Slow Poetry in America, A Poetry Quarterly: #1-3

Knowing how to joke in the world

but not in a poem. The solemn

paintings are the ones that attract me,

& in some there’s a secret lightness,

a simplicity of heart.

If what I’m saying is true, it won’t

be “important.” Nothing knew,

not new. That I’m amazed

by the things I’ve seen in my life.

The world, its people, places. Lost

roads, traveled by pilgrims.

Ways of life, invisible traditions.

The last of so many things:

vestiges, whispers.

There’s the hint that is a rose.

What I became aware of once

in poems. Perhaps it was a song.

The scent left behind. Follow it. (Kim Dorman, “Ground”)

I’m fascinated by the first three issues of the pamphlet series/journal Slow Poetry in America, edited and produced in Toronto by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen and Michael Cavuto [they even have a facebook page]. American poets who arrived north a few years back, Smith and Nguyen are also the editors/publishers of the long-running Skanky Possum, a literary press which has since expanded into an occasional series of house-readings. As the website for Slow Poetry in America informs:

Slow Poetry in America is a quarterly poetry newsletter edited by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen, and Michael Cavuto. Each issue is printed in Toronto, ON and features one poet, and can be mailed anywhere in the world. Annual subscriptions ($10) are made on a rolling basis and will include the next four issues.

Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions are $25.00 annually and will receive 10 copies of each newsletter. Please email mcavuto@gmail.com for Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions.

SPIA subscriptions seek only to cover the costs of printing & publishing, and do not earn any monetary profit.

Reminiscent of the pamphlets produced through Rachel Moritz’ WinteRed [see her 12 or 20 (small press) questions here] or Sylvester Pollet’s infamous Backwoods Broadsides, a series which ended an impressive twelve-year run back in 2006, Slow Poetry in America is a self-proclaimed “newsletter” that shares a title with Smith’s own most recent title, produced in 2015 by Victoria, Texas publisher Cuneiform Press, as well as an ongoing poetry and critical blog. Given that, it would seem to be that the title becomes, then, an umbrella, stretching across a larger poetic, from his own personal writing, to a collective sense of editing, reading and participating.

TROUBLE

someone who’s

in trouble

sometimes

if i make

my trouble an

intellectual thing

then i can sit at the table

sometimes (Marion Bell)

The first three issues are “GROUND,” by Texas poet Kim Dorman, “8 Poems,” by Philadelphia poet Marion Bell (June 2015) and “Sound Science: Selections,” by the late Texas (by way of Panama and New York) poet Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) from his 1992 trade collection Sound Science (October 2015), all of which exists as an introduction to poets I hadn’t even heard of previously. It is curious to see how Slow Poetry in America, at least so far, works to bring the work of Texan poets north of the border (which makes sense, given the decade-plus that Smith and Nguyen lived and worked there), and if this series is one that works as an extension of their prior work with Skanky Possum, or if it will be working to also engage with the literary community around them, in their new home in Toronto. Either way, these are compelling publications, and teasingly small, which can only entice.

PROTECTION

Sometimes I’m saying I love you

Those words in English mean

I will not let anyone hurt you

But me (Lorenzo Thomas)

Ongoing notes: early September, 2013

[photo of the leather-bound limited-edition above/ground press fetish item, including thirty different above/ground press “poem” broadsides, produced in a numbered edition of ten copies by Christine McNair] Pearl Pirie was good enough to do a small write-up on the recent above/ground press 20th anniversary reading/launch/party at The Mercury Lounge. Can you believe it’s been twenty years already? I certainly don’t.

There are still a number of exciting announcements to occur for the twentieth year, including new publications by Rae Armantrout, Hailey Higdon, Hugh Thomas and others, and the 2014 annual subscriptions, to be announced in October. Watch for it!

And we will see you at the Fisher Small Press Fair tomorrow at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto? We'll be there with bells on.

Buffalo NY: Before moving into three sections of prose-pieces, Kristy Bowen’s small poetry book, the shared properties of water and stars (Buffalo NY: Noctuary Press, 2013) opens with the line, “There are 3 houses with 3 different ghosts.” Writing in that nebulous space between prose and prose-poem, Bowen’s book is an accumulation of small prose-sections, presenting a semi-fragmented narrative that wraps and weaves through fable. The first page of section one reads:

THERE are 3 houses in 3 different colors. Each owner keeps a certain kind of sadness locked in the cupboard. The tall man lives in the white house. The short man keeps rabbits as pets. The woman in her white dress drinks vodka and stays up late. The yellow house is to the immediate left of the white one. The woman in the second house keeps her sadness in a smallish box. The older woman with the violets on her hat lives in the first house. The girl with the blonde hair lives next door to the man who keeps rabbits. One summer the rabbits multiply and chew through the fence. Mostly, they all keep to themselves.

