#76 - Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

How often had you sent out Chord Box before it was chosen for publication by The University of Arkansas Press as Finalist for the Miller Williams Prize in 2013?

The book was picked up pretty quickly—within the first six months of submitting it—but by the time I got the call from the University of Arkansas, it had already been rejected by 16 different contests or open reading periods.  I had been a semi-finalist for a couple of contests, and a finalist once, which was enough hope for me to keep trying.  I admit that I didn’t have a great sense of where my manuscript might fit in the publishing landscape—it’s a hard thing to predict, even if you’re reading a lot—so I blanketed the market, sending to as many places as I could manage.   It was expensive to do this, and emotionally taxing to get the rejections, but I’m glad I invested.

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

Chord Box was always my title.  Alice Fulton, who served as my thesis committee chair in graduate school, suggested it.  It comes from two lines in my poem “Echo”: “Lungs lift against the chord/box, stir its twin folds.”  Because the book is primary about music and sound—with the guitar and the human voice being two of its major subjects—Alice’s suggestion hit home.  The title, to me, seemed to suggest both the physical body of a guitar, as well as the voice box, or larynx, which houses the vocal chords.

Alice Fulton also gave me another helpful piece of publishing advice: it’s good to avoid having a title poem for your collection.  A title poem puts a lot of pressure on that one small piece of the manuscript, and, if the judge or editor isn’t crazy about the poem, it could hurt your chances of getting published.

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’d suggest sending to both contests and open reading periods.  My book was picked up, along with Joshua Robbins’s and Elton Glaser’s, out of the submissions to the Miller Williams Prize.  Sometimes a contest judge or editor will feel passionately enough about your manuscript to publish it, even if it’s not the contest winner.

When you feel that your manuscript is ready to send out, I’d suggest that you send it to as many open reading periods and contests as you can afford.  It feels terrible, and like a huge waste of money, but most of us have to reach a critical mass with manuscript submissions before our books will be picked up.  I was lucky enough to have the book taken pretty early in the process, but I think that this was due to, at least in part, the fact that I was so diligent about sending our the manuscript from the very beginning.  Because I initially didn’t have much extra money to write the contest checks, I moved into a cheaper apartment and took on a roommate for a year, thus cutting down on my monthly expenses. It was worth it.

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

Chord Box is essentially the same as my MFA thesis, though I added and subtracted some poems.  The sections have remained mostly the same as they were for my thesis. The first section of the book is a long narrative sequence, and I knew all of those poems had to be in a section together in order for the story to make sense.  The sequence is a very charged and morally ambiguous coming-of-age narrative, and while it initially felt like a real risk to have it come first in the book, my editor said that it was this section that really grabbed her attention.  The middle section of the book was more assorted in its subjects and forms, and I played around with the order of these poems quite a bit.  

The last section of the book is about living in China.  The inclusion of some Chinese words, and characters is a challenge for some readers, and so I tried to arrange that section so that the first poem “teaches” you how to read the poems that follow it.  I wanted to ease the reader into the more experimental/less transparent aspects of the book.  When you’re submitting your manuscript, anything you can do to make it more user-friendly is good. Contest readers and editors will likely be tired by the time they start reading your manuscript.

For a while, I was worried that the last section of the book, because of its more experimental poetics, might be the start of second book, rather than the conclusion of this first one.  However, what I learned is that it’s fine to have the last section veer off in a slightly different direction, so long as there are some resonances with poems earlier in the collection.

One thing I wish I’d known: the manuscript was much too long in its original form.  I think it’s better to include fewer poems when you’re trying to get your manuscript published. Less can be more.

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

University of Arkansas Press gave me a lot of freedom around how the book was designed, especially when it came to the cover.  My friend Monica Burke, whose primary artistic field is lamp-making, designed the cover of Chord Box.   We had a number of conversations and trial designs before coming up with our final pick.  A lot of book covers are really drab, and I wanted something that was slightly outrageous.  (My book cover reminds me of a paperback from the 1970’s.)  I’m grateful that the press went with Monica’s idea, and kept an open mind, even if my book looks different than most of the books in their series.

