#73 - Catherine MacDonald

How often had you sent out Rousing the Machinery before it was chosen for the 2012 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize?

I had sent the manuscript out in 2008, I think, to just one contest, The Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. Nothing came of that, and I didn’t send it out again until late fall 2010. That year I sent it to a bunch of book contests.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Rousing the Machinery? Did it go through any other changes?

The manuscript went out with the title Leda at Work in the World, but once Arkansas took it, the series editor Enid Shomer and I went back and forth about other possible titles, including Sleeping House, Morning Sky; Blue Strobe; Offshore; and The Signs for Fire, Ocean, Air. I still like all of those titles, but Rousing the Machinery is the best choice for the book. I think it's a one-of-a-kind, too. There are no other books out there with that title as far as I can tell.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

Was I worried about winning a contest? No, not worried. My feelings might be better described as resigned. I knew that once I started sending out the manuscript, I would be competing with many talented and original writers, all of us trying to find our way to print. I also knew that this was a serendipitous and unpredictable process that probably wouldn’t lead to publication right away, if ever. There’s so much poetry out there! I felt like I was standing around the crowded gym at a high school dance hoping to be noticed. Not a particularly pleasant feeling.

I am now a beneficiary of the contest system, but the challenges of the contest system are obvious; for example, it’s expensive both financially and spiritually. Yet winning a contest equals publication, attention, a payday. I think an ethically run contest is good for poets and readers because it makes public work that might otherwise remain mostly unknown. So if you can afford the fees and the wear and tear on your spirit, you should enter contests.

As for open reading periods, I didn’t send my manuscript to any of those, but I would have if the manuscript hadn’t found a publisher that year. My advice for those who are sending manuscripts out to contests or open reading periods is to choose the venue carefully and vet your work ahead of time with honest, savvy readers whose judgment you respect. Then let the process run its course and don’t obsess. It’s out of your hands.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The first version I sent out back in 2008 was basically my MFA thesis with all the typos corrected. Although I had begun to teach composition full-time by then—and there’s nothing like turbid undergraduate prose to clog the pipes—I wrote new poems and continued to tweak older poems. I kept the revision process going right up until I submitted the manuscript to contests in fall 2010, and even after that.

Also, in 2009 I published a chapbook, How to Leave Home, that includes many poems from Rousing the Machinery. Ordering the chapbook contents allowed me to develop a structure for the full-length manuscript. Good readers and friends such as poets Kathy Davis, Claudia Emerson, and Leslie Shiel read the full-length manuscript and helped me figure out how to make it better. So, basically, there was really only one version of the book, but I’d been hammering away on it for a while.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Graphic designer Liz Lester handled the project, inside and out, which made sense to me since I’m not a designer. I saw proofs at each stage and had opportunities to comment.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Yes, I had a lot of influence on this aspect of the book’s design. The painting on the cover, George Tooker’s Bird Watchers, is one I brought to the press’s attention and they obtained permission to use it from the museum that owns it. I’ve loved Tooker and this painting for a long time, and I hope it conveys some sense of the book’s concerns and its aesthetic.

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I think maybe a third of the poems had been published prior to the book’s publication. Frankly, I’m terrible at sending out poems. Once a poem feels finished, I sort of lose interest in it, and this means I’m not thinking about it any more or sending it out to journals. The engaging work is figuring out the poem, not placing it somewhere. (I know this is not a good business practice.)

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

A month or so after the book was accepted for publication, I had two long conversations with series editor Enid Shomer. She felt that the manuscript was well ordered, so that didn't change, and we agreed to eliminate two poems from the original manuscript. The editing process with Enid was both affirming and helpful, and the manuscript benefitted from her attention and experience.

Further along in the production process the astute copy editor at Arkansas, Brian King, asked great questions that led to simple but significant revision on a couple of other poems, including the change of a single word in the title poem. Then, during a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, I polished some of the newest poems a bit more and researched possible cover art, before sending everything off for production. Working with the press was a great experience from start to finish.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

You know, I don’t remember feeling any special thrill in seeing it or holding it for the first time. I was glad it was done; I thought it looked great. However, because I was so involved with the production of the book—seeing two sets of page proofs and several images of the cover—I knew it well long before I held a physical copy. Plus, it’s a long process from the first poem to a published book, and I’d moved past those poems in many ways.

