MODL Press (2000-2009): an interview with ryan fitzpatrick, and a bibliography,

this interview was conducted over email from March to October 2022 as part of a project to document literary publishing. see my list of interviews and bibliographies of literary publications past and present here

ryan fitzpatrick is the publisher of Model Press, a revisioning of MODL Press (the thing you just read about). He is also the author of four books of poetry, including the recent Coast Mountain Foot (Talonbooks 2021) and the forthcoming Sunny Ways (Invisible 2023).

Q: How did MODL Press first start?  

A: Okay, so, if I were to choose an inaugural moment, I might pick the view onto the stage at the year-end reading of the University of Calgary’s creative writing classes in, what, 1999 maybe? I had just worked with my classmates to put together a class chapbook for Nicole Markotic’s intro poetry workshop, sitting for hours in a computer lab at SAIT where we could use a photocopier for free. I was pretty proud of the book we put together, but when I got to the reading, I was amazed to see an array of very different chapbooks laid out on the top of the piano at the BeatNiq Jazz Club at the bottom of the Grain Exchange building on 1st. Fred Wah had challenged his class to build chapbooks of their own and I was inspired by the way they were self-publishing and organized. I bought copies of chapbooks by Tillie Sanchez and Jill Hartman, who were members of the short lived Phu collective with Natalie Simpson, Trevor Speller, Darren Matthies, and Lindsay Tipping. I later ended picking up Darren’s and Lindsay’s chapbooks at the campus bookstore. 

Inspired, I decided to self-publish the project I had written in Nicole’s class – a weirdo narrative long poem titled revised notes. Self-publication allowed me, to put it in the corniest terms, to control the means of production. I imagined revised notes as something scrappy, printed on a messy mix of paper types with handwritten chunks. I sat at the inkjet printer in my parents’ basement and fed pages through individually to get the effect I wanted. It was an immense pain in the ass.

When I needed a name for the press, I riffed on the name of a band I was in – The Mod Factor – and called it mod1press. Later, I realized that this name was incomprehensible, so I changed it to modl press. When I realized that the lowercase made the name inscrutable, I changed it again to MODL Press. My current online press is basically the same, except I’ve corrected it one more time to Model Press.

Q: I feel as though I have a copy of that around somewhere. Is revised notes the full-sized chapbook? And what kind of print runs and distribution were you doing for such? I would presume you were handing out copies, most of the time. What was the response to these first publications?

A: revised notes is the larger format one bound in the blue file folder. My overcomplicated first attempt to play with book format. 

Print run and distribution were something I was continuously changing as I went, but most of the books settled around 50 copies. That felt like a magic number to me, because it was an amount that allowed me to give a decent amount to the author (usually half of the run), still be able to sell or give away a few, and feel like I wasn’t holding onto books forever. Any time I printed more than 50, I felt like I ended up sitting on a ton of copies. I really wasn’t interested in keeping books in print. For me, one of the strengths of chapbooks was their ephemerality. It was all about circulating work that was new to whoever was around.

I think my approach to distribution was shaped by this, though I wouldn’t claim to be consistent about it. I slowly drifted from charging a little for books, usually enough to recoup some of the costs, until I got a review that called out the price of one of my books that made me fed up with the process of trying to sell things. The books I made over the last couple years of the press were printed super cheap and handed out at readings to whoever I ran into. It was completely haphazard and absolutely the best way to circulate poetry.

Q: The notion of the ephemeral, I would think, would also allow for the immediacy of presenting new work that an author might still be feeling out. Did the possibility of publishing, and self-publishing, shift the ways you saw or even presented your own writing? 

A: Definitely. The speed and ephemerality of chapbooks and self-publishing gave me this permission to think about poetry as an ongoing process. Work could be scrappy, unfinished, unpolished, and still make meaningful connections. The speed allowed for content that was too timely or obscure for poetry’s slow temporalities - political jabs, pop culture references, community in-jokes. I think that fast publishing is an important part of the poetry ecosystem and I wish more writers would embrace ephemerality in their approach to both publishing and their work, though I get the appeal of working slowly as well. Personally I found the speed of chapbook publishing really freeing. I could write something and quickly circulate that draft to a small group of people. 