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

As I described, my friend Monica Burke was responsible for almost all aspects of the cover.

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?

Yes, a fair number of the poems had been published in journals, especially in the middle and last section of the book.   Publishing these poems was a way of testing the waters, seeing if my writing was resonating with editors and readers.  I’m glad I did this. It gave me enough confidence to start sending out my book-length manuscript.

But the first section of the book, as I’ve described, is a long sequence, and so most of those poems did not place in journals, mostly because one really needs to read all of them together to make sense of the narrative.  I’d published the opening poem of that sequence in a magazine, but that was the only poem.

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 editor, Enid Shomer, was a very thorough reader.  We had two very long phone calls and went through each poem together, and from there I made occasional line edits, word adjustments, or omissions.   I took most of her suggestions, though she left the final choices up to me. The best suggestion Enid gave me was to cut a number of poems from the manuscript.  I was shocked to discover that, even after I’d cut a number of poems, the final manuscript is close to 100 pages.  That’s very long for a first book of poetry. 

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

Oh man.  I currently live in a very small town in rural Ohio, and no one gets mail delivery at their home; you have to go to the post office.   When I went to look for the box, it wasn’t there.  Because Kenyon College is a small community, I finally found the box at the office of The Kenyon Review, where I work.  I opened the box immediately, and, yes, took a picture of the books!   A mentor, Janet McAdams, instructed me to sleep with the book under my pillow that first night, for good luck.  (I did.)

   

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

It’s nice to know that those poems are officially “done,” and I’ll never revise them again!  I also think that having published a book, for better or worse, affords some people’s respect, and can, at least on good days, affirm your choice to live a creative life.  It’s also been nice to share my work with a larger group of people; so much of writing feels like talking to the wall.  In theory, the book now means I’m “qualified” for a number of academic jobs, but it’s a very competitive world out there, so I have my doubts.   I have a fellowship at the moment, so I haven’t entered the larger job market just yet.

It’s important to remember that everyone is on their own timeline when it comes to writing and publishing.   Many people have to wait for years before their first book is published, but by the time that first book is taken, they have another fantastic manuscript completed, or they’re deeply immersed in a second project, and they’ve got a strong sense of identity as a writer.  I was only 26 years old when Chord Box was picked up for publication, and not quite 28 years old when it was published.  I’m grateful to have gotten this relatively early start, but it also means that my next project feels pretty nascent, and I still lack confidence about my ability to write meaningfully and artfully.  I’ve felt a little bit unmoored for these past two years, often worrying about whether or not I’ll publish another book, and when it might happen.  I suppose this is a common experience.

For the most part, my life is the same as before the book.  However, it’s been fun to do some readings, and to have the book to share with new and old friends.  I’m grateful.

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?”

It’s hard to talk about your own work, but I think Chord Box a buildungsroman in every sense of the word.  It’s also a book about music, identity, and geography.  Martha Collins, who was good enough to write me a blurb, says the book is about “the language of sound, and the sounds of language.” That is pretty astute, I think!

What have you been doing to promote Chord Box, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve done a string of readings—mostly places where I’ve lived or know people—and that has been fun. I’ve also promoted the book, to some extent, through Facebook.  I haven’t had much luck getting reviews for the book, which is a bit of a disappointment, but it’s still early; Chord Box has only been out since February.   Reviews are hard to come by for your first book, or so I’ve heard.  In general, I think I’m not so good at self-promotion, but I’m working on it. It takes a lot of energy, and it’s not very conducive to writing itself.

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

As I mentioned before, I’ve really struggled with confidence around my work, and, unlike some of the thicker-skinned among us, I don’t deal with rejection very well.  Luckily, someone did give me the important advice: just focus on the work.  Write what you need to write, even if it isn’t as hip or clever as what your peers are writing.  And if you really want your book published, you’ve got to keep sending it out.   If it gets rejected many times, this doesn’t mean anything in particular; it’s common, and the chances of getting published are always slim, even if you’ve got a strong manuscript.  The more you send out, the better your chances will be.

