12 or 20 (small press) questions with Rob MacDonald on Sixth Finch

Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of Sixth Finch. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Washington Square, BOAAT, Birdfeast, H_NGM_N and other journals.  He is the author of Situation Normal (Rye House Press) and Resuscitation Party (Racing Form Press).

Sixth Finch is an online journal of poetry and art, founded in 2008 and updated quarterly.  Sixth Finch Books has published chapbooks by Gale Marie Thompson, Ryan Ridge, Dara Cerv, Jessica Poli, Chad Reynolds, Anne Cecelia Holmes, Ben Mirov, Cate Peebles and Emily Bludworth de Barrios.

1 – When did Sixth Finch Books 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?
I started the online journal back in 2008, and once that was going smoothly, I decided that we ought to expand to chapbooks in 2013.  I'm not sure that the goals have changed significantly; we're always aiming to get great work into people's hands, and we try to do justice to that work by designing books well. 

2 – What first brought you to publishing?
After I finished my MFA at Emerson, I felt like I wanted a way to stay connected.  I also felt like conversations among creative people were too rare and too segregated.  Poets talk to poets.  Sculptors talk to sculptors.  Musicians talk to musicians.  I was hoping that I might be able to bring those people together or at least get them looking at what's happening outside of their own disciplines. 

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
Early on, I needed to rely on friends to contribute to Sixth Finch and get things rolling, so the first few issues were heavy on poems that struck a chord with me.  Then Roberto Montes served as poetry reader for a while, and now Dara Cerv is in that role; they've both stretched me to bring in a wider variety of voices.  I'm feeling an obligation to keep stretching, and I'm confident that we're getting stronger as a result.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
Our commitment to visual art is serious, and we take pride in putting some of the top contemporary artists alongside our poets.  The art isn't decoration; it's content that's just as important as the writing.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
I'm not sure.  I know that we've done very well by simply selling the chapbooks through our site, and we've also done well at AWP.  A handful of independent bookstores have asked to carry our chapbooks, too, and we're grateful to them.  Any time someone has a new suggestion about how to get the books to people, I'm open to it.  The truth is that I'm perfectly happy to break even on the whole operation, so when you say "effective," I measure that based on books, not dollars.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
I've let the poets set the tone.  Some people want a lot of help with the details, and I'm happy to offer my two cents about every comma and every line break.  Other people have already nailed down final drafts before submitting, so they don't need (or want) that sort of editing.  I'm fine either way.  The goal is for poets to feel great about the final product.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
We've generally started with 150 of each chapbook, and we've gone to a second run on everything except the brand new ones.  Based on how they're selling, I'm confident we'll need to do a second run of them, too.  Maybe we should start with more than 150, huh?

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're a small team right now: Dara Cerv, Jaime Zuckerman and Katie Hibner make up the rest of the team.  They're great, and I don't miss the days when I was doing it all myself.  It's clear that different perspectives lead to a better product.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
I feel even more determined to write poems that stand out.  Being an editor helps me see how easily poems can slip into the familiar and helps me fully appreciate work that's offering something new.  I'm holding my own work to higher standards now because I'm used to being very selective as an editor. 

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?
I wouldn't feel comfortable publishing my own writing, but I've got no strong feelings about what other editors do.  The etiquette around that stuff doesn't interest me at all.

11– How do you see Sixth Finch Books evolving?
Maybe we'll give full-length books a shot.  Maybe we'll put out some sort of "Best Of" collection when we hit our 10-year anniversary.  I'm not sure.  So far, we've grown in a very organic way, so we'll probably stick to that approach.

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?
I don't know about "proud," but when I look back at all the work we've put out over the years, I'm definitely grateful.  We're a small operation, and I'm not really sure how we got where we are, but I appreciate the fact that so many people continue to trust us with their work.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
I don't know that I thought of them as models, but I was excited to see places like Octopus, H_NGM_N and diode putting great poetry online, consistently publishing work that was more exciting to me than what I was finding in print journals.

18– Tell me about your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
This year, we put out four chapbooks, and they cover a pretty wide spectrum.  I asked all four poets to write a little bit about their books, and I think that their answers show how different their voices and styles are:

Anne Cecelia Holmes: The poems in DEAD YEAR are a gut-punch to living with trauma and grief—raw and unapologetic elegies to loss of self and an attempt to gain it back. The chapbook steps into the muck of abuse and violence and sends dispatches from the muck, all the while working to reconstruct hope and a way forward.

