12 or 20 (small press) questions with Peter Jelen on BareBack Press

BareBackPress is an independent publisher dedicated to bareback writers, that is, people who aren’t afraid to bare themselves for the world, to give us honesty. Truth we may not like, but are forced to accept, while at the same time entertaining us.

Peter Jelen has spent the last five years living and working in Japan, China, and South Korea, where he now calls his home away from Hamilton. Peter is also the founder and editor of BareBackMagazine and BareBackPress, which is in the application process to become an associate member in the Association of Canadian Publishers.

1 – When did Bareback 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?
BareBack began in February 2012 as an online literary magazine (www.barebacklit.com) and within one year, after getting in touch with so many new and innovative young writers and poets, the press was born. The goal originally was to find poets and writers who weren’t afraid to go bareback ~ meaning that they weren’t afraid to take off their ‘gloves’ and risk it all when creating. To bare themselves in order to give honest, unpretentious writing that would contribute to the evolution of Canadian literature and poetry. Now, a year later, the goal has not changed. Honesty and sincerity is still the key ingredient in BareBack.
   
2 – What first brought you to publishing?
Rejection and realization. After my inbox became full of rejection letters from those fast-talking Ari from Entourage Manhattan agents, and I was ignored by the people in Toronto I decided to do it myself. That’s when BareBackMagazine was started, and that’s when I realized there are so many other writers in the same raft fighting the literary current. There is so much young talent in Canada, and I feel a lot of the bigger players in the Canadian literary world aren’t in touch with the pulse of the youth, or are too focussed on making money rather than great books. I wanted to challenge traditional ideas of Canadian literature and break away from what’s expected in books made within Canada.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
The role and responsibility of a small publisher is to challenge the big guys. We are small because we aren’t putting out genre books for bored housewives and seniors. We’re making books we’re passionate about, giving opportunities to authors who deserve the chance despite how many or how little books they can sell.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
Brevity. Flash novels. Collections of flash fiction. Short stories. Personally, I think literature will be moving in that direction. People lead busy lives, and many are intimidated by, or don’t have time to pick up a book as thick as War and Peace. Our focus in the future will be on making books like energy bars, they give you the same nutrients and satisfaction as a meal, but in half the time. Books that can be read in a weekend, not weeks.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
We’re not in the chapbook business, but from what I’ve seen and heard I think the best way is to give them away for free through social-media, or websites like Goodreads in order to generate interest for when the big one comes out.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
Definitely a light touch. Especially with poetry. I feel poetry is a spontaneous art, and if it’s edited too many times I think a lot of the spontaneity of its conception is lost. I know the poets have read through and fixed their work dozens of times, so I try not to reedit what’s already been edited. I respect an author’s creative freedom, I don’t knit pick over their diction or syntax, and I don’t pretend I always know best. The books we’ve published, and are currently putting together, have come very polished and tight.  I’d say the only things I’m picky about are titles, the aesthetic of the formatting, and back cover descriptions. 

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
We are distrusted primarily through our presses homepage, and other internet sites like Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and a few other smaller online retailers. Currently our authors are going door to door knocking on bookstore counters, asking to carry our titles.  We are very new, only four months old, and it’s a job in itself to get nationwide distribution, and I’m learning much of what I know as I go. I’m not a business person, nor a marketer, but I’m learning. I’ve made heaps of telephone calls, and sent a lot of emails, and the response has been very positive. People are willing to help us, and it’s encouraging. Right now we are making our books by print-on-demand. It’s the most cost effective, low overhead means to publish our books at the moment. It works the same as a print run without the financial risks. Basically, the author and I determine the print run, which is usually 300 to 500, and once those books have sold the P.O.D. stops, and we renegotiate. I’m actually quite thankful for the P.O.D. system, because it gives guys like me a chance to start up a small press like BareBack without sinking every dime he has into.

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?
The authors and I are the editors for BareBack books, and my wife is the graphic designer. We all work very closely together and it works wonderfully. We get to know each other as people, build personal relationships, and ultimately reach our goal, which is creating books we’re proud of. The authors I’ve worked with so far are all easy going people who are open to advice and criticism.  If there’re any drawbacks, it’s that we don’t have staff helping us to put out books every month, instead of every three months.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
It’s made me more critical of my own work, and less critical of other people’s work. I know firsthand how much time, effort, and energy goes into publishing a book and now, whether I enjoy a book or not, I’ve learned to appreciate the process, and the sweat it takes from people in the industry. As well, I feel being an editor/publisher has also broadened me as a writer, given me acid eyes, and the ability to look at myself in the third person. Seeing all of the talent that is out there has inspired me, and forced me to be more creative. 

