Women Publishers' Roundtable: Third Installment

I hope you enjoy the third installment of Delirious Hem's Women Publishers' Roundtable.  Here you'll find the most recent interview question that was sent to these small press editors, as well as the conversation that followed. 

 

Third Interview Question: How does your press, its mission, and its overall aesthetic relate to your creative work? What becomes possible for you when curating texts, rather than writing them?

Kristy Bowen (Dancing Girl Press):  I always joke that it’s so much more enjoyable to put other people’s work into the world than to put my own out there. I guess it’s a question of permission, maybe. I feel completely comfortable saying “here is this book, I love it and you will too” about someone else’s work, yet to do so with your own work is kind of awkward’ As to the creation of the work itself, I have learned so much about putting manuscripts together and how to make things work by immersing myself in other people’s projects on a daily basis. It’s also incredibly humbling, to see what’s out there floating around and vying for the same publication spots as my own work (and why I increasingly get less and less concerned by rejections as the years go on). I often think though that I tend to publish the sort of books I wish I had written (but for whatever reason, can’t do quite as good a job at it…)

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S. Whitney Holmes (Switchback Books):  When I get intimate with other people’s poems, I can’t help but want to write my own. Not that that always happens, exactly, but in the midst of editing a book, I walk around with a chorus in my head. The cadences, sometimes full lines from the book I’m working on, are so stuck in my head that I start to perceive the world around me a little differently, which I guess is a way to get myself started writing. I’d always rather work on someone else’s poems, though. Over several years and projects, I’ve developed a lot of confidence in my ability to edit, whereas there’s always heaps of (sometimes overwhelming) doubt in my own writing. Working with Switchback Books and the amazing manuscripts that I get to read (even the ones we don’t end up publishing) reminds me of the vast possibilities for poetry. The stuff I’d never give myself permission to do, I see others do with stunning results. It’s a humbling reminder to take risks.

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Gina Abelkop (Birds of Lace Press):  Engaging with the work Birds of Lace puts out takes so many different forms. When making chapbook covers I am often on my living room floor watching a movie, using my hands to do something repetitive which feels really good- it’s creative but doesn’t require much of my energy, so it can be done after work in the evenings. It’s a way to feel productive when I feel too lazy/low-energy to be productive in more energy-consuming ways. Reading the poems and fictions themselves is always inspiring and makes me want to step up my game, to meet them or even just attempt to meet them, the playfulness of reading a text and seeing a way to have a conversation with it. Sometimes I’m inspired via the personal interactions I have with the authors I publish or BoL readers, through emails or Twitter or Tumblr; the internet has allowed many of us to have continuing contact/relationships with people who make things we love. I enjoy packing orders up and going to the post office to mail them, the idea that I will mail something to someone and they will read it and we’ll all have this fine line of connectivity, a warbling affinity.

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Lisa Marie Basile (Patasola Press): Mostly as an editor I lay out the manuscript, printed, on a table near a window and look at the words, feel them, imagine them, play with them, and obsess over them. I feel it is more important to publish other people than it is to publish myself, and will always feel that way. I absolutely need others’ beautiful writing to inspire my own—at least inspire me to go harder, fuller, bloodier, to try something new. In a way, publishing permits me to explore work in a very intimate way. Also I see all the authors working with Patasola as my children. There isn’t really anything better than seeing the authors and poets blossom, of their own accord, or with Patasola. I also think that reading and re-reading texts lets you take a looking glass at a human being, and it reminds you, at the end of the day, that we’re all people, and we all think really crazy, wild, little things all the time, and that we’re always dreaming and defining and deconstructing, and we’re all capable of beauty.

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Erin Elizabeth Smith (Sundress Publications): I think for me it helps me to think of narrative in a different sort of way than I would with my own writing.  Not necessarily the narrative of a singular poem or narrative poetry as a whole, but rather the way that a collection can tell a story.  So often we're taught to overlook these temporal/autobiographical movements in the ordering of collections in favor of thematic/literary links that we forget that poems are more than the sum of their parts.  Working with authors in re-ordering and thus re-imagining their manuscripts makes me think about the stories that my own writing tells beyond the arc of a single poem.

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T.A. Noonan (Sundress Publications): I want to echo Whitney’s word “humbling.” Holy smokes, is that ever the truth! It’s a blessing to work with so many different authors who are doing so many cool and amazing things, and I’m so inspired by the authors we get to work with. My problem is that I often get so obsessive about working with others that I sometimes put my own work on the back-burner—which is maybe not the healthiest thing, but it feels right. Sometimes. But even when I’m neck-deep in someone else’s writing, I’m still thinking about what I want to accomplish with my writing, so the whole process feeds itself in this never-ending cycle of excitement and possibility. That sounds a little cheesy, but it’s true.

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Kristina Marie Darling (Noctuary Press):  I love what Whitney said about how our work as editors reminds us to take risks.  Reading manuscripts by Noctuary Press authors (Kristy Bowen, Carol Guess, and Eva Heisler) has taught me a lot about what's possible within contemporary cross-genre writing.  Their work has shown me that prose and the poetic line can coexist gracefully within the same narrative space, that algebra can be beautiful, and so much more.  Although I work with prose forms, and the press also publishes this type of writing, I find that the work I'm drawn to as an editor is often much different from my own.  These writers take on subjects, literary forms, and genres that I've never worked with before.  I love how my work with the press reminds me, almost constantly, of the importance of experimentation, challenging oneself as an artist, and keeping an open mind. 

Please check back for the next installment, which will include a discussion of books, chapbooks, and alternative ways of disseminating literary texts . . .