona University, and Florida State University (PhD). Currently, he splits his time teaching veterans at the Light House Writer’s Workshop in Denver, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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