For me, it’s also been tied to posting work on my blog and later on social media. Sharing work online was central to the boom in poetry blogs that happened in the 2000s and I was absolutely drawn to that because it felt more immediate and, to be honest, it felt more possible than publishing in magazines or books. It definitely shaped my approach to poetry and I’m probably still too in love with sharing my own in-progress work online. 

Q: You mention the original impulse and prompts for beginning the press, but what else was happening around you at the time? I suspect what Derek Beaulieu was doing, for example, through his housepress might have influenced some of your publishing structures. What other influences were in play for the press?

A: It was about an upswell of activity that I came into in the early 2000s. A lot of that energy was driven by folks coming out of the creative writing program, but not all of it. My feeling is that Calgary was going through a bit of a transition point in the poetry community. People’s aesthetics and investments shifted over the course of the decade. In the early 2000s, it seemed like everyone was doing something: starting a press, a magazine, a reading series. A lot of it was ad-hoc. Some of it was more professionalized (meaning there was money involved). I was inspired less by the work of any one person than a suite of publications, groups, and happenings: filling Station, Dandelion, Yard, Bemused, Three Blind Mice, Haus and The Ranch, Single Onion, Semi-Precious, (Twat) Team, The Sabbath, Flywheel, In Grave Ink, (orange), Nod, Mutton Busting (I’m forgetting a lot). This in addition to all the writers I was engaging with online, at first through the Buffalo Poetics listserv and afterward through the brief explosion of poetry blogs. I found this rush of activity energizing and inspirational. I wanted in so I joined filling Station after being invited by Tom Muir and started publishing - first, self-publishing in a very scuffed imitation of Jill Hartman, then publishing other folks.

I suspect that some of my feelings come out of a nostalgia for that early-2000s moment, a nostalgia for the improvisational energy of young people who have some faith in culture’s ability to make community, especially in a regional city like Calgary where we had to learn to make our own fun. But it’s not a coincidence that MODL petered out when it did, because it seemed like by the end of the decade the energy of the city and its literary spaces had mutated into something different, something that, to me at least, felt more antagonistic and invested in a cult of celebrity around a handful of figures in the scene. I drifted toward the music and art scenes which at that moment were more invested in diy community strangeness.

Q: What role, if any, did your work with MODL direct the ways in which you engaged with communities beyond Calgary? Were you aware of much of small publishing beyond Calgary’s borders during those early days?

A: My guess is other folks who were around will give you a different answer, but I was pretty strongly connected to the local, at least as a publisher. I don’t think I published anyone who didn’t have a Calgary connection, but I do remember doing a few sales and swaps over the Buffalo Poetics Listserv. I slowly became aware of what was going on outside of town as people from other cities came to give readings, as I talked to other poets in town who had moved from other places, and through the growing network of blogs that were popular in the early to mid 2000s. But in terms of publishing, I was more likely to invite those out-of-town writers to submit to filling Station than to publish them with MODL, maybe because filling Station felt like a professional enterprise with a longer history, even though fS was constantly at threat of shutting down.

Because I did small press in a very local way before jumping into the wider world of it, I find I’m always a little too aware that there is way more activity going on than is apparent in the dominant promotional cycles of poetryworld, where everything is keyed to specific presses and cities. I kind of wish I was more involved with communities outside of Calgary, but also I’m grateful to have focused so much time with the strange particularities of the local. Local spaces are really where poetry bubbles over and gets interesting, if there’s room for them to develop.

Q: How did producing and distributing small chapbooks through MODL affect the ways in which you approached and considered community? Or even your own writing?

