Drunken Boat, an international online journal of
the arts, is one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. It
publishes works of art endemic to the medium of the web, such as video, sound,
hypertext, digital animation, web art, and multimedia/cross-genre works of art
and letters, alongside innovative works of prose, poetry, translation, reviews,
interviews, and photography. We focus on work that stretches form, irrespective
of aesthetics. We include special folios on such subjects as Native American
Women’s Poetry, Aphasia, and the Black Mountain School, among many others.
Drunken Boat has published established artists and
writers such as DJ Spooky, Norman Mailer, Franz Wright, Kay Ryan and Sol LeWitt
as well as emerging artists and writers. We are also very invested in
international art and literature and have a large worldwide readership. In
addition to the magazine, we have published three books, including Collier
Nogues’ The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground and Lisa Russ Spaar's
Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry.
Ravi Shankar (1975-) is the founding editor and
Executive Director of Drunken Boat,
one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or
edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including What Else Could it
Be (2015), the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening
Groove, called the work of one of America’s finest younger poets by CT Poet
Laureate Dick Allen, finalist for the Connecticut Book Award Instrumentality
(2004) and Autobiography of a Goddess a forthcoming collection of
translations of Andal, the 8th century Tamil poet/saint, co-edited with Priya
Sarukkai Chabria. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle
East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature”
by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured
in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a
commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the
Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on
the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman
of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first
international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and a Professor of
English at Central Connecticut State University.
1 – When did Drunken Boat first start? How have your original goals as a
publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned
through the process?
The
conception for Drunken Boat began in
1999 and we published our first issue in 2000 and the quantum leap that our incipient
vision took from where we began to where we are now would have been
inconceivable to me then and still remains remarkable to me now. We began as a kind
of one-off side project between two old friends, the architect Mike Mills and
myself, and we thought we’d showcase the work of those writers and artists we
admired who we thought weren’t being widely seen, just for our own pleasure.
Little could we have anticipated what publishing online would mean, for soon
after the launch of our first issue, we began receiving work from places as
far-flung as Australia and China. Now Drunken
Boat has a staff of over thirty individuals worldwide and we now publish
books. So we could not have foreseen what we would become and our original
goals have certainly shifted in time. Fifteen years in, it’s time to become
self-sustaining and my own real prerogative is to insure that Drunken Boat has a life well into the
future. What I’ve learned through the process of creating the journal is too
immense to distill briefly, but primarily I’ve learned about managing different
personalities and how to sustain a long running art endeavor on a shoestring
budget, all of the splendor and frustration it entails. Clearly the former
outweighs the latter or I wouldn’t still be doing it.
2 – What first brought you to
publishing?
A
frustration with what I was seeing published, for one, where the most
innovative and challenging works of art were being ignored, but also a sense of
the consanguinity of the arts. Artists in different media share a curatorial
space with writers too infrequently, so we hoped to change that by creating a
garden for true cross-pollination. Having started Drunken Boat with a visual
artist, I really hoped that we might try to use the magazine as a forum for those
kinds of works that couldn’t exist in print. Because our ethos has always been
publishing works of art endemic to the medium of the web, we wanted to publish
multimedia work, work that used the digital as part of its compositional
strategy and we were never interested in replicating the paradigm of the page.
Really we still aren’t. However in 2010, we were brought an interesting
project, which was the posthumous poems of Reetika Vazirani and that was the
kind of project we just couldn’t turn down. That led us down the path of
publishing more books and we plan to do a title or two a year from here on out.
3 – What do you consider the role and
responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
Small
press publishing is vital to our overall health as a culture. I see an analogy
in the role of microorganisms in the human body. Of course we are always
concerned about those larger vital organs, the liver and the heart and the
spleen, but the body is not an island; instead it’s a complex ecosystem where
bacterial cells outnumber human cells nearly 10-to-1. Microbes, the flora of
the body, are vitally important in everything from our immune system to our respiratory
system, even though you can’t really see them working. Similarly small press
publishing lies under the surface of our culture, nowhere nearly as vast and
recognized as the machinations of mass media, and yet the work that is done
there is vital to creating the environment necessary to complicate those
homogenous, stereotype-reinforcing romantic comedies and party anthems that
pass for shared culture. I think small press publishing gives voice to the
voiceless, allows for experimentation outside the marketplace and ultimately
evolves thinking in a way hard to quantify but impossible to deny.
4 – What do you see your press doing
that no one else is?