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

After writing so much about music, sound is now the primary sensory operation in most of my poems.  It’s more important than the visual, even, which is usually the dominant sense in writing.  But in regards to most of the poems in Chord Box: it was a different era of my life, and I can never write like that again.  The new poems are more global and political in their scope, and are less about identity or history than the ones in Chord Box.   They are also formally different from my old poems; my sense of the line continues to evolve, and I find that the ultra-terse, tightly-wound lines that I used to write don’t seem to be serving my words any longer.  Form is holy to me, so the old habits have been hard to break.

In some ways, the new poems are more ambitious, which means they often fail or don’t quite live up to their potential. Writing is really hard! Every time I sit down to work, I feel like I’m trying to reinvent the wheel.  But I’m still at it.   I’ve had a writing fellowship for this past year, which has been great, and has given me time and space to think and try new ways of writing.  Some experiments fail; others produce interesting results.  And, in addition to poems, I’ve also begun to experiment with a new form altogether: essays.

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

I hope so?  As Whitman would say,  “Great or small, your furnish your parts towards the soul.”

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Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers is the author of Chord Box (University of Arkansas Press, 2013).  Her poems appear in The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Crab Orchard Review, AGNI Online, POOL, and other journals.  Born and raised in North Carolina, she is a graduate of Oberlin College and the MFA program at Cornell University, and also spent several years teaching in rural China.  She is currently a poetry fellow at The Kenyon Review, and lives in Gambier, Ohio.  You can read more about her poetry on her website: www.elizabethlindseyrogers.com

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#75 - James Pollock

How often had you sent out Sailing to Babylon before it was chosen for publication in 2012 by Able Muse Press?

I was fortunate; I did manage to get eighteen submissions out the door, but to my delight the manuscript was accepted only three months into my submission process. I had planned to send the manuscript to about a hundred presses in the U.S. and Canada over the course of a year. At the time it was a little bewildering because one of the places I submitted it to, Able Muse Press in California, had indicated in its submission guidelines to expect a six-month wait for a response, but in fact they accepted it just twelve days after I sent it to them. It was thrilling, of course, but this was essentially a new press (they’d only published three or four books at the time), and I wondered if I ought to wait to hear from some more established presses first. But I asked around and got some advice—the poet Eric Ormsby’s good word was especially decisive—and ultimately I gladly accepted the offer. Though not before I’d heard back from some other publishers first. The book was a semi-finalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book Award. McGill-Queen’s University Press in Montreal was interested, but the editors wanted me to make the manuscript longer by twenty-five pages and submit it again within five months, which didn’t strike me as the right thing for this book. And some presses sent letters of praise that nevertheless didn’t make me an offer, including Graywolf and Etruscan in the U.S. and Gaspereau in Canada. The most whiplash-inducing of these was from someone at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, whose words are forever burned into my memory: “Your verses are lyrical, your images exact and moving, but our small poetry list is booked for the foreseeable future.” Alas! But in the end I’m very happy the book was published by Able Muse, for a variety of reasons. For example, many small presses have trouble with distribution, but that’s not an issue; it’s not hard to get your hands on the book. It’s also in my contract that, as long as the press stays in business, the book will never go out of print. That’s hard to beat. And my editor at Able Muse, Alex Pepple, has been a pleasure to work with.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Sailing to Babylon? Did it go through any other changes?