A:  I mean, if I put this in the corniest way possible, doesn’t taking the means of production into your own hands underline the way that publishing should primarily be about circulating material that members of your community (however you define that word) is invested in and excited by? That’s maybe why the local appealed to me as a site for circulation, because I could honour one person’s work by picking it up and passing it down the line. It’s like delivering the news!

If it’s affected my own work, it’s probably made me pretty strident about poetry not having to be so polished all the time, because there can be stages to publication. You should be able to put out in progress versions of your work through the scrappy channels of small press. Because small press is ephemeral and local, it can support writers where they’re at in a particular moment. Writing and publication can be quick as well as slow. I think the recognition of that has made my work too timely sometimes. And if my experience with book publishers and the literary magazine industrial complex has taught me anything, it’s that timeliness is not always a valued quality.

Q: What was behind the decision to end the press? Was it a decision deliberately made, or one through circumstance? Were there any frustrations that drove the decision, or did you simply run out of energy, time or even enthusiasm?

A: It was a lot of things: the shifting of the local writing community, my own move into academia from being a kind of literary townie, years of working multiple jobs. Ultimately, it was an increasing lack of energy paired with the reality that I had to focus what energy I had elsewhere. I still feel bad about a few publications closer to the end of the press that just never got finished because I couldn’t find time or energy to finish them. The press just kind of ended without me being deliberate about it. There was the possibility that I might publish something for years after I had actually stopped. Though much later, I did think about making a big splash out of ending the press by selling the name (plus my long-arm stapler) for $5!

Q: Finally, what prompted you to restart the press under a new name and online? How does the new MODEL relate, at all, to MODL? Apart from the obvious differences in production, what are the differences you are finding to running a press now to running a press then? What has changed, and what remains the same?

A: Well, Model relates to MODL in that it’s still me doing the work. And there’s a continuity in the design. But why bring it back now? Well, I was feeling increasingly disconnected from poetry world between moving to a new city and the general anonymity of publishing (especially magazine publishing). The social distance of the pandemic was kind of the final straw and I felt like I needed something that would reconnect me to the community elements of poetry in a positive way. I juggled a lot of possibilities like an online magazine or some kind of newsletter. 

Eventually, I landed on the chapbook but decided to make it leaner and quicker to produce. Rather than the adhoc approach of MODL, the “model” of Model became quite deliberate. I’ve been producing the books in batches in such a way that the press acts a little like a magazine where the individual pieces are released over weeks or months. The design of each book is deliberately minimal and the biggest decision I make when building each book is the page size. The online element came out of pandemic necessity, but I like the way it focuses me on circulation rather than aesthetics. The goal is to get pieces in front of as many eyes as I can, which has a limit, but less of a limit than the material one of an analog small press. Admittedly, I pay for this with the loss of the analog thrills of the paper chapbook and every once in a while I think I’ll eventually go back to making print books. But right now, this approach is working for me and I’ll keep it up as long as people are interested and I’m having fun with it. 

MODL Press “Bibliography” (spotty bc I didn’t keep good records and didn’t have enough spoons in my 20s to even think to do something like that)

pre-2000
a couple of self-published chapbooks I made that I am too embarrassed to admit to

2000

revised notes – ryan fitzpatrick

(Class project for Nicole Markotić’s intro poetry workshop. I spent hours feeding different kinds of paper through my parents’ inkjet printer because I thought it would look cool. This book is the source of confusion about the press’ name because it started as mod1 press—a reference to the band I had been in—and was changed to modl press and then to the more deliberate MODL Press. For the record, it’s meant to be Model not Modal. I always liked the joke that the press wasn’t a model press and then made it clear by misspelling the press’ name.)

2002

PyongTaek – ryan fitzpatrick

2003?