Since
its inception, Drunken Boat has
always pushed on the boundaries of the status quo, and so I feel like we have
always wanted to collapse the distinctions of genre, of aesthetic school, of
self-replicating vision. Drunken Boat was
among the first journals to combine literary arts with multimedia expression,
and I still believe we are one of the few venues where web art, sound art,
video, hypertext, interactivity, photo, translation, reviews, poetry,
nonfiction, fiction, and design all converge. We are constantly looking for
those works of art that exist in the interstices between what we might consider
normal literature, for those works of art that either transcend the printed
page or ask difficult questions of the reader/viewer/participant in the meaning
making process. I also believe that our dedication to global literature is
unique; we’ve published writers from Korea, Eritrea, Australia, India and from
various Native American tribes. We also have focused on issues such as aphasia
and exploration that have not found an outlet in other literary venues. Finally
we are dedicated to the egalitarian distribution of the arts, which includes
publishing the work of outsider artists, spoken word poets, true mongrels of
the spirit, alongside Pulitzer Prize winners.
5 – What do you see as the most
effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
We
haven’t published chapbooks, but full-length collections and I think the best
way to get these out in the world is to use technologies like print-on-demand
and also ask that our authors do their best in promoting their collections,
giving readings, helping send out review copies, etc. We also love to foster
synchronicity between platforms, so for instance when we published Lisa Russ
Spaar’s The Hide and Seek Muse http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780988241602/the-hideandseek-muse-annotations-of-contemporary-poetry.aspx, a collection of her incisive columns
from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s
Arts-and-Academe blog, we also published a folio dedicated to the
collection that included audio of the poets she was reviewing reading their
work and some of the essays from the collection: http://www.drunkenboat.com/db17/hide-seek-muse. Our most recent book by Collier
Nogues, The Ground I Stand On is Not My
Ground http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780988241626/the-ground-i-stand-on-is-not-my-ground.aspx
has its own dedicated
website where you can peruse the source texts that Nogues used to make her
erasures: http://thegroundistandon.com/. We think that kind of back-and-forth
helps the books to have a vigorous life inside and outside of print.
6 – How involved an editor are you? Do
you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
Again
it depends; sometimes if we see something that has a lot of promise but doesn’t
quite work, we will work closely with the author to make it resonate better.
Our genre editors are terrific at doing this kind of work. In those case, we
might suggest not just line edits but also a different ending, a place to
elaborate or excise, or a new direction to pursue. Other times, we are very
light and just fix typos or lineation issues, but always in consultation with
the author.
7 – How do your books get distributed?
What are your usual print runs?
We
used Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/ and though it depends, we do print
runs from 500-1000 copies and are always willing to reprint.
8 – How many other people are involved
with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how
effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
We
have a fairly large staff of about 30 individuals from around the world and we
often work with outside Contributing Editors. We love doing this because we can
tap into their expertise which often varies from our own. So for instance, Kristin
Prevallet edited our Trance Poetics folio http://www.drunkenboat.com/db16/trance-poetics in one of my favorite issues; Jean
Jacques Poucel put together the OULIPO compendium http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/, which still stands as a monumental
look back at the past and future of creating under constraint; and Kalela
Williams put together a folio on the Affrilchan Arts for us http://www.drunkenboat.com/db20/affrilachian-arts. Without the influence of those
outside editors, we never would have had those rich, diverse folios. The only
drawback is that we have a very specific editorial and design process, and
often times it is difficult to get them acclimated to our process. Sometimes
having outside editors creates a lot of extra work for our staff but we are
getting better at streamlining it.
9– How has being an editor/publisher
changed the way you think about your own writing?
I
have internalized my critical eye and I am constantly amazed by the variety of
what is being published. And so if I wasn’t an editor/publisher, I think I
might have been more content to settle into a comfortable groove doing the same
kinds of things over and over again, writing some version of a familiar lyric
poem, but because I’m constantly being confronted with such a welter of
unexpected approaches to writing that challenge by own preconceptions, I find
that I am forced to evolve in response.
10– How do you approach the idea of
publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran
Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles
during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and
bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the
whole question as irrelevant?
Well
I have always written the Editor’s Message to each issue of Drunken Boat, but that’s the extent of
it, save for exceptions like when I translated Hervé Le Tellier and Jacques
Bens with Laurence Petit for the OULIPO folio http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/translators/shankar/shankar.html. I don’t think taking back the means
of production is bad thing and indeed there’s a long history of pamphleteering
that’s currently making a comeback with small presses and blogs, but just
personally, I prefer having the quality of my work judged by someone other than
myself and like Epictetus, I believe we have two ears and one mouth so that we
can listen twice as much as we speak.
11– How do you see Drunken Boat evolving?
After
having run the magazine for 15 years, I’m thinking stepping back to concentrate
on Development and let an energetic new Executive Director take over. We need
to become self-sustaining and concretize what we have laid the roots for over
so many years. Doing book is new for us and we’ve also had conversations about
releasing a sound arts primer with recordings from our live events from around
the world. Perhaps we’ll release this digitally….and on cassette tape. In all
seriousness, the magazine has moved to Drupal and we have a consistent design
team for the first time ever and that will allow us to concentrate on providing
a forum for those works of art that explore the frontiers of form.
12– What, as a publisher, are you most
proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your
publications? What is your biggest frustration?