The back page tells us that “Noctuary Press is a small independent press that focuses on female writers working with cross-genre prose forms (such as flash fiction, prose poetry, footnoted texts etc.).” Bowens’ the shared properties of water and stars is the third title produced by the press, after works by Carol Guess and Eva Heisler, and would be would be interesting to see illustrated, as she paints a vivid series of small portraits. Her fables wrap and soar and weave their way through shades of familiar characters and stories, turning and twisting them to tell a different kind  story, one that exists alongside what you might already know.

LET’S say the blonde girl has something shadowy whispering in her ear each night. Hundreds of bears lumber outside her windows. Her mouth like an open seam. A small cut in the dark; club-footed, claw-hearted. The bears outside her window watch the boys climb, one by one, up to the roof to touch her face. Her murmurs are slender, silky, like the backs of calves. Let’s say the dark writes itself anew along the walls each night. The words like a bubble in the throat until they burst.

Minneapolis MN: From the few I’ve seen, I’ve become quite a fan of the WinteRed Press Chaplet Series, edited and published by Gabrielle Civil and Rachel Moritz. There seems something here reminiscent of the late Sylvester Pollet’s Backwoods Broadsides, which produced the one hundredth and final publication back in 2006 [see Ron Silliman’s note on such here]. Produced in runs circling one hundred copies, the two most recent are Purvi Shah’s “What monsoon is this” (number 20) and Caryl Pagel’s “Mausoleum” (number 21), and previous authors in the series include Mark Nowak, Fanny Howe, Rodrigo Toscano, Elizabeth Robinson, Juliet Patterson, Tiff Dressen and Kate Greenstreet, with forthcoming titles by Dawn Lundy Martin, Moe Lionel, RosamondS. King and Eric Leigh (a complete list of the series so far, including forthcoming authors, are listed on the back of each publication).

Sometimes it is not the answer that matters but the question, the ruffled spot left behind where question hangs in air. Can you steam the air into a smooth sheet? Perhaps: momentarily. But then the separation of cloud and rain asserts itself. Perhaps: you need not find answer. But then sometimes answers find you: sometimes even when you abandon, you cannot escape. Such is the justice of the world: moving. (Purvi Shah, “What monsoon is this”)

I hadn’t heard of Brooklyn, New York poet Purvi Shah previously, the author of Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), and (according to her bio) “winner of the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Service Award in 2008 for her work fighting violence against women.” Her poem/broadside “What monsoon is this” is an intriguing sequence of startling fragments, some boiled down to the sharpest, startling points. Chicago poet Caryl Pagel is the author of the poetry collection EXPERIMENTSI SHOULD LIKE TRIED AT MY OWN DEATH (Factory Hollow Press, 2012), and her chaplet is made up of four poems constructed nearly as continuous threads, each small phrase-fragment built as a punch. The title poem “Mausoleum” opens:

The night behaved exactly as you

thought it would                      As you saw

it would                       As you saw it

unfold and unravel and pre-occur in

a previously—you now know—prescient

premonition                        The details are irrelevant

Back issues (I’ve been myself meaning to pick up the whole run at some point) are $1.45 US, which really does make excuses for not ordering seem rather lame. Send cheques to: Rachel Moritz, 2917 E. 22^nd Street, Minneapolis MN 55406 USA

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Rachel Moritz

Rachel Moritz is the author of Night-Sea (2008) and The Winchester Monologues (2005), both from New Michigan Press. Her poems have been published in American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, HOW2, Indiana Review, 26, TYPO, and Verse Daily. Among her awards are a 2008 SASE/Jerome grant, 2005 and 2010 fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review and publishes WinteRed Press, a Minneapolis-based poetry micropress.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
New Michigan Press selected my chapbook manuscript, The Winchester Monologues, for their annual competition in 2004. In some sense, winning that prize was validation of what had felt like “playing house” as a poet. Or, another way to say this is that it was my first experience with the willed pretending that is part of executing a project.