Ben Mirov (on A Few Ideas from My Blackbox): I wrote these poems pretty quickly. Most of the advice they contain is bad. Sorry.

Cate Peebles: I wrote The Woodlands after leaving Brooklyn and moving to Pittsburgh, a city that somehow still has wilderness bursting through its seams; the trees and animals are as much a part of the landscape as bridges and old factories turned into condos. This insistent, stubborn wildness made its way into my language and shaped these semi-punctuated bursts.

Emily Bludworth de Barrios: One image I had specifically, when imagining an audience for the poems of WOMEN, MONEY, CHILDREN, GHOSTS (and I did think "audience," as in an assembled group of listeners, as opposed to individual readers), was that hearing these poems would be like being both gently and forcefully pushed around by waves. Not an intellectual experience, but a physical one, being thrown against, tumbling through, the sounds repeated and mixed with the connotations flaring up and dying. (Like standing inside a building as opposed to looking at a photo of a building or studying its architectural plans.) So hearing or reading the poems could be like swimming in strong waves, or like being the tongue of a bell (making a helpless, inevitable, jarring, natural, intermittent, sensical noise).

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

Anne Cecelia Holmes, Dead Year

Dead Year

Tonight I pay attention

to my energetic state.

Reframe, reframe,

prickly feelings aside.

I turn on the fire

until my eyes adjust,

expand to let a path

scorch through all

of me. All of me

dying in fake light.

I know about steering

toward forfeit.

Each time I crack

I touch the gap between

my lungs. I reach

inside my brain,

malleable as it is,

and spend a century

slicing its dimensions

until it becomes

a map I can trust.

The author of The Jitters (horse less press, 2015) [see my review of such here] and the chapbooks Junk Parade (dancing girl press, 2012) and I Am A Natural Wonder (with Lily Ladewig; Blue Hour Press, 2011), Western Massachusetts poet Anne Cecelia Holmes’ newest poetry book is Dead Year (sixth finch books, 2016). Dead Year is made up of a suite of twenty-eight short lyrics, each of which utilize the same title, claiming (and re-claiming) a safe physical and temporal space. As she writes in the opening poem: “I unfold old terror / until it is a landmark. // Anything wanting / to be born this year // needs more than / an inarticulate feeling.” The poems in Dead Year are powerful in their subtlety, openness and even optimism, with only the thinnest verneer between the surface of the page and an immeasurable depth of rage and grief. On her website, as part of her announcement for the new book, she offered: “These poems are dispatches from abuse and violence and looking for shelter, apologies to unneeded apologies.” In many ways, these poems do feel like epistolary dispatches, little notes composed, not as a cry for help, but for an acknowledgment of what has happened, what is happening, and what comes next, attempting to emerge, rebuilt, on the other end of trauma. The poems in Dead Year are very much an acknowledgment, giving voice to what had not yet been spoken of. To give voice is to make tangible, but it is also allowing the potential for exorcism. As she writes towards the end of the collection: “I reach / inside my brain, // malleable as it is, / and spend a century // slicing its dimensions / until it becomes // a map I can trust.” In her December 15, 2015 “12 or 20 questions” interview, Holmes spoke a bit about the process of working on the manuscript:

Over the past two years or so, the voice and intent behind my poems have shifted pretty forcefully to a more bodied, female perspective. Like I mentioned before, for a long time I was uncomfortable facing depression, anxiety, trauma, especially related to a personal and societal female experience in my work, even though these ideas and concerns were boiling in me. To that end, I am writing poems investigating how to reconcile these issues—how to be okay with anger, but also working toward hope. Hope is important to me, no matter how sick the world seems or how foolish it feels to still seek it. There are theoretical questions behind this, of course, but it is also impossible for me to separate the theoretical from the personal.  

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Anne Cecelia Holmes

Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of THE JITTERS (horse less press 2015) and the chapbooks JUNK PARADE (dancing girl press 2012) and I AM A NATURAL WONDER (with Lily Ladewig; Blue Hour Press 2011). She is co-editor of Jellyfish Magazine and lives in Western Massachusetts.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book just came out in June, and it has been both thrilling and sort of terrifying navigating that experience. What I think most about at this point regarding “change” is that having a book in the world has given my family a more concrete notion of what I do, that writing isn't just a “hobby” for me. They have always been incredibly supportive, but a book has changed how they interact and engage with me and my work—it's very moving.