To
have started on a whim an endeavor that has persisted for so long is of great
pride to me. Much of that is owed to all of the amazing people I have worked
with over the years, each who had their own style and sensibility which is
reflected in the pages. In some ways, our magazine traces our own collective
digital lineage from the infancy of those early lo-fi artworks, those pieces
created in Shockwave and Story Space, to more sophistication. I think what may
be overlooked about Drunken Boat is
how much we’ve accomplished on so small a budget and how much more we could
accomplish with a bigger budget. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and
we depend upon reader support to survive. Not having consistent funding has
been a source of frustration.
13– Who were your early publishing
models when starting out?
There
simply weren’t any so we just made it up as we went along. Once we realized
that we were actually not just a one-off project but an actual online literary
journal we looked around and realized there were others of us—Alt-X, Eclectica,
The Cortland Review, Big Bridge, Failbetter, and soon after us, Tarpaulin Sky, Blackbird
and wordforword, Softblow and QLRS from Singapore, Jacket from Australia. So we
began to be aware that others were doing something similar to us. My own
editorial experience was certainly shaped from being a reader at the Paris Review when it was in the basement
of George Plimpton’s Eastside brownstone and I has influenced by the seminal
work, particularly with writers interviews, that the journal was doing. But
otherwise we discovered where to go by going.
14– How does Drunken Boat work to
engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What
journals or presses do you see Drunken Boat in dialogue with? How important do
you see those dialogues, those conversations?
Drunken Boat is part of a large network of
interlaced literary and artistic production. We share an affinity with those
early online publications such as La Petite Zine, Exquisite Corpse, Blackbird,
Memorious, Failbetter, and Jacket, who importantly offered us in a model
similar to our own with respect to international and innovative poetics. We see
affinity with BOMB, for their work crossing over into the visual art world;
Aesthetica Magazine, for their work with sound art; Tuesday for what they do
make materiality happen; and our new Executive Director’s production Anomalous, for their investment in
translation and experimental literature. We dig the work in A Public Space, Canary, Lana Turner is Dead,
The Iowa Review, Harper’s, Subtropics, Tin House, A Brooklyn Rail…the
list is endless but the important thing is that we feel those connections
deeply. We have co-hosted events with Ugly Duckling, Les Figues, Rattapallax, The Dalkey Archives, Midway, and hosted
performances in arts spaces, outdoor parks, and people’s homes. One event,
“Recharging the Sensorium” was hosted at the New Britain Museum of American Art
and Torp Theater, drawing nearly 1,000 people over the course of a weekend. We
hope to expand the idea of literary community can be, speaking both to the
neophyte and acolyte alike.
15– Do you hold regular or occasional
readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other
events?
Think
I just answered that, but I will add that we do try to have launch events and
try to represent at book fairs and festivals. We have recordings of sound
artist Cary Peppermint at Pete’s Candy Store doing some improvisational avant
bubble gum pop he deemed somewhere on the spectrum between Brittany Spears and
John Cage and photographs of members of the Oulipo convening for dinner in
Brooklyn. These are testament to the sense we have of art and literature being
a living organism.
16– How do you utilize the internet, if
at all, to further your goals?
This
one is self-evident, no? Digitally born and bred to spread new forms: Drunken Boat.
17– Do you take submissions? If so,
what aren’t you looking for?
Yes
we do. We are currently on an editorial hiatus as we transition our staff but
have a number of exciting folios coming up including on the OuTransPo,
Sardinian culture and the Glass House Shelter Project, a remarkable program
bringing college accredited classes to homeless shelters. We are open to almost
everything that is quality, well-conceived and executed, regardless of
aesthetic bent or school of ideation, but we don’t want un-ironic cowboy or
Jesus, unreconstructed pap, overwrought and un-transfigured confession, or
arbitrary experiment that could be just as arbitrarily reordered. Do send us
things we are not expecting: interviews, collaborations, mixed media, archival
projects, global and transnational lyricism, and much more.
18– Tell me about three of your most
recent titles, and why they’re special.
This
one is easy because we only have three titles published so far. Our first book Radha Says are the posthumous poems of
the remarkable and tragic figure, Reetika Vazirani, a manuscript meticulously
reconstructed through an act of literary forensics. Our second, Lisa Russ
Spaar’s Hide-and-Seek Muse collects
the best of her columns from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s
Arts-and-Academe blog on contemporary poetry. Pithy, wise, and insightful,
Spaar’s essays take on everyone from Charles Wright to Brenda Hillman. Our most
recent book won our inaugural first book prize and was chosen by Forrest
Gander. The title is Collier Nogues’ The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground and is a provoking collection of erasures with an interactive website to
accompany it. Our fourth collection will be out this fall and it is “Union,”
the best of 15 years of Drunken Boat and 50 years of Singaporean literature and
it will be co-published by Ethos Press. We hope to continue doing a few titles
a year in addition to putting out a magazine that explores and exhibits the
best contemporary art and literature.
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