Now getting the news that the book won the Miller Williams/Arkansas Poetry Prize was exciting. On Valentine’s Day 2011 I got an email from the University of Arkansas telling me that my manuscript was one of four selected for publication, and that poetry series editor Enid Shomer would be phoning all four finalists later that day to inform the winner of the of $5,000 prize. Needless to say, I was stunned to learn I had won the prize. For a few days afterwards, I was afraid that I had misunderstood the conversation.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

Although the question hasn’t been asked of me on a plane, I have answered this question in other settings, though never very well, I’m afraid. Rousing the Machinery is about men and women, work and class, resiliency, and more broadly, history and inheritance.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

No different in the day-to-day, but knowing the poems are out there is at once unnerving and satisfying. I’m married to a librarian and I love libraries, so I especially like to imagine the book on library shelves. WorldCat is wonderful on-line tool to see where the book has landed in the world.

One of the best things to come out of winning the contest is that I was able to use some of the prize money to go to Italy. I’d never been out of the United States before, three weeks in Florence and Milan, thanks in part to the poems, felt very good.

What have you been doing to promote Rousing the Machinery, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Promoting poetry is very humbling. Audiences are small and the external rewards are few. I’ve done the usual readings and talked about the book with other writers who are studying poetry. It’s especially fun to talk with students who are beginning to write poems. Their responses to the book are sometimes surprising and give me insight into how a poem is received by a reader who has no prior knowledge of my life or me or even, sometimes, poetry. These conversations remind me to write as well as I can, to do my part in the conversation as well as I can.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

For me, the process was without serious bumps, and I suspect that the best advice comes from people who have had a harder road than me. My advice is to take from the experience what will help you move on to the next poems. Try thinking of it as just one very interesting thing among many that will happen to you.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I don’t think the publication has affected my new work too much, though it may have improved my work ethic a bit since intense revision appears to have paid off.

These days I am working on a couple of things. One is a poetry manuscript tentatively titled The Unkept House. I’ve been reading Edith Wharton’s early nonfiction about home and garden design as well as writing by contemporary geographers such as Doreen Massey who think about how space and place shape us. Other people’s housekeeping habits and domestic travails enter into many of these new poems. I’m not really a project-centric poet, but these are the poems I’m writing now.

I am also writing a nonfiction piece about work I did as a guardian ad litem (an advocate for abused and neglected children). I’m messing around with a possible fictional treatment of this subject, too.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I can’t go so far as to say it can change the world, but poetry has certainly deeply engaged and changed me. As a reader I go to poetry for music, form, and content conveying precisely and urgently something of another person’s singular experience. When a poem delivers that, it’s a quite remarkable thing. Though some argue that the culture has moved on, leaving poetry behind, I think there will always be an audience. For the reader who is open to it, reading the right poem at the right time can be, in that moment at least, transformative. 

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Catherine MacDonald is the winner of the 2012 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize for her collection Rousing the Machinery (University of Arkansas Press). Her work has been published in Washington Square, Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, and other journals. She has also received scholarships and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Ropewalk, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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#72 - Johnathon Williams

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

I spent about a year sending the book exclusively to contests — probably a dozen or more — with absolutely no luck at all, not even a finalist mention. I was finishing my MFA at the time, and sending to contests was the thing that everybody did. But then the next contest season rolled around, and I couldn’t stomach the expense and absurdity of it anymore. I knew other poets with terrific manuscripts who had been doing the same thing for four or five years, spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars in the process, with no end in sight, biding their time and waiting their turn to be the next recipient of the Backwater Review’s Now You Qualify For A Tenure Track Position Award. I’m not sure what you call the ability do that year after year (patience is perhaps the most generous word), but I knew I didn’t have it.

The problem with the contest system is that it’s a side effect of the academic takeover of contemporary poetry. I’m not hating on MFA programs here, because mine made me a far better writer, but, in an environment where 9 out of 10 poets hope to make a living by teaching, the lockstep relationship between contests and publication and teaching jobs is restrictive and absurd. Too many good books sit around for too long. I make this complaint as a reader as much as a writer – I want to buy and read those books sooner rather than later.

Anyway, I was fortunate in that I already had another way to make a living (I’m a web programmer), so I didn’t have to live and die by the length of my CV. As luck would have it, my friend and teacher Davis McCombs mentioned that Antilever was seeking manuscripts at about the same time I gave up on contests.

I suppose my advice would be to avoid the contest racket if you can. It’s a huge sink of time and money, and the benefits outside of academia are negligible. But anyone who would take my advice about publishing should probably check whether his health insurance covers psychiatric care.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been The Road to Happiness? Did it go through any other changes?

The title was originally Sawdust, which was taken from another poem in the manuscript. Most of my writer friends were lukewarm on that title, so after the book failed to place at five or six contests I changed it. In hindsight I’m glad I did.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

The book went through two or three minor revisions as I was submitting it, most of which involved substituting newer, stronger poems for some older ones I fell out of love with.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I had no input on the interior design, but I did approve the cover image after my editor suggested it. (I struck out trying to find a cover image on my own.) I’m very happy with the look and feel of the book — the folks at Antilever did a fantastic job.

