Nic Sebastian's new chapbook, Dark and Like a Web,edited by Phoenicia Publishing's Beth Adams, has just been published under the Nanopress model that Nic invented. Under this type of publishing, the author partners with an editor to work closely on the manuscript until it is ready for self-publication. The book is then made available in various forms, including an e-book, a free .pdf download, an audio book/CD, and an inexpensive print edition sold at cost through Lulu. When Nic first asked me to edit these poems, I was excited because they speak to me personally, and were already close to being ready for publication. I would have been happy to publish the chapbook at Phoenicia. These are "via negativa" poems, looking at the divine obliquely, and through obscurity. The book includes process notes from both Nic and me, and an explanation of how we came up with "Broiled Fish and Honeycomb Nanopress." We both hope you enjoy this project as much as we did! Here's one of many favorite poems from the collection, but I urge you to read the whole chapbook, where a greater meaning emerges as one poem and one experience is followed by another. the girl and the hours the girl lives in an iron shack her homeland is red it is dry the passing of the first hour is rich blue salt, the second emerald oboe the girl pulls up a rough wooden chair in hot wind she observes the sleek hours passing in single file before her on a catwalk one is smoking vermillion another dream black and muscled dark whale song the striding hours are elegant they have a fine sense of color and they are not afraid the girl watches deeply under constant sun, never feels she is alone As I wrote in my editor's note: "When we create, I think we all long for the close reading, the deeply attentive listener or viewer. Making our work public is an act of courage, risking not only dismissal or rejection, but also intimacy. Editing, by its very nature, requires an intimate engagement with the text, closer perhaps than anyone’s but the author. I see that intimacy as both a responsibility and a great privilege. I’m changed each time I enter deeply into the words and world of other writers who have asked me to edit their work. Certain phrases and ideas enter me, and they stay. In one of my favorite poems in this collection, Nic asks, “how have you sharpened/into this thin bright hook/pulling me after you still/as though you were some great moon and I/some helpless tide.” This stunning image speaks equally to me about the pull of the divine, and the pull of the creative impulse, two forces not so separate as they may seem." This is the third year qarrtsiluni has run a chapbook contest, with the winning manuscript published by Phoenicia. There are lots of contests out there, some with no reading fee at all (this one costs $11). If poets simply want to be published, there are also a number of chapbook printers now who masquerade as publishers. So why go to the trouble of entering a contest like this one? For one thing, the judging process is completely anonymous. (I know: I'm the contest coordinator!) We receive entries from known poets as well as people who've never submitted before, but all identifying information is stripped out, including acknowledgments, prior publications, biographical information -- even the "created by" tag in the file data is removed. So the judge has no way of knowing who is who, who has a degree, whose manuscript is filled with previously-published poems, and who doesn't but just happens to be a very good poet with something unique to say and an arresting way of saying it. Second: Our contests typically don't receive hundreds of entries. Your work won't be lost in the shuffle, but read carefully. And third: your entry fee goes toward the honorarium for the judge (for 2011, that's Luisa Igloria) and the cover artist, and to defray the expenses for review copies and postage. This is a break-even proposition at best, and you can feel positive, knowing that your fee helps support poetry itself. All ten shortlisted poets will receive publicity and publication of some of their works. In both 2009 and 2010, the contest was won by accomplished but relatively unknown poets. The subsequent publication of their books and the publicity they received, as well as the credit, has helped both of them in their careers. Dave Bonta and I take seriously our role as publishers and promoters of the poets who are chosen for the shortlist and as winners, and we do all we can to get the work out into the world in a beautiful form -- whether that's as printed or online books, or in the audio version -- where it can be read and appreciated. We also try to make the process an enjoyable one for everyone involved. To all my poet friends: you should seriously consider submitting to this contest. I won this contest last year, and Beth Adams & Dave Bonta have have been so awesome that they have ruined me for any other publisher. This year's judge is Luisa Igloria, who won the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry. --Clayton Michaels So we hope you will consider entering the 2011 contest; send us your best work, and good luck to all! The deadline is June 15, and all details are here. above: Clayton Michaels
All Phoenicia's poetry books are on sale through the end of April! like a neil young song Everything sounds sadder in a reed thin falsetto. Like a Neil Young song circa After the Gold Rush 1970 or 72. The words almost cease to matter when a voice is spread that thin. When with one stray syllable the entire fragile dynamic can just dissolve. Then again, sometimes when it breaks it can be far more compelling—see ‘Mellow My Mind’ from Tonight’s the Night. In a reed thin falsetto: should you ever choose to, this is how I would like you to remember me. -Clayton Michaels "Watermark" Marly Youmans has just published part 1 of a 2 part interview at her blog, "The House of Words." We talk about the strengths of Phoenicia as a micro-publisher, and what's rewarding about doing this work. To my surprise, Marly has illustrated the interview with some of my own artwork. Thank you, Marly!
We were delighted to read Rachel Barenblat's appreciative review of Ren Powell's "Mercy Island" today, at her blog The Velveteen Rabbi.
Rachel speaks of her appreciation of Ren's poems about growing up, "childhood, in these poems, isn't necessarily safe" and also mentions her own anguish at reading "Girl-talk with the Poet from Ramallah" which speaks of horrors endured by a Palestinian girl. But she also writes that the book contains great beauty. At the end of her review, Rachel quotes the first stanza of "View From an Island," the final poem in the book, I am a Russian Doll land within land and says: "I love the opening couplet with its suggestion that each of us contains multitudes within ourselves. Lichen, heather, craggy beauty, mackerel slapping on the dock: despite all of our human sorrow, these beauties remain... This is a gorgeous collection of poems." Inheriting the Garden
We promised ourselves we'd plant posies but all that time the bed lay barren. It was summer when we moved from that place. And the world seemed filled with the bursting of dandelions. The former tenants of this house understood seasons: snowdrops, lemoinei, jackmanii -- But now, here, in late autumn two monstrous roses press, vulgar against the kitchen windowpane. And too often at breakfast I find myself holding my breath. from Ren Powell's Mercy Island: New and Selected Poems From Moira Richards:
Like the ages-old ghazal, of which I counted three in this collection, Ren Powell's poetry evokes musicality and sung lament. Like the couplets of a ghazal, the lines of her poems form discrete, seemingly unconnected units that nevertheless resonate a unity through their juxtapositionings. Like one long ghazal, these poems are all strung together on a refrain; on a recurrence of barely suppressed chaos - nightmare, perhaps; not a spoken refrain, but an unspoken refrain - as if the narrator, only by 'negotiating a new language' is able to speak of the unspeakable, to say the unsayable. Moira Richards, South African poet and author, is the co-editor of Letters to the World: poems from the Wom-po Listserv, a collection of 259 poets spanning 19 countries and five continents In the Chicago area? Ren Powell will be reading from her new book "Mercy Island" on Wednesday evening and would love to see you there!
POETRY READING/BOOK SIGNING Lincoln Township Public Library Stevensville, Michigan 7:00PM Wednesday, March 9th |
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