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?
To be honest, I feel uncomfortable publishing my own work through BareBack, and I fear people will view it as a me using the press as a tool to promote myself, which is why I try to work harder for the other authors than for myself. When it comes to promotions and soliciting reviews my work goes on the backburner. Through BareBackMagazine I’ve gained a lot of contacts, but I don’t use them for my benefit. I put the other authors ahead of me, and work for them.

The argument for or against publishing your own writing is relevant, and an argument I often have with myself. I would love to have my books under the label of another press so I wouldn’t have to struggle with the argument anymore, but that’s not the case. I like what BareBack is doing, and I am proud to be a part of it. And for that reason, I will remain being a BareBack author.

11– How do you see Bareback evolving?
I see us carving out a loyal niche audience that appreciates what we’re doing, and hopefully in the future we’ll make a dent in the mainstream.

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?
As a publisher and as a person I am most proud of how far I’ve taken a small online literary magazine in just over a year. When I started BareBackMagazine I never thought that it would snowball into a small press. Last year I had no idea how to build a website or where to go to get people to submit work and, more importantly, about how to get people to read it. I didn’t even have a facebook page and was stubborn to use social media, and was certainly myopic in my view of its power. I have still refused to insert a “like” button on the homepage, for fear of cheapening the art, but I am chagrined at only having 56 “likes” even though we have nearly a thousand people on our mailing list, so next month I am bowing down to the almighty facebook and adding a “like” button. To make everyone, including myself, feel more at peace. 

This year has been a lot of work, a lot of research, and a lot of learning both professionally and personally, and there’s still so much more learn, which excites me.

I don’t feel people have overlooked anything about our publications. I think they are just not seeing them. And that is probably the biggest frustration. The press doesn’t have thousands of dollars to market our titles, so at this point it’s mostly word of mouth. A lot of people don’t want to risk twenty dollars on a book by an author or a book they’ve never heard of, which is understandable, so it’s my job to at least make the books sound, and look, as appealing as possible.
   
13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
At the beginning I felt like William Blake, doing it all myself with a little help from my wife. I think Blake was a big inspiration in the sense that he was rejection prone, but not discouraged and took it upon himself to get his work out to whoever would take it. 

14– How does Bareback work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Bareback in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
As of now we’re only in dialogue with online journals, no heavy hitters in the Canadian literary world. We are talking with BookNet Canada and have applied for associate membership in the Association of Canadian Publishers and will also seek membership in the Literary Press Group of Canada in the future once we meet all of their criteria. I would certainly like, and am completely open to establishing relationships with everyone in the literary community, and I encourage all of our authors to keep getting their work into journals and magazines because it is always important to have your work reach different audiences. Mike Algera, author of Old Gods for New, just received the Editor’s Choice Award for Poem of the Year from Arc Magazine for one of the poems in his collection coming out in June. Other authors we’ve published are also keeping up their relationships with magazines and editors who have previously published them in the hopes of getting more exposure and press. The relationships we make with other publications and people in the literary community as a whole are extremely valuable to us, and we are slowly building up our contacts. Although we may be in different boats, we’re all floating in the same water. And just like when you’re at the cottage, you wave when you see another boater.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
Readings are up to the authors themselves. We’re scattered throughout the country and its best if each author arranges their own readings or book launches. These events, I do feel, are very important. I’ve been to book readings before, and hearing an author read his/her work really makes it come alive. The voice in which they read stays in your mind and makes their work take on an entirely different tone. Connecting with people face to face is a great way to attain readers, and personalize the work for them. I was actually lucky enough while in university to have bill bissett come and read for my class, and it completely changed his work. I can still hear his voice in my mind every time I read his poems.

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
As I mentioned earlier I am learning the value of social media and networking through the internet. I’ve found Goodreads is a useful tool for authors to interact with readers, and for potential readers to get a glimpse into what people think about an author’s work. The internet is great for finding and getting in touch with people in the literary community you may have otherwise never heard of, or had a chance of getting in touch with. The internet is probably the best weapon in a publisher’s or an author’s arsenal to gain readers, which is the goal.