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I didn’t care about having the majority of the poems published, per se, but I was desperate to see at least some of the poems appear in journals or magazines, especially those poems that were written during my first year or two of grad school (the Arkansas MFA is a four-year program). I’d been writing and publishing prose as a journalist for years, but writing poetry was new to me — most of my first real efforts as a poet were included in my application packet to my MFA program. I needed those first publications in journals and magazines to prove that I wasn’t wasting my time.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

My editors at Antilever, particularly Dillon Tracy, gave the book a tremendous amount of attention after accepting it, and we went back and forth on everything from the order of the poems to rewriting stanzas within individual poems to whether certain poems should be included at all. That attention to detail was gratifying and humbling, and the book is better for it.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

I remember more about the beginning of the day than I do the end of it. My wife and kids were out of town visiting family the day my author’s copies arrived. So I came home after work to find this box sitting on the stoop and no responsibilities claiming my time before the next morning. I picked the box up and carried it, unopened, to my favorite bar, where I ordered a double pour of mid-shelf whiskey and opened the box and began signing books and giving them away to anyone I had ever met or anyone who made the unfortunate decision to ask about the contents of the box. I gave away 19 signed copies that night. I have a vague memory of standing in line at Jimmy John’s around 1 a.m. and asking the register lady to please give me the poet’s discount on my sandwich. I woke up the next morning on my couch with a wretched hangover and the empty box clutched in my arms and my final remaining copy sitting next to an empty bottle of bourbon on the coffee table.

   

How has your life been different since your book came out?

It hasn’t really, although there have been a few perks. Every now and again a random friend-of-a-friend will mention that he read and enjoyed the book, which is nice. The book’s presence on my shelves is strangely comforting when I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I forget to pay the electric bill. Oh, and every year on my birthday before the book was published I used to get really drunk and lament the fact that I was a year older and still hadn’t joined the author’s club. I suppose this year I’ll have to get drunk and lament something else.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

The awful truth is that I’m terrible at explaining what the book is about. I have a canned paragraph that I send out when people insist, but it isn’t very good. Katrina Vandenberg’s introduction to the book explains it better than I ever could. I don’t know whether Katrina and I share a blood type, but if we do and she ever needs a kidney, I’m committed to giving her one of mine.

What have you been doing to promote The Road to Happiness, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a couple of readings, and a Skype appearance for a classroom or two, and this here interview, and… so fucking little. I have no idea how to effectively promote a book of poetry. My only comfort is that no else does either. It’s not that I mind promoting the book — honestly, at this point I’d get naked on television if I thought it would help.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

Related to the above, I wish someone had told me to have a marketing campaign ready to go as soon as the book was available. Also, I wish the same person had told me what an effective marketing campaign for a book of poetry looks like.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I believe that poetry can create change in the individual human heart. And I believe that is enough.

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Johnathon Williams is a writer and web developer living in Fayetteville, AR. He publishes the online journal Linebreak. Find more at his website: http://johnathonwilliams.com

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#71 - John Estes

How often had you sent out Kingdom Come before it was chosen for publication in 2011 by C&R Press?

I would not even want to go back and count. Some version of the book had been making the rounds for a year or so; it had been a finalist in several contests and had received a few of those rejections that helps you believe in a book more than disbelieve in it. But I did a major revision in the summer of 2009, and shortly after that it was picked up. There are aspects of the older manuscript I miss in the published version, particularly its less overtly narrative structure and that it was, as Schlegel might have called it, a book of “mixed means.” Insofar as one wants a first book to declare one’s intentions and range as an artist, I think the previous version did that more comprehensively, more forcefully. But it did become a tightly coherent book, and readers have responded to that.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Kingdom Come? Did it go through any other changes?

The title prior to that revision was Sufficient Wildness, which is a phrase of Thoreau’s from “Walking” and also a poem in the book. I was attempting to capture some essence of the compromises at the heart of the book. On one hand, the personal compromises involved in marriage and family, the site—or presumed site—of many of the poems. And on the other hand, the aesthetic compromise at the heart of the book, between my typical language-centered mode the shift—part chosen, part innate brought on by the threshold I was crossing—toward biographical narrative. The poetics were attempting to track with a deeper immersion in and acceptance of my own material existence, a thing unavoidable when one founds a household. It’s something like when James Gatz first kisses Daisy: he feels that love draw him irrevocably into his humanity such that “his mind will never again romp like God’s.” (As if). It may also be the inevitable discovery getting older that the mind of God—a figure for freedom—is not opposed to but rather dependent upon being sunk into the midst of one’s life, which becomes possible in new ways once others are bound to you. Poetry is one means of navigating those attachments.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

Considering that honor is the coin of our mostly-coinless realm, yes, I had hoped to win a contest. One reason is purely pragmatic: as you know, the majority of avenues for first-book publishing are through contests, and many publishers, even if they end up publishing some finalists, still don’t consider other books outside their contests. We must enter then, even though it can become quite expensive (and heartbreaking). Also, considering the near non-existent marketing budgets of small presses, the exposure that comes from winning a contest—people do notice—is difficult to replicate. And I don’t think wanting to win an entirely selfish desire, either; we all know we’re not entirely the authors of our poems. Any worthy poem comes in part as a gift in whose fashioning we are fortunate enough to participate, and the same can be said of our books. So the hope of seeing that work honored is a natural hope. One merely needs to keep it all in perspective.