It has also been constantly surprising and empowering to receive support and kindness from strangers, from other writers I admire—from anyone. And it means the world to me when I hear that poems I've written mean something/speak to other people. Growing up on other people's writing, I am floored at these kindnesses pointed in my direction.

As for recent work, I'm trying to write more from the murky parts of my guts to tackle what I’ve never really let myself confront before: womanhood, abuse, trauma, loss of self. I'm writing through what I used to perceive as too “upfront,” too ugly (in myself, in the world)—personal damage, my body (or bodies at all), what it is to be a woman who feels threatened by herself and most things and most people. I'm working more toward just stepping into the muck, writing dispatches from the muck. I feel like my voice is louder, and like I’m pounding on the walls and figuring out if I need to keep pounding and shouting or forgive, or how one can reconcile any of those things.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I came to fiction first, but as a little kid. As I got older, though, I found poetry the best vessel/translation for my brain mess—for making connections and finding ways to map my anxieties and interactions. To deal in reconciliation with the world and making sense of it by fighting with and puzzling over it. And poetry lets me get steeped in chance and risk and recklessness as guides—not knowing necessarily where I will end up. That provides a comfort and a challenge that keeps me going.

Also, I just don't feel like I have the stamina or particular brain space to write fiction or non-fiction—I can write and chew on a poem for a really long time, and that can completely exhaust me, but building up plot, characters, a certain sustained arc is just not in my wheelhouse. I am, though, trying to write non-fiction. Not successfully yet, but trying.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Oh, length of time on a manuscript depends drastically—on what I'm writing, on my mood, etc. I don't really deal in “projects,” though, at least as I define the word—I'm more about just writing what and when I can, and then seeing how what I've produced ends up fitting later with what else I've written.

I do tend to write individual poems pretty quickly, but again, there's no knowing what will need several rounds of revision/rethinking or what will come out as a finished poem. I wish I had more of an intelligent answer for this, but it's really a crapshoot for me. I do enjoy editing when necessary—I guess it's more common that I do need to edit than not.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Poems are pretty much a different animal every time. They can begin with a line I've written down, or just something weird in my head spills out and I'm surprised by it. This is what I simultaneously love and find fascinating/infuriating about writing poems—the discovery, the not knowing where a poem might start or end.

I haven't ever really set out writing poems with a book in mind, except for two chapbooks I've written. For some reason I think of those differently. Mostly, though, I write discrete poems for years that end up thematically linked because of the brain space I'm writing in during that time, and then I work to figure out how they might combine into a larger manuscript.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

If I am motivated enough to leave the house, readings are almost always incredibly helpful to my creative process and push me to work harder. And I love readings as community building, and I feel an excited buzz or a kind of hypnosis while hearing other writers read.

I do enjoy giving readings, both as a chance to test new work and also as an experiment to alleviate public anxiety. Right now, I'm in the middle of a small tour for my first book, and I find it exhilarating and also a little scary to be reading from a physical book for the first time. It's always interesting, too, to gauge how audiences react to your work, to choose or not choose poems you think a specific audience will respond the most to, and that sort of connection with an audience is unlike any other I've felt. It's a weird, but fun, intimate game to play.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Over the past two years or so, the voice and intent behind my poems have shifted pretty forcefully to a more bodied, female perspective. Like I mentioned before, for a long time I was uncomfortable facing depression, anxiety, trauma, especially related to a personal and societal female experience in my work, even though these ideas and concerns were boiling in me. To that end, I am writing poems investigating how to reconcile these issues—how to be okay with anger, but also working toward hope. Hope is important to me, no matter how sick the world seems or how foolish it feels to still seek it. There are theoretical questions behind this, of course, but it is also impossible for me to separate the theoretical from the personal. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I've been thinking about this a lot, especially lately, especially in this current era of writers on politics, activism, advocacy, and with an added social media lens. I admire the writers tackling issues of race, disability, sex and gender, and other injustices/invisibilities in their work—writers undoubtedly enact change, ask for change, fight for change, and I see this role as absolutely necessary.

More generally, I think writers are always addressing cultural complications—to further complicate, to investigate, to ask even more questions that may not have answers, to find beauty or ugliness in complication, all working toward finding strangeness/difficulty in the ordinary or what's ordinary in strangeness/difficulty.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Definitely essential. I trust my work more than I used to, but I'm always sharing with others or asking questions to get a fresh perspective—I can't write purely in my own vacuum, and I don't think I should.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

One piece of advice I've been latching onto lately, which was passed on to me from a friend (who received it from a writing mentor), is “Try to find grace in transition.” This isn't necessarily tied to writing, but I've been thinking about it a lot as I try to reevaluate and reconfigure how to make writing more of a priority in my life versus a “career,” but also I apply it to my writing as a way to calm myself down when I don't necessarily know which direction I'm headed in or when I'm feeling like I'll never write another poem (ugh).