Pamphlet Series (all w/ art by ryan fitzpatrick)

            “What’s so wrong with being poplar?” – ryan fitzpatrick

            “fantasticate|ruggedize” – Natalie Simpson

            “Fylfot” – Jill Hartman

            “Weather Report” – Jocelyn Grossé

            “vanilla” and “a step in June” – Chris Ewart

            “Pass the Doughnuts, Please” - Jason Christie

            “Pitt Graphic 4” – derek beaulieu 

(I was living with my parents and my dad had bought a shitty old photocopier, so I started experimenting with pamphlets because I could put them together quickly and make them on the cheap. I mostly asked folks who were around, friends and local folks whose work I admired. The accompanying artwork solidified the design aesthetic for the first couple years, which was cut up, photocopier mess, handwritten stuff—anything I could throw together that looked vaguely cool and didn’t give away that I was a shitty artist.)

2004

“Hey Mom, I’ve Been Censored” – filling Station collab for Freedom to Read week ft. Chris Ewart, J Alary, Jason Christie, Carmen Derkson, Jocelyn Grossé, ryan fitzpatrick

A Long Detonation – ryan fitzpatrick

(The last gasp of my failed first manuscript The Ogden Shops. After this I really focused on publishing other folks work rather than my own.)

welcome to asian women in business a one stop site for entrepreneurs – Larissa Lai

Cover Art by ryan fitzpatrick

(Produced in two editions, the second for Yasmin Ladha’s ACAD class, I think? Published because Larissa approached me at a reading and said she was experimenting with Flarf too. This piece is probably too serious to be Flarf, but it’s still great.)

2005

Pirate Lore – Brea Burton, Jill Hartman, and Cara Hedley

Cover Art by Sandy Ewart (credited as Sandy Lam)

(Probably the nicest looking book I produced thanks to Sandy’s artwork. This is one of the only places that Brea, Jill, and Cara had their work published together as a collaboration, even though they were regularly performing as a group at this time.)

Asian History Month chapbook ft. Crystal Mimura, Sandy Lam, Dale Lee Kwong, Weyman Chan

ffllj – derek beaulieu

Cover Art by ryan fitzpatrick

blert – Jordan Scott

Cover Art by Sandy Ewart (credited as Sandy Lam)

(Maybe the second nicest looking book I produced thanks to Sandy’s artwork, but marred by a couple weirdo design decisions on my part.)

2006

Nascent Fashion – Larissa Lai

Cover Art by Travis Murphy

(Published because I was erroneously credited in the anthology Post-Prairie with publishing a book Larissa had self-published. This book took forever to produce because Travis took his time with the cover. I stopped including cover artwork after this book. I received a review in filling Station that belaboured the fact that I was charging $10 for the book. I stopped charging for books after that review. Both of those things were detracting from something that was supposed to be fun and not feel like work, especially in a moment for me where I was working seven days a week at two jobs.)

2007

Pamphlet Series ft/ Helen Hajnoczky, Aaron Giovannone, Emily Carr, Bronwyn Haslam, Weyman Chan, Laurie Fuhr, Ian Kinney

(published for the 2007 Blow Out reading? This is probably my favourite MODL publication. I showed up to the book-selling table at the event with a box of these really plain looking pamphlets and people seemed really annoyed that I was asking them to “dig through the box” and “take some for free.” Between Larissa’s book, which took forever to produce and wasn’t received very well, and my general inability to do the things a professional press would do, I felt freed by the fact that I could show up with this cleanly designed but otherwise messy “book object”—a strange “shuffle anthology”. I doubt anyone other than me has the full set, though maybe I’m wrong.)

2007/2008?

Big Vocabulary – Nicole Markotić

(I don’t have a copy of this anymore, but I remember it took too long to put together, so I hand crumpled a bunch of interoffice mailers to make it look like it had been “floating around the department for a while”)

2008

Governor Jangles – Christopher Blais

Doors and Enemies – Natalie Zina Walschots

Magic For Yr True Love (reprint) – Kiarra Albina

Poems – ryan fitzpatrick

(comp + CD produced for “Future Fest” at Springbank Middle School)

2009?