I had the idea for a sequence of poems about the mysterious and eccentric character, Sarah Winchester, who built a huge, sprawling mansion in San Jose, California at the turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th, that is). Suspending myself in this manuscript allowed me to dive into subjects that interested me: the role of the repeating rifle in the American west, the cult of “spirit rapping” and other Victorian attempts to communicate the dead, the ways we inhabit grief and direct or transcend it through creativity. The project gave me a platform for applying to a Minnesota State Arts Board grant that supported travel to the house and completion of the final sequence of poems. These skills—conceiving a project, diving in, following the unknown, asking for support—all felt crucial in learning how to follow inspiration and believe in something. Having the chapbook published was a real gift.

The poems I’m working on today are both different and similar. I hope that the subsequent years of studying poetic craft have made me a more subtle and skilled writer. I’m quite a bit older, too, so I like to think that personal maturity shows up in the writing. Who knows.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I wrote fiction first, as a tiny one—lots of stories on lined notebooks. And during a maudlin adolescent period, lots of really bad “novels” typed in all caps on my typewriter and then on the Tandy computer my father set up for me. But poetry better matched my love of rhythm and sound, my inattention to detail (in terms of the literal and the real), and my nascent lyric self. I didn’t seriously write poetry until my mid-twenties, but then it took hold and hasn’t let up.

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?
I’m a fast drafter and a very slow polisher. My poems shift significantly through the editing process or disappear and morph into something else entirely. The full-length manuscript I’m circulating right now evolved over the last six years, and the manuscript I’m currently developing is heading into its third year of drafting and editing. I do take notes, less so since the birth of my son. The writing evolves from a blend of notes, sampling from other books spread out around me, and drafting—usually at a computer.

4 - Where does a poem fiction 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?
I like to work within a thematic project, whether it’s a series of poems or a book-length idea. Somehow, this helps me shape and direct poems that can otherwise feel airy and ungrounded. So yes, more and more I feel like I consider everything I’m beginning as part of a book project. I’m a big fan of the series poem or the book with multiple smaller sections/series poems, and my reading life tends to inspire and support this direction.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do enjoy public readings, but I also find them a little nerve-wracking. I’m not a funny poet, and I dread reading with witty, dynamic writers after whom my work seems serious and dark (to me, at least). That said, I love attending readings. So, perhaps for me it’s about audience and mood and feeling comfortable with my non-ironic self.

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?
My concerns and questions change with each project. In Night-Sea, the second chapbook I published with New Michigan Press, I was very interested in the formal creation of a world in which the past and the present appeared to co-mingle. I was also interested in themes of (mental) instability and darkness, expressed through the lens of the mythological “hero’s journey” captured so well by Joseph Campbell.

In my full-length manuscript (currently circulating), the poems explore otherness and exile, especially in terms of memory, childhood and sexuality. But in the end I think all of my poems—like most poets or fiction/non-fiction writers, for that matter—have to do with the human questions of why are we here, what does this life in a body mean, what is real, what is dream . . .

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?
There are so many roles, so many kinds of writing. Writers crystallize what we know and shift our knowledge from internal to external forms. Writers document injustice or inspire change. I’m encouraged by how—amidst the decline of the book industry (book stores, printed books, that is)—there are more of us writing than ever before. I think, however, that the lifestyle of a writer can be over glamorized and perhaps indicates something so many of us crave: space and time to be creative, being seen as some kind of authority, fame and opportunity (ha), and—answering for American society here—being a pure individual not answering to anyone, etc. Sometimes it seems like we’d be better off if other professions were as glamorized, like, say, that of an elementary school teacher. Because maybe there would be ways for creativity to enter more of our daily world. It feels like modern society is really starved for this—and it tends to be ghettoed off in a few professions: visual artist, dancer, writer, etc.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love editing, and I thrive on feedback from my poet friends and teachers. So it’s definitely an essential part of the writing process, allowing me to see my work in a new light and shift ideas, directions, or just word and line choices. I dream of working with a really engaged book editor, but haven’t had that experience yet.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Whoever said that perseverance matters as much (or almost as much) as pure talent? I think of this again and again, especially during despondent moments of wondering why I keep writing poetry.

And that saying—“leap empty-handed into the void.” In the last year-and-a-half, I’ve experienced a birth (of my son) and a death (of my dad). The world seems so void like or dreamlike to me these days—a sense perhaps heightened by having lost a lot of my short-term memory (I hope temporarily) through the process of pregnancy/birth. I’m trying to embrace this state, as it’s such an essential human condition, but it’s frightening (again, not a feeling unique to me, by any means).