But this wish was not without its flip-side; one knows contests are something of a racket, something of a crapshoot, and come (usually) without any commitment beyond that book. Most contest publishers publish a book a judge chose and not necessarily a book they would have selected, and so it’s no surprise that they feel no longterm investment in the work or career of that poet. This is a pretty odd situation if you think about it, and just the kind of transaction money is good at instituting. I am romantic enough that even as I pursued this end I would often say that I’d much prefer to have the book picked up by a publisher who believed in the work and wanted to see it exist in the world, and that’s what happened.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

As I said, the book evolved over a couple years, but at its kernel was a chapbook, called Swerve, that had won a Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. That little book traced in a brief arc my movement from an ascetically-minded artist to a husband and father struggling to keep hold of my artistic-practice-as-I-understood-it in the midst of those new conditions. But I wanted to build on that, and had more poems in that vein, so the book was an exercise in expansion (some have said too much expansion) into an arc that now spans five sections. I gave the sections somewhat jokey titles (structured after the chapters in A.A. Milne’s books), which I have some mind to revise in a future edition, but they do serve one primary end—to remove all doubt about the narrative structure. One chooses the work one wants a reader to do, and I realized that trying to unearth a buried narrative was not the thing I wanted readers attending to. So I try in each section to trouble what might initially feel like excessive clarity as much as possible, which I’m sure attentive (or patient, whichever) readers notice.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Somewhat by accident I was more intimately involved than is anywhere near normal. The press’ book designer was out of the country for an extended trip when it came time to start assembling the book, and since I have experience in design they allowed me to get the process started and I just kept going. So my influence on the book’s look and feel was complete. I’m happy with how it turned out; people pick it up and call it a beautiful book, which is gratifying and about all I could hope for.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

The cover image—these are always a treasure-hunt, aren’t they—was discovered on an airplane back from an AWP conference, when I happened to be sitting next to a photographer who was organizing photos on his laptop. We fell into conversation, he sent me some pictures, and I chose the aspen stand which wraps it front to back, which I felt was not only striking but significant enough.

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

This was, and I suppose remains, an obsessive concern, yes.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

The unique design situation meant that I had control of the poems far longer than is typical and I took advantage of it, revising poems up until it went to press. One long poem that serves as the book’s climax remained to be written (or it occurred to me needed to be written) after the book’s acceptance, but the others kept shifting—largely in response to each other—and I felt truly satisfied by time of publication that I’d taken every poem as far as I could take it. It was an especially instructive exercise in the assembly of a book, to see just how deeply one can or even must get to know one’s own work, which helped me to discover and solve problems I didn’t even know existed with some of the poems. If it hadn’t been for that year and a half of revision that took place during the design process (a process delayed, too, by a major move from Missouri to Ohio and the start of a new job) it would be a different book, maybe a less complete figure. But again, there is always something to be said for the unfinished quality of everything, which I hope it retains.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

You hear so many stories about the thrill of that unboxing, but I was terrified to open the box for fear of finding a problem and didn’t do so immediately. Well, as befits my karma and my intuitive expectation, there was a printing error with that first press run and that moment I’d worked toward for almost 10 years was much more disappointment and grief than pride, relief, joy or whatever at that moment. Fortunately we got all that fixed and the finsihed book finally arrived, but you just can’t recreate a first time.

   

How has your life been different since your book came out?

One thing I was not prepared for was the sensation that having a book can be a kind of burden. It has an independent existence and it can—if you let it—exert (or extract) certain demands. I made a choice in the summer after the book came out to try and promote and sell the book rather than, as I really wanted, to start work on the next one. This meant putting together a tour, finding ways to promote it, etc. I enjoy doing readings—even the ones done for just a few people—and it’s always gratifying to find readers (and they must be searched down). While more reviews and sales are always to be hoped for, I have felt that in some small measure the world registered my offering. The book is a gentle tyrant by and large, and we co-exist peaceably.