The working title for many years was Northwest Passage, which is also the title of two of the poems in the book. But when I finished the manuscript it didn’t fit. The phrase lacks the mythic resonance outside of my native Canada that it has there. And on the other hand it’s been so well-used in Canada that, there, it’s almost a cliché, at least for the title of a book. What I wanted was a title that would place the book in the main stream of Western literary tradition, and one with several layers of meaning—in this case, an image of a sea voyage, an ironic or disputative allusion to Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” an allusion to the several Babylons of history, the Bible, and nursery rhyme (“How many miles to Babylon?/ Threescore miles and ten./ Can I get there by candle-light?/ Yes, and back again.”), and so on. I wanted a title that would be inviting to readers at first glance, and resonant with new dimensions of meaning later on: a complex symbol. I myself keep discovering new ways of thinking about it even now, and I like that very much.

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?

Book contests, with their reading fees, are simply a business model many poetry publishers rely on in the U.S. in order to keep publishing books, and they’re a perfectly good one. But there are also plenty of publishers that call for open submissions, and in fact a lot of them, including Able Muse Press, do both. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to choose one over the other, because just about every manuscript that gets published—as opposed to self-published—is the winner of a competition with other manuscripts, whether it’s called a book contest or not. As for me, among the eighteen presses I sent the manuscript to, six involved contests, though I was planning to enter many more.

And anyway, after a book is published there are also plenty of post-publication book awards, the point of which is to publicize the book, to find readers for it. I’ve entered some myself, and my publisher has entered my book in some too, fifteen altogether. When Sailing to Babylon was named a finalist for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award in poetry, a major honor in Canada, it gave the book a big boost in visibility. There was a $1000 prize for each finalist, and a finalists’ reading in Montreal which meant a lot to me. The book was named the runner-up for the 2012 Posner Poetry Book Award, in Wisconsin. And now I’ve learned that it’s been shortlisted for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada’s most prestigious poetry award, and the publicity for that has already been extraordinary. Each finalist will be given $10,000 for doing a reading at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto on June 12, 2013. And the winners—one Canadian and one international—will be announced at a gala the next evening, and given another $65,000. I’m overjoyed, as you can imagine, and filled with gratitude.

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

I sent it out in one version. It took me about fifteen years to write the poems, but once I had finally written enough good ones for a book, it didn’t take long to put it together—just a few days. I spread the poems out on the floor and read them all, putting the ones that seemed to belong together into piles, then ordering the poems in each section and putting the sections in a natural order. Granted, there are only eighteen poems in the book—the last one is twenty-three pages long—so arranging the poems was probably not as difficult in this case as it might have been otherwise.

The hard part was writing it. I wrote many more poems than made it into the manuscript, and I was ruthless in deciding whether a given poem was good enough. Hence the fifteen years. The last thing I wrote was the long poem, “Quarry Park,” and when it was done I knew for the first time that I had written a book.

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

One perk of publishing with a small press is that you have some input on these matters. The book was designed by my editor and publisher, Alex Pepple, and he did a marvelous job. There was plenty of consultation, lots of back-and-forth, but in the end my main design contribution was the color of the cover—blue instead of the original beige. Other than that, my publisher gets all the credit for the design, which I love.

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

I suggested several images that involved ships at sea, and Alex chose an image on his own with a similar theme but a more abstract style. It’s a photograph called “Sailing Ships from Heaven,” by a French photographer named Roger-Michael Goerge, and he seems to have done something to the camera lens. I think I read somewhere that he smudged it with petroleum jelly to make the image dream-like.

What about the publication of the poems in journals and magazines prior to the book’s being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have most of the poems published before you sent out your manuscript?

Yes, indeed. I understand that some editors read the acknowledgements page very carefully to get a sense of the caliber of journals the poems have appeared in, especially for a first book. The more prestigious and difficult to get published in, the better. And editors also have a clear sense of which journals tend to publish the kind of thing their presses specialize in. In such cases, where you’ve published affects the editor’s attitude, and perhaps how much time he or she is willing to spend on reading the manuscript. If she hasn’t heard of any of the journals the poems have appeared in, or if they’re just the wrong journals from her point of view, she may well give it short shrift—because editors are nothing if not overworked and short on time.