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I wrote critical prose in graduate school, and I’ve enjoyed writing book reviews when I’ve done them. The process of writing critical prose works my intellectual muscles and enables me to think about poetics in new ways, which always informs my own writing. I miss doing it. However, I’ve been a reader of critical prose more than a writer of such.

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?
A typical morning begins with a wake-up call from my 17-month old son. And then the day unfolds in a kind of crazy rush of being with him or being at work and returning home to be in toddler world again.  Writing happens on Sunday mornings—my semi-regular designated writing time—or on retreats. I would love to write every day, every morning of my life, but I don’t have access to that kind of schedule right now (very few of us do!). I’m lucky to have a partner who values/requires creative time in her own life, and we try to arrange our life wherever possible to make space for writing—more of a challenge with a child in the mix but it still manages to happen.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Reading is always the first spark of inspiration for me. Such a long list of inspirations, so many great poetry books that have felt like gifts to me. A few from the last year:

Brian Teare, Sight Map
Emily Wilson, The Keep
Matthew Henriksen, Ordinary Sun
Rusty Morrison, The True Keeps Calm Abiding Its Story
Dana Levin, Sky Burial
Josie Sigler, Living Must Bury
Paula Cisweski, Ghost Fargo
Dawn Lundy Martin, Discipline

Also, anything and everything by (in no particular order): Virginia Woolf, Fanny Howe, Myung Mi Kim, Jean Valentine, G.E. Patterson, Laressa Dickey, Juliet Patterson, Bill Stobb, Sun Yung Shin, Elizabeth Robinson, Brenda Hillman, George Oppen.

Also photography, visual art, the language of 19th-century essays, school readers, natural history guides. The language of the past is just so decidedly elegant and gorgeous; it always inspires something for me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I had a somewhat itinerant childhood, and I’ve made my home in Minnesota for the last twenty years. Perhaps the scent of springtime lilacs and wintertime wood smoke are the best indications of this place in the world for me.

I spent four years in Hong Kong from age 3-8 and was able to go back in 2007. It was crazy to smell the air, the foliage, the street vendors, the ocean, and feel like: this is home. But that was how visiting felt, and I’d love to go back sometime.

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 natural world—what a poetic cliché, but so true. I’m always inspired by the silence (at least of the human) and the spaciousness of places where we are less present.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Many, many here, and a few already given in #12. To add to that list, I would mention Fanny Howe’s essay, “Bewilderment,” in her essay collection, The Wedding Dress. This essay so perfectly articulates the connection between spirituality and creativity, how necessary it is to live as fully as possible within a state of “unknowing.” Lately, I’ve also been grooving on the writings of Krishnamurti, (20th-century Indian philosopher and spiritual thinker), especially his Notebook, written in the early 60s.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
My list is way too long, but I’ll throw out a few of the top contenders:

See the Himalayas

Travel the world for a full year

Work on an organic farm as a summertime WWOOF-er (or even just for 10 days!)

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?
My mother lives in Falmouth, MA, which is close to the scientific research community at Woods Hole. I always think that the life of a wildlife biologist would have been a second choice for me—except for my totally imprecise mind—but I love the devotion and itinerancy of studying puffins on the coast of Maine or heading to sea to spend a month researching the nerve systems of squid. It feels like poetry to me. I’m romanticizing this, I know, but still.. .  I’d love to have skills that could really contribute to the ongoing train of human knowledge, especially where our environment is concerned. I also would have liked to be a potter—so tangible, physical, mix of utilitarian and aesthetic.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’m not very good at a lot of things (I’m not crafty, I lack basic patience for complicated, mechanical tasks), and I inhabit an emotional inner world that seems to require writing and creative expression to keep me sane. So there you go.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I cried from beginning to end of Terrence Malicks Tree of Life. Despite some flaws in the movie, his depiction of women, etc., the visual beauty and existential questioning of this film really fit the place I’m hanging out in these days. I also loved the movie, The White Ribbon—very haunting and surprising.

Two novels I recently enjoyed: Ben Lerner’s Leaving The Atocha Station, and Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a manuscript that circles themes of alchemy, paternity, birth, and death. I’ve been interested in the historical character of Kaspar Hauser—a “foundling” of the 19th-century who appeared on the streets of Nuremberg one day with no information about who he was or where he came from. Poems about this character have developed in and among a narrative of pregnancy and birth, especially as conceiving a child within a two-woman household (with absent father), my ambiguous feelings about my own dad, connectedness and distance, etc. We’ll see where any of this goes!