But having a book published does impose changes, at least insofar as ratifying your identity as a poet or writer; here is proof, beyond the fantasies of your imagination and a hope in a distant event, that you are what you say you are. At least for now. It makes getting work possible, and it relieves a lot of psychic tension bound up in those uncertainties. One hopes that it’s a good book, and that it encourages more, even better, work. In my case, the choice not to dive into the second book right away—coupled with a busy job, a young family, everything in between—has meant two years passing before I had another manuscript ready. I try to trust that the delay, which has not been without its pain, has been a good investment all around. We’ll see.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

Funny, since as I told you above that actually happened to me and I got a cover photo out of it. This is a question I duck as much as possible; it’s impossible not to be reductive and I wouldn’t want to be guilty of confirming anyone’s worst assumptions about potery. But because of the way I’ve structured it and the presence of those domestic concerns, the book is about something. There is an attempt to speak to various common experience—marriage, child-birth, art, ambivalence about these things—and it was for that reason I worked as hard as I did to find an audience for it. Nonetheless it is poetry, and so my success at finding those readers has been mixed at best. But the good thing about a book of poetry is there is no hurry; poems wait around for a reader to find them.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

More than any advice what I could have used was pretty practical information: a more efficient means of getting the book disseminated to people and places that might be willing to buy or stock it or host readings. The library system is a black box, and the independent booksellers are geared almost entirely toward fiction and non-fiction. One is left to a lot of email writing, a lot of guesswork, trial and error. Even after being pretty industrious about all that, I’m pretty willing to let the marketing department take over.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

I have a new book in manuscript, called Stop Motion Still Life that is starting to be sent out, another one in development. I started a film project last summer, which may or may not amount to anything. I can’t claim that the book has influenced later writing, except insofar as it let me deal squarely with some matters that I don’t feel the need to address again any time soon, at least not so dead on. Life keeps going. There is that phenomenon called The Empty Attic of Achievment, which is good to see filling up again with the next thing. Maybe that’s about as good as one can say about finishing a book, is that it gets out of the way so that the next one can emerge. And so forth.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I think poetry changes poets, and that kind of certainty is enough for me. I’m suspicious of mass movements, and probably wouldn’t like a world created by poetry anymore than I like the world created by all the non-poetic forces at work on it. And certainly individuals are transformed, or at least informed, by reading, and the world would be a better place if more people read better things (including me). So my ambitions are fairly modest; if a poem were to instigate even one reader to tilt her head at even a slightly new or different angle to the universe, then it has done a lot, maybe all that it can do.

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John Estes is director of the creative writing program at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. Recent poems and prose have appeared in Tin House, New Orleans Review, Southern Review, Crazyhorse, AGNI, and other places. He is author of one book of poems, Kingdom Come (C&R Press, 2011) and two chapbooks: Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoön (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Swerve, which won a 2008 National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. Fine more at his website: http://johnestes.org
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#70 - Joanna Pearson

How often had you sent out Oldest Mortal Myth before it was chosen for the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize?

It’s hard to say because I never had a very programmatic plan for trying to publish a book of poetry.  I had impulsively sent a [haphazard] bunch of poems to one or two book contests a couple years before, but never with the thought that I actually stood a chance.  (In fact, I was always a little appalled at the jumble of poems I’d sent off immediately afterwards.) For a long time, I had individual poems I liked, but I didn’t feel like I had enough to pull together a full manuscript.  It wasn’t until 2010 that I really thought I had something that seemed like a book, and then I entered this one book contest I really admired (because I had a prophetically good feeling about it).  My manuscript didn’t win (proving my powers of prophecy to be faulty), but I was a finalist, which gave me hope.  So then the next fall, with  significantly more thought, revision, and consideration, I found a handful of book contests I liked, including the Donald Justice Prize, and sent out my manuscript. 

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Oldest Mortal Myth? Did it go through any other changes?

In one very different, earlier incarnation, I called it Animal Afterlives, which is the title of one of the poems included.  As a book title, it had very little to do with the overall manuscript—other than the fact that I liked it and thought it sounded kind of cool  Once I decided on Oldest Mortal Myth, though, I knew it fit the book, in a lot of ways.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

It’s very likely I was one of those poets operating under that misconception! In truth, I hesitate to give advice because I feel like I was ill-informed about the process of publishing a book of poetry.  It didn’t really occur to me to submit to open reading periods.  In retrospect, I think sure, yes, do all of the above—send your manuscript to contests and open reading periods, send it wherever, as long as you sense there’s some kinship between your work and that published through that contest or press. 