Ghost – ryan fitzpatrick

Stray – ryan fitzpatrick

Faint – ryan fitzpatrick

(produced as a series w/ similar design)

Unpublished/Unfinished (because I couldn’t get my shit together)

a collaborative piece by derek beaulieu and Christopher Blais

Stephen Harper Magazine collab co-edited w/ Natalie Zina Walschots

Palliative Care – Meghan Doraty

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jessi MacEachern

Jessi MacEachern lives in Montréal, QC. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Is Dead, Vallum, MuseMedusa, Canthius, PRISM, and CV2. She is the author of the new above/ground chapbook Television Poems, and you can read her chapbook Ravishing the Sex Into the Hold online at MODEL PRESS. Her first full-length poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021). She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Concordia University. (twitter: @jessisays / instagram: @jessisaying)

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

The most notable change is that I can now attest to having finished at least one poem in my lifetime, for the long poem (or series of poems) in the book finally feels done, or at least those lines have finally become resistant to being undone and done over.

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

Writing for me is the art of trying to say it, whatever it is, again and again until it comes out sharp and glinting and making some new sense of the world. Prose has yet, for me anyway, to fit that messy mode of expression. The sentence is too domineering, the line lets you get away with so much.

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?

If I have an “idea” for a “project,” I’m doomed. My book is the result of determinedly running away from every new thought or feeling I had, in order to disassemble and reassemble the same lines of the poem, or number of poems, that I had been living, and sometimes writing or re-writing, for three decades.

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?

It begins with a sense of obligation. I’ve identified as a writer, or more precisely a poet, for almost my entire life, which only means I’m always plagued by the feeling that I should be writing. So, I set myself some impossible task and then I become increasingly dissatisfied with my failure to meet said task — until, out of sheer exasperation, I write something. It’s never for the next book, precisely, but to further confirm yes, I am a writer, a poet.

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

To answer this question from the isolation of COVID-19 is to become flagrantly nostalgic for a “before time” that involved impossibly cold winter walks to Librairie Drawn & Quarterly to stand at the back of a sweating, snow-damp crowd, as well as long and humid summer nights in green-lit bars on Saint-Laurent with a troupe of poets or performance artists or both. Sometimes I was invited on stage or to the head of a friend’s charmed living room to partake in the reading and I have always felt so terribly honoured by this opportunity. It is also with a sepia sort of longing that I think of the person-to-person readings I will not host as my first book enters the world.

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?

I’m having a difficult time answering this question because I am equally provoked to say yes and no. Yes, every syllable of my writing is engaged in the feminist project of redefining experience and personhood, as inspired by the uncanny language of the French thinkers Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva and the re-visionary citational praxis of Ahmed. It’s also sparking up against the minor-becomings of Deleuze and Guattari and circling back (with the modernist poet H. D.) to the foundational mistakes by Freud. But no, when the poem comes out, the thought is not theory-inflected. Not in an explicit way. It’s a far too elemental struggle to say anything at all that I’m engaged in when pencil lead is hovering over the notebook page.

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 believe there are too many types of writing and too many types of writers for there to one role for the writer in culture. I can say, however, that my greatest service to the public at large, as a writer, was as the teenage author of erotic Harry Potter fanfiction. A service I may never surpass.

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

Jenny Sampirisi was the editor of my book with Invisible and, together, we formed a fluid and expansive relationship with the manuscript. Without diminishing the concrete changes she made in the writing, I can say the most meaningful gift her editing gave me was one of clear sight. In her eyes, the book became complete.

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

Read often and read widely. I think of Sina Queyras (I believe it was them) advising our graduate poetry workshop, or perhaps writing in an interview, that it’s important to read across genres or forms when you’re writing: poetry for the novel, non-fiction for the poem, etc. Or was that Gail Scott’s advice? Another influential teacher, whose reading lists forever changed the fabric of my life. I don’t necessarily follow this advice (I’m always reading another poet’s book while I’m writing the poem) but I think others ought to.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I am used to dividing my time between academic prose and poetry. The worst part of writing my dissertation, an experience I relish saying is good and done, was the inability to carve out time for the expansive and meandering thought poetry sometimes requires. Of course, now, as a contract or part-time instructor, time has not become less of a problem. Without the looming crisis of a critical thesis, however, I have been able to prioritize reading and writing poetry — perhaps at the expense of my academic career. Where is the scholarly manuscript, the hiring committee wants to know.