Thanks so very much for the opportunity to answer these questions, rob!

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 (small press) questions: Rachel Moritz on WinterRed Press

Rachel Moritz is the author of Night-Sea and The Winchester Monologues, both from New Michigan Press. Her work has been published or is recently forthcoming in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, 26, TYPO, and VOLT. She lives in Minneapolis, where she publishes WinteRed Press and co-edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review.

WinteRed Press publishes poetry chaplets and broadsides. Learn more at winteredpress.blogspot.com

1 – When did WinteRed 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?

Sun Yung Shin and I began WinteRed Press in 2004. We were new to the poetry world and excited about the possibilities of small press publishing. The idea developed after we traveled to a conference on Lorine Neidecker in Madison, where we perused many gorgeous chapbooks at the amazing Woodland Pattern Book Center—the series published by a + press stands out in my memory, but there were many more.

Neither Sun Yung nor I had the skills, time or funding to publish full-length or letterpress chapbooks. After drinks and discussion with our friend, the poet Mark Nowak, we decided to model WinteRed after the series, Backwoods Broadsides, which was published out of Maine by Sylvester Pollet. We really loved this format: essentially an 8 ½ x 14” page folded into fourths, offering six pages for poetry in addition to a cover page. The ‘chaplet’ fit our desire to produce something beautiful that was also functional and affordable—for the reader and the publisher.

Our original goals haven’t changed; we still want to create beautiful, affordable and unique work. We pay particular attention to innovative female poets and writers of color.  We also aim to publish regionally (many, many amazing poets live in our neck of the woods, the Twin Cities) and nationally. However, we’ve definitely slowed down in production. In the first several years, I believe we published three-four chaplets annually, and then life started happening with a little more force for both of us. Things are slower these days; I aim for 1-2 chaplets a year. I’m less concerned with being part of a publishing “scene” and getting these widely distributed (at first we had a subscription option) and more interested in contacting writers whose work I love and making them a chaplet almost as a token of my adoration. Sun Yung is less involved at this point; I’m the primary publisher. I love the chaplet form, though I still wish I could produce them via letterpress for a more beautiful product.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

As I mentioned, a love of poetry, a desire to be in touch with writers I admired, and to create something unique and one-of-a-kind. Chaplets are perfect for readings, easy to sell and distribute, and fun to have in your poetic repertoire.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

Although this sounds like a stretch, I remember something I heard the Dalai Lama say recently, in response to the question: “What world issue would you solve if you had the power?” His response: “None of us can or should solve any issue individually; it takes all of us working together.” In some sense, the sheer range and options within the micropress world today model this sense of the many. I believe a press is responsible to love, passion and integrity. But I don’t believe that any one press needs to be concerned with standing for everything or with representing everyone; it’s one slice of a community, of aesthetic and political concerns, of geography, contacts and resources, etc. WinteRed is a very small part of a larger conversation.  That said, I do believe that male poets in the U.S. publish with more frequency and with far greater acknowledgement than female poets, so it’s a primary responsibility of mine to publish as many women as possible. I also value the work of poets with quieter/contemplative voices (less ironic, more serious)—I would mention Tiff Dressen or Eléna Rivera as examples.

4 – What do you see the journal doing that no one else is?

As far as I know, no one else is publishing in this particular format.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new issues out into the world?

Getting issues to the poet. We send the chaplets to several poetry libraries and centers, but otherwise depend on the poet to distribute these personally.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

Each chaplet is organized by the poet. In that respect, the product is theirs. I’m in control of some things: interior font remains the same, for instance, as does the back page. However, I’ve never felt the need for line edits. And everything (including title page) is run by the poet for approval before it goes to print.

7 – How do issues get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

At first we had a subscription list, but that dropped off after several years. I generally print 80 copies, give 15 to the poet, and then offer them a discount on additional copies. I send the chaplet to about five poetry libraries, and then the rest is up to the poet.

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?

Sun Yung Shin and I began the press; I’ve been running it solo for the last four years. However, I have a new co-conspirator, Gabrielle Civil, joining the ranks as guest editor this fall. Our plan is to have Gabrielle solicit and publish 1-2 chaplets a year, and I’ll do the same. We will each have independent control and choice over publishing, with collaboration around production and distribution.