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

It reminds me a little bit of the good old art of mixtape-making.  I think by the time I was actually ready to assemble a book, it mostly fell together in an intuitive way.  By then, I’d written enough poems that certain themes and connections were apparent.  The toughest part for me was plucking out the poems that didn’t belong because I felt sorry for them.  I have this tendency to overinclude.  I want to cram everything in, even my most terrible poems, those poor little stray dogs.  In the end, though, (hopefully) I was appropriately selective.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

I got to choose the cover image, a photo taken by my brother-in-law, who is a young yet absurdly talented artist.  (His name is Daniel Alexander Smith, and you should check out his website.  Look out for this guy!)  I was really happy with how the book turned out.  All credit and thanks to Jamie Smith and Kim Bridgford and  the family of Iris N. Spencer and everyone else at the West Chester University Poetry Center!

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

It was never really a concern, but I had published a number of the poems in magazines or journals already.  I’ve always really loved reading around in various small magazines and journals, so it was always exciting for me also to send work out and feel like I was part, even in a very small way, of that dialogue.  It’s wonderful to discover a gem of a poem by someone whose work you don’t yet know! So, yeah, I’d been submitting  individual poems for a while and reading journals, but not with any thought towards how that would or would not affect assembling a book-length manuscript. 

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I did make some changes here and there, and I got some helpful editing/proofreading from the kind people at the WCU Poetry Center.  But on the whole, once I feel an individual poem is “finished” I usually leave it alone.  I tend not to want to revisit older poems and tinker with them.  I have the gift or curse of not being overly fastidious.  So mostly I was proofreading and making the final keep-or-cut decisions about poems.

  

How has your life been different since your book came out?

It hasn’t really been.  I’m so happy the book exists, and I feel lucky and grateful, and it’s a very nice thing, a thing I always wanted (a poetry book! a real, live book!), but the book came out just as I was entering into one of the busiest stints ever in my work.  I’m a psychiatry resident, and I was heading into this period of working these month-long stints of 12-hour shifts in the emergency room, and half of them were night shifts.  It was pretty grueling.  There weren’t a lot of poetry-related thoughts in my mind, as a result.  But maybe that’s a good thing, in a way?  There’s nothing better to reframe one’s appreciation for the time and opportunity to read and write poetry than spending every waking hour in the emergency room of a large, urban hospital....

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

Carnival freaks and Greek mythology and ghosts and religious doubt and kidnappers and gunshot testicles and visual disorders and metamorphoses and the human body.

What have you been doing to promote Oldest Mortal Myth, and what have those experiences been like for you?

So far I haven’t done very much, but I’m looking forward to participating in a couple readings coming up.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I would still like that advice, if someone would like to give it to me.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

Only recently has my schedule eased up a bit so that I can start writing some again.  I’ve had a few little bursts of poems here and there, but the main thing I’d like to try first is another YA novel.  That’s what I’m working on at the moment. 

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Maybe so.

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Joanna Pearson's first book of poetry, Oldest Mortal Myth, was selected by Marilyn Nelson for the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize.  She is also the author of a novel for young adults, The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills. She currently lives in Baltimore where she works as a resident physician at Johns Hopkins.  Her website is joannapearson.com.

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#69 - Rebecca Hazelton

How often had you sent out Fair Copy before it was chosen for the 2011 Ohio State Press / The Journal Poetry Award?

According to my spreadsheet, I sent Fair Copy out one hundred and eighteen times to various contests or open reading periods from 2009 to the first month of 2012. I was a finalist ten times, a runner-up three times, and a semi-finalist five times. Looking at those numbers really brings back the feelings I had during those years, that I was yelling into the wind. Also, that I had no money.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Fair Copy? Did it go through any other changes?

It’s always been Fair Copy.

I would say that Fair Copy is a conceptual book. Can you explain what that means to you, and what the challenges are of creating a book? Do you think things like format, structure, and arc change significantly with a conceptual book versus one that’s not?

The book is conceptual in that there is a formal element uniting the poems, but it happened almost by accident – one day I wrote an acrostic off a line of Emily Dickinson’s, and then thought to keep going, choosing every 29^th poem in my Collected Emily Dickinson. I knew doing so would provide me with a book length amount of material, but I didn’t for a moment really think I’d do it. But if I consider the book in terms of the subject matter, the book is less conceptual. Many of the poems in Fair Copy have different voices or speakers, with different agendas and concerns; if the formal framework weren’t there the book would be a more jagged affair. I think of conceptual books as more unified in subject matter, like American Busboy by Matthew Guenette, where all the poems center around a restaurant and its wait staff, or almost any book by Jenny Boully, a poet who really unites the concept and the conceit. But that may just be me thinking of “conceptual” in a limited way, like an album (do we call cds albums anymore? Do we even call them cds?) – Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or Joanna Newsom’s Ys.

You also have your second book, Vow, being published in 2013 by CSU Press, only a few months after Fair Copy. Though this is rare for poets, it does happen. Tell us about trying to write two collections at the same time—if that was the case of course. Which do you consider your real “first book”? And what are the advantages and disadvantages, do you think, of having two collections coming out within months of each other? 