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

In For Now, Eileen Myles describes the writing life as a waste of time: “I think literature is wasted time, I don’t think there’s anything good about it. It’s not a moral project except in this profound aspect of wasting time.” Ideally, my routine is shaped by such un-moralistic time wasting: a slow journey from bed, through the apartment, into the city streets, and back to the notebook as needed. This is possible, mornings and weekends especially, because I do not have children. I do, however, have a job (for now) and my writing often has to fit into the spaces left over after the demands of the college or university classroom.

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

I turn back to the writing of the poets who delivered me to this aspiration (to write) in the first place. I admire those poets who find inspiration in the visual arts, in music, in textbooks of astronomy and biology; while curiosity about the wider world fulfills the person I am, which is necessary to be the poet I am, I always find that the only thing that sets the poetry a-ticking is poetry itself.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Vinegar. Accompanied by the sound of pans rattling on the stove and air hissing between the metal lid and the glass bottle of dozens and dozens of jars of pickles. My mother working tirelessly in the kitchen. Always choosing an afternoon hotter than hell. This acrid scent floats too in the memory of my great-grandmother’s front yard, home of my childhood summers, as the swarming grandchildren and great-grandchildren race through the vegetable garden. Great Nana and Nana and Mom are slicing cucumbers and radishes and dropping the red and green flesh into heaping bowls of vinegar. Pig shit, too, floats on the air from the farm across the way and the whole day, the whole summer, would be perfect, really.

14 - 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?

The influence I take from other forms is hard to describe. I feel woefully uneducated in music, though its various forms accompany my writing and non-writing life. I love to be on my back below the spread of a tree in leaf or to have my toes in the sand and face to the ocean on Lakeside Beach in PEI, but I find nature is best for inspiring silent contemplation rather than copious transcription. I carry a notebook through every art gallery I visit and take pages of notes but this is to gear up my response in the present rather than to forge a separate response in verse. But all this makes it into the poetry — in the form of an afterlife, maybe, following a circuitous and not entirely conscious journey through my thought and memory.

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

I’ll name the poets I studied during the five or six years of my doctoral work: the modernist H. D. and the contemporary Lisa Robertson, Erín Moure, and Rachel Zolf. I find in this work a shared perspicacity in the face of a shattered/shattering world, translated into various forms on the page: the beauty of a crystallised image, some admiration for a length of well-cut velvet fabric, an unsayable desire in the movement of a limb, and jarring gusts of human-animal-machine sound.

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

I would like to visit Japan. I would like to write at least 2,000 words of a short story. I would like to bake this Russian Honey Cake. I would like, I think, to have a small part in a play.

17 - 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?

I am a teacher as well as being a writer. When I was younger, I dreamt of being a lawyer — specifically a criminal defence lawyer, in the style of Alexis Davis from General Hospital, who falls in love with the married mob boss for whom she tirelessly works.

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

I write and I study writing and I teach the art of reading writing because it is exactly how I want to spend my time — immersed in the material of language. I write because I am always interested in describing what I sense happening in any given now-time. It seems important to name it, to call it to the attention of those we love, this now. That’s what living is, sharing in the now, and I choose words for the sharing.

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

I just finished reading Claudia Rankine’s Just Us and like everything produced by her genius it is just that: genius. The last movie I watched was Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and it was an indisputable delight.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have a series of poems, inspired by Hoa Nguyen’s “Reading and Writing through the Poetry of Lorine Niedecker” workshop, that I would like to see in a chapbook. I am slowly returning to a creative-critical project about “the event” which draws upon the generative space of listening to a writer read their work. I am also writing some new beginning each day until it coalesces into a single poem, or perhaps the next book.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;