Gabrielle is an amazing performance artist and poet who has spent a great deal of time in Mexico City and is familiar with the literary world there. She is going to begin our 2011 series with a new chaplet from New York-area poet Purvi Shah, but she plans to “guest edit” and annual Mexico City edition, which will likely be a Spanish-speaking (and writing) poet. We’d love to eventually have this function as a translation series with Spanish poems and their English translations side-by-side.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

I’ve always been partial to the series poem, and perhaps this has been reinforced by WinteRed. Certainly, the poetry I publish has influenced me in terms of inspiration. I enjoy falling in love with new work; reading is generally what spurs me to write. So it’s an honor and a pleasure to publish work that I admire.

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?

Early on, Sun Yung and I both published our own chaplets. I can see how this might be troublesome, but I also think that in the world of micropress poetry, stakes are fairly low and issues of power are less heightened. A press creates a community of which the editors—usually working poets themselves—are a part. That’s the reality of the situation; so many readers of poetry are poets themselves. And frankly, we’re all doing this out-of-pocket. Most of us are publishing other writers to be in conversation of some kind; our own work can be part of that dialogue. Perhaps, for me, it’s a matter of style and quantity. I hate attending readings where the curators take up lots of space and time reading their own work! So, I wouldn’t publish another chaplet of mine. But I feel like self-publishing was part of “diving into the water,” so to speak, understanding how the form worked and what the product felt like. Sun Yung’s chaplet, Vestibulary, remains one of my all-time favorites.

11– How do you see WinteRed evolving?

Perhaps further exploration of form, publishing in new communities. As an example, Tiff Dressen’s, Because Icarus-Children, is printed as a vertical broadside, though you fold the chaplet horizontally to read the poem. Kate Greenstreet’s chaplet, Hermes is the god of the roads, works in a similar fashion. Translation and collaboration are interests of mine (and Gabrielle’s); I’d love to publish call-and-response poems or two chaplets that speak to each other. And maybe someday I’ll learn letterpress to make these more elegant, or find another printer with a wider stock of paper for more color options! Hopefully, Gabrielle’s involvement will offer new possibilities.

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’m proud of the range of poets we’ve worked with, the way we’ve bridged our “local” Twin Cities community with voices from the East Coast, Bay Area or elsewhere. Our list varies in style and geographies; you can find the lyric and elegant work of GE Patterson next to John Colburn’s hilarious poem-as-play The Hallucinogists. Fanny Howe remains one of my most beloved poets; it was gratifying to publish her work, I Promise, in broadside form.

My biggest frustration would no doubt be with myself and my energy/time for publicity; in some other universe, I would be organizing readings, traveling to AWP, managing a growing subscription list, expanding WinteRed into a book press, and making these chaplets pay for themselves. Maybe someday.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

As I mentioned earlier, the series was really modeled after Backwoods Broadsides, which ran an impressive, voluminous and under-recognized list in its lifetime. You can read more about BB here:

http://scorecard.typepad.com/crag_hills_poetry_score/2005/08/backwoods_broad.html

14– How does WinteRed work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see WinteRed in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

Chapbook presses and journals that I admire, either for style, design aesthetic or generosity of spirit: a + bend, Albion Books, Ugly Ducking Presse, We Are So Happy to Know Something, Cannibal Books, Proem Press, swerve, Fuori Editions, 26, TYPO, New Michigan Press, Etherdome Press. The latter, run by Elizabeth Robinson and Colleen Lookingbill, was an early inspiration. I’ve also rarely been disappointed by a chapbook published by the Poetry Society of America. This is just a beginning list: there are so many great presses out there, as your interview series demonstrates.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

We don’t hold regular or even occasional readings. However, chaplets are designed for readings; you’ve just enjoyed the work you’ve heard and you have only one dollar in your pocket, so how can it be a mistake to take home a WinteRed!

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

WinteRed has a basic website, www.winteredpress.blospot.com, which I update with each new edition.

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

We don’t take submissions, though poets often write to inquire. We simply don’t publish enough of these to have a formal submission process. The form lends itself best to solicitation; I generally send copies to the poets so they can think about a series that would work best for the length and style.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

Tiff Dressen, Because Icarus-Children: A gorgeous, longer poem that leaves me ruminating on birth, embodiment and the relationship between language and spirit.

Kate Greenstreet, Hermes is the god of the roads: This poem is cryptic in the best way—a blend of narrative, dreamscape, dialogue, and image.

Juliet Patterson, Threnody: An elegant, beautiful series that borrows lines from George Oppen and presents a lament for the catastrophes of our environment.
       

12 or 20 (small press) questions;