I didn’t write them at the same time; I’m not that good of a multi-tasker. Fair Copy was completed by the time I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a year as the Jay C. and Ruth Hall Poetry Fellow. During my year there, I wrote Vow in around nine months. I wouldn’t consider either to be my real “first book.” I wrote a manuscript for my MFA thesis called Hinx Minx; that was my first book. It was not, however, good. I sent it out to a few contests, and then realized when it placed in one that I really didn’t want it out in the world. So I shelved it.

Having both books come out at almost the same time is very strange. I feel like I haven’t had a lot of time to get used to Fair Copy being my first book, because the demands of the second book are very much present – editing, cover questions, marketing, etc. I have readings scheduled, and don’t know whether I should just read one book at a reading, or try to read parts from both books at a reading –how does it work?

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

I submitted both to contests and to open reading periods. Fair Copy won Ohio State University Press’s contest, and Vow didn’t win Cleveland State’s contest but was selected by Michael Dumanis. I had good feedback from open reading periods, but no success. I would certainly suggest poets try both, but my experience was just that there weren’t a lot of open readings available compared to the number of contests. Passing through the screenings of a book contest is a matter not just of skill – you get the right preliminary screener, and not the one who has a chip on his/her shoulder against your aesthetic. You get the right second round screeners. You get the right final judge. You get lucky, in other words, but you get to be in that lucky position because you have skills as well. I assume these things apply to open reading periods and well, though I haven’t been on the other side of those as I have for contests.

The contest system is problematic, but it’s hard to know the way out. Contests help support small presses and journals, and whenever I wrote a check I told myself that’s what I was doing (sweetened a little when the contest actually included a subscription or copy of the winning book). I just told myself it was a donation. But knowing that the money helped support things I cared about still didn’t make the system any less expensive, and there were definitely other things I wanted that money for, like car maintenance and repair, or living in a less terrible apartment. The only way I made back (most of) the money I spent on contests over the years sending it out was that I won a book contest with a slightly larger than average prize. The fact remains that these contests are most accessible to people with some cash to burn – so how many voices are we not hearing because of that?

Friends of mine suggested that I try and pick the judges I thought would appreciate my aesthetic, and there were times I placed in contests where I thought that was the case – and just as many where my dream judge passed me by. Really, you’re just hoping that your judge is someone who can see past his or her own preferences, and there’s no way of knowing if he or she has that kind of breadth.

For what it is worth, my advice is to only pick the presses you would be proud to be a part of. There’s so little compensation for poets, monetarily or otherwise, and we are continually doing work for free – books reviews, interviews (thank you again!), untold hours at journals and presses that are labors of love. We do these things because we love them, and because we believe in poetry, but we shouldn’t then think that our work has no value. We at least need to realize that our own work deserves a proper setting, among other poets you respect.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

Ordering poems in a manuscript is not my strength. Everyone has different methods, and after a while, I felt as if I’d tried them all. The initial order was simply how I’d written them – every 29^th Emily Dickinson poem – but that was terrible. I tried ordering via narrative – one of a child growing into womanhood (ala Satan Says), or a relationship taking a downward trajectory – but it felt forced. I tried ordering by linking words from poem to poem, so that a poem ending on one word might match up via word or them to the following poem, but that was overly precious. I tried ordering by mood, and no surprise, I’d reorder it drastically whenever I was in a bad one. I tried thinking of it like a mixed tape. I finally returned to the narrative angle, but it is a fairly buried one.

The book went through many revisions, but because of the formal constraints the revisions could only be so radical and maintain the form. There are lines that changed drastically, and some poems I almost entirely rewrote, which was often a better, though exhausting, tactic to take rather than jimmying with one stuck line. Mostly, the style of the book changed a lot from the initial draft to its final incarnation – when I started I was very interested in jamming in as much as possible – I kept telling people I wanted the poems to be rococo! – and over the years a lot of that playful excess got stripped out, as fun as it was, because it was distracting. So weirdly, as time went on, the book gained a more Dickinsonian spareness than less.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

Ohio State asked me to send them several possible images for the cover, but it wasn’t guaranteed they’d choose one of my suggestions. I sent in a number of Victorian and late nineteenth century illustrations. I actually didn’t know they’d chosen the Kay Nielsen illustration I’d suggested until they sent me a preliminary proof, so it was a good surprise! I wasn’t involved in any of the other design aspects for the book, but they did an amazing job – I love the cover’s font.