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
We’re always accepting submissions, and eager to have a look at pretty much anything close to our guidelines. The only thing we aren’t looking for is pretention. Writers who haven’t found their voices yet, and aren’t willing to give us the honesty and sincerity we’re looking for.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
Unwrapped: The BareBack Anthology is special to me because it showcases what BareBack is all about. It’s eclectic and quirky, dark, humorous, and sardonic at times. It features not only Canadian talent, but poetry from writers in Europe, the U.S., and India who were willing to bare themselves for our pleasure.

re: verbs by Robert Swereda, which was also released in February is an interesting collection of visual poetry which shows the unlimited creative potential of poetry. It shows that poetry is not dead, that it’s alive and well, and there’s still something to be learned from it.

Old Gods for New by Mike Algera is an amazing collection of poetry that spans nearly ten years. Through his book you essentially get to see Mike grow up. We feel what he went through, and where he hopes to go. I think he’s setting a new standard for what poetry should be doing, which is making people feel welcomed, not stupid because they don’t understand a poem. His writing is simple, and graceful. One poem he’ll have you chuckling, the next giving you chills and making tears well up.

BareBack Press participates in the fall 2013 edition of the ottawa small press book fair on Saturday, October 12, 2013.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

Victoria Chang, The Boss

THE BOSS IS NOT POETIC

The boss is not poetic writing about the boss is not poetic

            a corporate pencil doesn’t gallop

    dactyls one foot two feet six feet seven the boss

                only has two feet the rain taps its

trimeters all over my roof the boss can only jump up and

            down in one spot the boss cannot do the

    splits the rain splits into pieces the rain slants into

                my face into my eyes that are not really

slanted the boss only rhymes with cross and loss

            poem rhymes with palindrome and loam a desk is

    not poetic either it has four sides hard and stiff a

                Herman Miller chair loses question marks

through its holes as it holds a Herman or a Miller one day

            I watch a shrill pelican dive straight down into

    the water a waiter brings us fish on a plate a pelican

                swallows a fish whole a pelican is the boss

with its endless office of sky I could stand on the pier

            the whole day and peer at the pelicans that fall

    from the sky with their briefcases of fish in their

                oily grey suits and shined black shoes

I’m quite taken with the poems in California poet Victoria Chang’s third trade poetry collection, The Boss (San Francisco CA: McSweeney’s, 2013), the first of her work I’ve read. Her poems move like a rush of water, hardly a break or a pause, and must be fantastic to hear read aloud for the lyric flow. Chang’s cadence balances one of near-assault against a soft flow, playing with repetition and intoxicating rhythm, and seems to favour the staggered four-line stanza, in poems ranging in size from three to eight stanzas long. In a book of less than fifty pages, who exactly, one might ask, is the boss? Throughout the collection, the perspective of the poems shift, ranging from the obvious suggestion of the boss as an employer, to a new infant and the narrator’s own father, and even the father of the boss as the boss himself. Writing around subservience, notions of personal, professional, sexual and gendered power, and who truly might be in charge, Chang’s poems are nearly liquid, and include a number of pieces for and from the works of Edward Hopper, slipping his images between that of “the boss.” As she writes to open the poem “EDWARD HOPPER’S OFFICE AT NIGHT,” “Maybe the woman in the blue dress is the boss [.]”

THE BOSS IS BACK

The boss is back from the hospital is hospitable then

            hostile the boss gave birth the boss

    lay still on a bed to rest to bedrest to rest

                the baby girl on the bed

each morning I lay my cast to rest but there’s no jury no

            fury I lay my baby on the bed I sponge

    her I wonder whether the boss feels what I feel

                for my baby a heel on a cheek

doesn’t always mean love the boss kicks up her heels

            her eyes empty and eerie like a fish’s eyes

    we are weary we are wary of the boss we

                sleep standing up but so

does the boss miles and miles under the sea even the fish

            don’t sleep they can hear the helicopters

    carrying soldiers going back and forth

                and back and forth

Shane Rhodes, X: Poems & Anti-Poems

as may have been grunted

treaty five

As aforesaid within, hereunto the hereinafter, thereupon and hereby thereof. That is to say, within the aforesaid that whatsoever thereto, that is, there whereas within, thereon. Therein, however, that whereas, hereinafter elsewhere, thereto unless therefor. That within the that that is that, what soever, forever within the hereby, that thereupon, there is to heretofore that within. Whereas, that is to say, inasmuch hereby in that, therefor hereinafter within this. Within therein that is. Within, that is, thereabout unless thereof—hereafter throughout. And, as aforesaid, any part thereof otherwise elsewhere or hereinbefore hereby—thereto, as aforesaid, hereof within whenever. Thereon thereof whatsoever wherever forever. That is to say, however, therein thereout, therefore within. Whereas thereof, hereby within. Within the aforesaid, therefor within the hereainafter.