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I have been trying to establish a steady writing routine for years, and while I'm both lazy and defeatist (a charming duo), I do think I'm finally coming to understand that it's okay not to have one—or to force myself to have a strict one, I should say. Since leaving grad school, where I had loads of unstructured time to write within (that I realize now I didn't take full advantage of; so it goes), I now work a 9-5 desk job and pretty exclusively write on the weekends—my brain kind of shuts off after the work day ends, and I tend to come home, eat dinner, watch tv with my husband, and go to bed.

One small routine is that I meet up with a few friends (also writers) on Sunday mornings at a local coffee shop, so we can all write and basically keep each other and ourselves accountable. I find this small kind of structure really helpful, even if we spend half the time just catching up and whining about how difficult writing is and collectively wishing the loud barista would be quiet (seriously, he is so loud).

I just came back from a 10-day writing residency, though, which was invigorating and productive and lowered my anxiety levels so much that I know I want/need to prioritize writing more, give myself more time. How, though? I'm still trying to figure that out.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Reading poetry is a necessary part of my writing process. Usually if I'm not reading, I'm not writing (at least not writing well). If I'm stuck, or feeling anxious and weird (which is pretty much all the time; who am I kidding?), I read for awhile to get my head in the zone. Sometimes I also take notes on what I'm reading—basically in the form of word lists I can turn to. Without reading, though, I really have no idea how to write a poem, or I end up just writing gooey nonsense that I can't do anything with. I learned long ago, though, that I have to abandon classic “inspiration” and just write no matter how I'm feeling.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Polish food, especially kielbasa in a slow-cooker.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I need to read poetry to write poetry, but other forms inevitably find their way into my work. I watch a lot of TV and find snippets of dialogue worming into my work pretty frequently. Music affects my poems if I'm listening while writing—mostly in terms of tone-setting. I suppose everything external finds a way in, whether I'm cognizant of it or not. My husband is a philosopher, and my poems have been known to absorb some phrases or ideas from philosophical theories/paradoxes—not in an overly theoretical way, but mostly in the small absurdities I find in images or language. “Brain-in-a-vat skepticism,” for instance, I find more delightfully interesting on an image level rather than a purely theoretical one (which is still interesting, don't get me wrong).

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I turn to Mary Ruefle and Bernadette Mayer a lot to help me get in a writing headspace. I am mostly reading women these days, and more so women who write boldly through anxiety, trauma, loss, womanhood and bodied experience. My two lifelines, Caroline Cabrera and Gale Marie Thompson, give me so much fire and hope and I would be nowhere without their brave writing and friendship.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write non-fiction essays. Travel pretty much anywhere.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

This constantly changes, since I don't even have a constant “occupation.” I do have great respect for trauma counselors, and those who work with abused women. In another life, I would have loved to pursue that field, but I know I don't have the strength for that. My last couple jobs have been working for mission-driven organizations, though, and I am definitely interested in continuing to work in that vein.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I'm going to start by saying “I had a weird childhood,” which is so cliché, but that's part of it. Or maybe, more accurately, “I was a weird kid”? My parents got divorced when I was very young, and one of my earliest memories spending time at my dad's apartment was this elaborate project we concocted together: my dad would give construction paper faces to all the furniture in the living room, and my task was to write personal histories for each piece of furniture. I was painfully shy and sensitive and writing just made sense to me more than anything else. I can write what I can't say out loud (I am a terribly inarticulate speaker), and make connections I never would have made merely inside my head without fiddling with them on the page. I am an incredibly interior person and if I'm not writing I'm just feeling more anxious about what's in my head than if I give that anxiety a space of its own.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I just finished Anne Boyer's Garments Against Women, which I'm still reeling from—thinking about the impossibilities often present in understanding/creating art, about womanhood, and this question Boyer asks: “how do we survive our survival?”. Martha Marcy May Marlene is a beautiful, terrifying film I watched recently about a young female cult survivor.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I'm not completely sure? I think I'm toying around with a second manuscript, but really, I'm just excited to be writing again after a pretty long dry spell.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Anne Cecelia Holmes, The Jitters

ODE

None of this concerns you but

sometimes it’s better to pretend closeness

than live in fear of rejection. Things I know:

car sickness, the Mall of America, all-night

murder dreams. Childhood was a joke.