What about the publication of the actual poems in journals and magazines prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I never thought about it. If I had, I suppose I would have sent the poems out more often. I certainly had some publications, and some journals, like Field and Pleiades, seemed to really respond to these odd poems, and I am so grateful for that support. I’ve had more poems taken from Vow, but I also sent out more from Vow, and more often. It’s only in the last two years that I’ve started submitting more regularly, basically because friends of mine said I needed to do so.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

With Fair Copy, the changes were minimal. The book had been through a lot of revisions by the time it was taken.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your published book for the first time?

That it felt so strange! I felt as though I were watching myself. For my entire adult life –even when I was a teenager – I’d imagined being a published author. So to have that dream come true felt both amazing and surreal. When the box arrived, my husband and I opened it together, and he took a picture of me. The expression on my face looks a little like a kid whose had too much sugar at the fair: happy, but also possibly about to barf.

  

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I feel a little more exposed to the world, which isn’t a bad thing, but is uncomfortable. A lot of poets, myself included, have a drive to be noticed and to be read, but also a deep discomfort with public scrutiny. You toil away for so long as a poet, generally, and are so used to being unnoticed, that to have someone suddenly take a look at you can feel really alarming. After the book was published, I was more aware that other people really could read the things I write. I don’t know why individual poem publications didn’t trigger that for me, but they didn’t. It’s a good thing my subsequent book as taken so quickly and unexpectedly – I think if it hadn’t, I could have second-guessed the work in that book to death.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

That would be a pretty self-punishing thing for me to do – I’m actually talking to a stranger in this scenario? We’re breathing each other’s re-circulated breaths? Terrifying! Well, assuming the braver, less flight phobic me is in this situation, I would probably tell them it’s about domesticity and desire, and the difficult of understanding the truth of either. Then I would quickly pick up the Skymall catalogue and become very interested in mobile stairs for arthritic dogs.

What have you been doing to promote Fair Copy, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve got a number of readings scheduled in the next few months, and the experience has been awesome so far, although I’ve just gotten started. I got to read in the Kraken Series in Denton TX, and back at my alma mater, Davidson College. I’ve been impressed by the strength of reading series in cities across the country.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I actually think I got all the good advice! Several of my friends warned me that the experience of having the book published was in some ways anti-climatic. So I was prepared that I might not feel as excited as I felt I should feel. I was also warned that publishing a book wouldn’t change my life, so I managed not to wake up the next day expecting unicorns. All this sounds a little bleak –it’s not, I promise! I only mean that it’s easy to think, “I just need to get this book published and then…” – and to fill in that blank with whatever secret desire you have about your life. But the publication of the first book is not a panacea for your anxieties. That first book is just a first step if you want to keep writing poetry and to keep publishing it. So my advice is to celebrate – break out the champagne! – then figure out what’s next for you the following day.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Are there any new projects in the works?

Before the book was taken, I felt conscious of it as not finished – for me, finished was to finally be in print. I had moved on to different work, but every couple of months, had to look at Fair Copy again, polish it further, send it out again, etc. I wanted very much to be done with it and completely free to do something new, but I continually had to try and dip into the book again and again, editing it while trying to be true to the book’s beginnings. It was hard to maintain those very different ways of thinking: my previous aesthetic and the work I was trying to create.

As for new projects, Vow is coming out, which is quite different from Fair Copy. No formal constraint to speak of, a number of series with implicit narratives, a lot more frank in terms of subject matter. I’m also working on a series of ekphrastic poems based off the works of contemporary female artists’ self-portraits: Cindy Sherman, Terri Frame, and Julie Heffernan, some of which are included in Tender Trapper, a digital chapbook from Floating Wolf Quarterly, and some of which will appear in Bad Star, forthcoming from Yes Yes Book’s Vinyl 45 chapbook series. I’m also working on a series of poems called “Homewreckers,” which look at disruptions to the home, both literally and figuratively, and which have been surprisingly fun to write. It’s fun to bring down buildings. It’s fun to break plates.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

It depends on the world. I’m unlikely to write a poem that makes the entire planet take notice – why would it? I write out of a very particular set of circumstances and privileges, and I’m fooling myself if I think my poems might fulfill some universal human need. There are poets that have come to mean a lot to particular countries – I think of Inger Christensen, or Pablo Neruda, but that’s rare, and often breaks down under closer scrutiny. But. But. If we think of the world as a smaller thing, if we think about the worlds we carry within ourselves – absolutely. There are poems I can honestly say changed the way I thought about my life and my place in it.

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Rebecca Hazelton is the author of Fair Copy (Ohio State University Press, 2012), winner of the 2011 Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award in Poetry, and Vow, from Cleveland State University Press. She was the 2010-11 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Creative Writing Institute and winner of the “Discovery” / Boston Review 2012 Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Southern Review, Boston Review, Best New Poets 2011, and Best American Poetry 2013. Find more at http://rebeccahazelton.net.
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