In his fifth trade poetry collection, X:Poems & Anti-Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2013), Ottawa poet Shane Rhodes works to reconcile the clash of histories and cultures, composing poems from various subjects and issues surrounding Canada’s First Nations peoples, including conflicts, treaties and appropriations such as the conflict at Oka and the Indian Act as well as Idle No More and its various public responses. Given the work achieved through the rise of Idle No More, it would seem Rhodes was slightly ahead of the curve, attempting to explore and question some of the structures inherent between two sides in such deep conflict, given that their language markers and concepts are so vastly different. As he writes in the poem “sôniyâwahkêsîs,” part of the larger “Preoccupied Space,” a poem that quite literally has a river of words running through it:

            listen to them              pounding their nations down

                        into this dream land

            church spires            schools               land registries

Some might recall that, a couple of years back, Rhodes made waves by donating the prize-money he won for his Lampman-Scott Award (the merging of the Archibald Lampman Award and the Duncan Campbell Scott Award) for the sake of Duncan Campbell Scott’s tainted history as the Minister of Indian Affairs, thereby forcing the annual Ottawa poetry book prize back to its roots as the Archibald Lampman Award. Some might argue a complication due his use of voice, a thread that came up slightly through his previous collection, Err (Nightwood Editions, 2011), when he utilized the voices of AIDS patients, deliberately blurring the lines between engagement and discomfort.

The book is built up of two sections: “Poems,” which is constructed out of four sections and a “Notes and Acknowledgements,” and continues from the other side of the book with “Anti-Poems,” a section made up of the poem “White Noise.” As Rhodes writes at the end of the second half of the book (which is, technically, somewhere in the middle):

White Noise is composed of material harvested from 15, 283 public comments posted in response to fifty-five online news articles from the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Sun News, the Ottawa Citizen, the Province, and the Calgary Herald over a forty day period between December 20, 2012 and January 28, 2013. All news articles were in relation to the Idle No More protest movement and the beginning and end of the hunger strike of Theresa Spence, Chief of the Attawapiskat First Nations reserve. Idle No More started in Saskatchewan in November 2012 as a grassroots movement led by First Nations to protest recent attacks on Indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, human rights and environmental protections by the Government of Canada. Adding to this protest, Chief Theresa Spence began her hunger strike—subsisting on a liquid diet of medicinal teas and fish broth—on December 11, 2012 demanding, among other things, a meeting between Canada’s First Nations leadership, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the Governor General of Canada to discuss Canada’s treaty relationship with First Nations. Her hunger strike ended on January 24, 2013.

There is something about the book itself that presents a conformity of shape, while the poems physically cohere to an entirely different set of considerations. The poems feel uncomfortable within the shape of the book, something that might be entirely deliberate, forcing the language of one structure into an arbitrary other. Throughout the collection, Rhodes utilizes a variety of fonts, sizes and line directions to compose a series of polyvocal poems – visual poems, prose poems, lists, long poems, etcetera – to articulate, track and explore an ongoing conflict of generations, filled with Empire, deliberate misunderstandings and outright racist strategies by the Federal Government (including by Duncan Campbell Scott himself). How do two sides coincide when they approach land and space so very differently? As he writes further on in the poem “sôniyâwahkêsîs”: “you are history     I think / but not the one I was taught [.]”

translation,

treaty

Blackfoot, Blood,

Peigan, Sarcee, Stony

and perhaps Native American

be inhabitedwithpower to distrat

overhere!inafterthefact

most sofullIcan’teatmore beadworkdesign

and unwillinglydefiate,

do overhere!buyoncredit seed,

release,

pass out,

and yell

high person in government of CanOpener

the Medicinal herbs Magpie Queen

and herbdrink inrapidsuccession pasteverything,

all there! honest, badname,

and privy

what?evergreenconifer

to land inurved

smallgointhewater to follow limp,

that tosaysomethingofnoimportance:

I’m intrigued at Rhodes’ use of the phrase “anti-poems,” and might question what he thinks the phrase means, siding one against another, “poems” against its mirror. Which side is “poem,” and which becomes that which is against? Rhodes’ poems have long held an experimental bent against more formal strategies, but in this collection, he allows the more experimental side to really flourish, pushing up against all sides of the printed page. This is a complicated and deliberately troubled and troubling book, one that hopefully further opens a conversation that has been so very long in coming.