Slinging imaginary rifles over my shoulder,

falling out of trees for negative attention.

Now I talk to you like I have nothing

to lose, no grip whatsoever. I sneak into

the neighbor’s basement just to be the criminal.

I call you in the middle of the night to say

I’m not a ghost yet. It’s funny because

in Chicago I have a real brother but what

a boring story. Things I don’t know:

portion control, easing depression,

the optimal gesture.

Nothing I say will make you love me

and there’s real honor in that.

The author of two poetry chapbooks, Massachusetts poet Anne Cecelia Holmes’ first trade collection is The Jitters (Grand Rapids MI: Horse Less Press, 2015). Built as a collection of compact lyrics, the poems in The Jitters are fearless, vulnerable and razor-sharp. These poems revel in even the smallest miracles, attempt to comprehend the darkness, and take no shit from anyone. As she writes to open the poem “WORLD’S TINEST EARTHQUAKE,” “I’d like to say what’s been said / and say it better. Break // accountability exactly open. / When faced with an ultimatum // I choose the most destructive force, / haul everyone onto the lawn just // to get tough. Please trust me.” These are poems born of a quick, dry wit, composed as a series of observations, critiques and direct statements that take no prisoners. “When nothing changes I finally love myself,” she writes, in the poem “MEMORY BRICKS.”

SOME RELICS

All of this hurts the facial expression.

I’m sick of watching you fall over

the television like you’re the one

inside it, and more than ever

I feel like a tugboat in that scene.

Don’t blame me for your

bad cartography. I can’t be

an acrobat because

my heart isn’t ripe.

You said this trampoline

makes you dream of chairs

but to me the backyard

is a butcher shop.

Bring me a bag of rocks

and I’ll carpet you in them.

I’m going to be

an admiral in all this.

I’ve been increasingly aware over the past few years of a particular strain of American poetry: poets, predominantly female poets, composing very striking lyric poems that combine savage wit, subversion, distraction and use of the straight phrase, blending lightness against dark subject matter. If I were to attempt any kind of list of examples, it would include Matthea Harvey, Natalie Lyalin, Dorothea Lasky, Amy Lawless, Sommer Browning, Emily Pettit, Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Emily Kendal Frey, Anne Boyer and the late Hillary Gravendyk, and now, Anne Cecilia Holmes. What connects the writers on this list is the way they each compose tight lyric bursts that slightly unsettle, managing to utilize both light and dark humour, and push to shake at the core of expectation, discomfort and the otherwise-unspoken. There is something about how each of these authors, including Holmes, have embraced elements of the confessional mode through a compact lyric that can be used to voice flashes of anger, annoyance, frustrations, loneliness and violence, and even conversations on evil, as Holmes writes in the final poem in the collection:

POEM FOR WHAT I’M NOT ALLOWED

Ode to the murderer I imagine

in every band of trees. To

my blood cells, to well-ordered systems,

to my head absolutely thick

with disease. Ode to the dress I slept in

and wore the next day, to the cilantro

I planted in all the wrong weather.

Ode to the fucking cosmos. Ode to my face

against your face, to poems that want to

like us but don’t. Ode to being

the bloodless one, the neurotic one,

the one ignoring your spiritual journey.

To your clothes in my basement

covered in ink. To I wore this when

we first met, to I want to hurt you like this

and then like this. Ode to quitting my job

to stay excited, to exposing myself

to my neighbors, to embedding so many

rocks in my chest. Ode to Tulsa.

Ode to the 900-foot Jesus, to keeping

my hands in my pockets most of the time.

To my brothers and sisters, to all my

enemies, to imagining every way

to die in every possible scenario.

Ode to crying when I can’t find my shoes,

to feeling like god will punish me for

sins I don’t believe in. Ode to taking

pictures in front of strangers’ houses.

Ode to my jacket covered in yellow.

Ode to how I wish you were built

out of wood panels. Ode to staring

out the window in the worst

of the house. Ode to your age,

to my age, to how I react improperly

when reenacting your fate. Ode to

so few phenomenons. Ode to

absolving myself of everything.

To singing what I’m doing, to arguing

what counts as “artifact” and “alive.”

Ode to my wandering pacemaker.

Ode to my big fat heart. Ode to

pretending I’ve never been where

I used to live. Ode to hoping you’re

a goner. Ode to grieving nothing

each time a villain is born.