Jon Paul Fiorentino, Needs Improvement

WICKED ELOQUENT

Because poetry is very, very far from –

and those who therefore thrive insist it remain so

And also contemplative drones drone

inside cabailist cocooneries

Not to mention domain names reserved for only the most

wicked eloquent –

Plus flaccid fraternities with their

heightened-flaccidity-as-aesthetic-mandate flail, swing

Most meritorious solder wand weld torch trophy crooners

croon the comments, the walls, avoid the wells

And wasn’t this ambition supposed to be in the writing, not in the

product? In tenor and vehicle and not in laurel and mantle?

Fuck me. I’m as flail as anyone

Montreal writer and Winnipeg ex-pat Jon Paul Fiorentino continues his persona of the ‘beta male’ (although far softer here than in previous works) through his sixth trade poetry collection, Needs Improvement (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2013), from the cover image of a mediocre report card (including subjects “trope,” “imagery” and “self-regulation”) to the subtle thread that stitches his lyrics and post-lyrics together into an extremely tight and taut collection. Fiorentino’s poetry is thick with references to misspent youth, the City of Winnipeg, recreational pharmaceuticals, clinical depression, Montreal and juvenile humour, and his poetry has evolved over the years into an impressive staggered and studied post-language lyric. Over the stretch of more than half a dozen trade titles – including two works of fiction, and previous poetry collections Indexical Elegies (Coach House Books, 2010), The Theory of the Loser Class (Coach House Books, 2006), Hello Serotonin (Coach House Books, 2004), resume drowning (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press, 2002) and transcona fragments (Winnipeg MB: Cyclops Press, 2002), as well as the chapbook hover (Winnipeg MB: Staccato chapbooks, 2000) – Fiorentino has learned to play his combination of dark and flippant tone as less of an overpowering force than a simple and subtle distraction that actually masks his movement into entirely different subject matter. I find it interesting that Fiorentino’s poetry has evolved into more conceptual veins, including the “pedagogical interventions” in the title section; utilizing manual illustration, satire, appropriation and manipulation, Fiorentino has widely expanded his ouvre far beyond the once-core of his work in the prairie long poem, and managed to craft questions far more important than the answers.

The visual poems he includes are reminiscent slightly of those by former Vancouver poet Jason Le Heup a decade or so back, as well as other works through and around the Toronto Research Group (bpNichol and Steve McCaffery), and blend perfectly with the rest of the collection [see an example of such here]. Composing poems both lyric and visual, the poems in Needs Improvement attempt to explore, explain and even obscure theory, and even opens with a quote by Judith Butler: “Neither the Austinian promise nor the Althusserian prayer require a pre-existing mental state to ‘perform’ in the way that they do.”

MINIMAL PAIR: SIMPLETONS

When I said we made a minimal pair

I was deep in linguistic conceit

It had nothing to do with your character

it was strictly labio-dental

Some of the poems in this collection previously appeared as the chapbook The Winnipeg Cold Storage Company (Calgary AB: NO Press, August 2012), including works that focused on mythmaking and geography, working over, across and through his hometown of Winnipeg, as he does more specifically in the title poem to the chapbook, included here as well:

The title of “Winnipeg Cold Storage Company” poses the question of collective memory and what it means to say that ‘things might be done with storage’? The problem of collective memory is thus immediately bound up with a question of performance. What does it mean for storage not only to store, but also in some sense to perform and, in particular, to perform what it stores?

In the colophon of the chapbook, he wrote that “The text from ‘Winnipeg Cold Storage Company’ is appropriated and manipulated with the most love from Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performance by Judith Butler.” Composing poems as lyric-fragments of losing, loss and disappearance, as well as a section of report cards exploring bullying through satire, Fiorentino manages to turn information against itself, even to the point of working to say nothing at all.

TRINITY BELLWOODS

Down to my last

lyric

Do you know the word pilling?

It’s a piling on of fabrications

You wear it well or

wore it

Free-range derangement commences

as denizens make strange with tenses and moods

I saw an old cancerous friend here

who said, ‘I remember when I used to be creative –

They cut it out of me

all interstitial-like’

Now, the lies and years are

piling/pilling

I will miss you when you shun me. I write these

things for nothing

You remain

the best nothing I know