But the main reason to publish your poems in journals is to test your work against the standards of the editors. It helps you see which of your poems are the best, and which either need more work or just aren’t good enough. And of course, you do it to find readers for your poems. So I spent many years getting the poems published in magazines. In the end, all but two of the poems in Sailing to Babylon were published beforehand, and one of those two was “Quarry Park,” which was just way too long for most journals.

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?

Quite a lot. The process delayed publication for about a year, but I wanted to make sure the book was the best it could be. A few months after the manuscript was accepted, and with the blessing of my editor, I went to the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference where I received some invaluable advice from Joan Houlihan, the poet and critic, and Jeffrey Levine, the editor of Tupelo Press and also a poet. I’d applied and been accepted to the conference before my book was accepted for publication; I had thought my submission process would take longer than it did. But by the time the conference happened, as I say, the manuscript had been accepted by Able Muse Press. I went to the conference anyway because I wanted to make the manuscript better, and I’m glad I did. I ended up removing two or three poems, revising some others, and changing the order of the poems in a few cases. So it added up to a significant improvement.

My editor, Alex Pepple, made some helpful suggestions about a few poems, as well. And a few months later I was very lucky to have the unofficial editorial services of my friend Carmine Starnino, a very fine editor, poet, and critic in Canada, who, I was happy to find, only suggested some judicious cuts to the first three pages of “Quarry Park.” He’s a famously tough editor, so I knew from the scarcity of his suggestions that the book must be getting close to ready to go to print. After I made those changes, my wife, Stormy Stipe, who had been responding to drafts of the poems all along for years, signed off on the manuscript again too.

That just left the proofreaders. I think my editor and publisher, Alex, in his remarkable thoroughness, hired six, some of whom had reputations for being very tough—which is just what you want in a proofreader. They each caught several different things, some of which were debatable and which got resolved according to the press’s house style. But one of these proofreaders—an older man from Europe, I was told—made a suggestion that really helped the ending of a poem called “Weekend in Vienna.” He said something about how everyone knows that a certain kind of doorless elevator in Europe that doesn’t stop at your floor—you have to step onto it while it’s moving—everyone knows it’s called a “paternoster elevator.” Well, I didn’t know that, but what a perfect name! It was just right for the ending of the poem. So, many a thank-you to that anonymous proofreader, whoever he was.

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

It was early July, a bright, hot day. I carried the box in from the front porch and set it down on the living room floor, and my son Felix, who was six, kept pushing my hands out of the way and saying he wanted to open it himself. And when we finally managed to get it open with the scissors, my wife picked up a copy and felt the cover and smiled and said it felt like flour, and then she went off to read it. I read some of it to Felix, too, the parts about him, and he was very excited. It was all very domestic and joyful. The book looked beautiful. But I remember thinking, what am I going to do with all these books? There were fifty copies in the box. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of doing several readings, so by now I’m happy to say I’ve sold my way through box number two, and I’m about to order another.

  

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?”

It’s full of poems about exploration and discovery, from wilderness explorers like Henry Hudson, John Franklin and David Thompson to mental travellers like Northrop Frye and Glenn Gould. And it ends with a long poem about hiking through a wooded park with my two-year-old son in Madison, Wisconsin, and what we find there. On another level, it’s about spiritual journeys, and ultimately about making a home for yourself by engaging imaginatively with the history of the place you find yourself in. It’s an allusive book, written in a clear style, and with much attention to the sounds of words.

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

I spend a lot of time now promoting the book, along with my book of essays that was published a few months later (You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada.) Several doors have opened—readings, interviews, invitations from editors and translators and festival directors, and things I’m now eligible to apply for, like fellowships and grants. And I’ve made quite a few new literary friends. It’s like being welcomed into a tribe. But on a deeper level, my long apprenticeship in the art is finally over. I’m filled with confidence, and excited about starting a new book.

What have you been doing to promote Sailing to Babylon, and what have those experiences been like for you?

I’ve been submitting the book to contests, as I say, and applying for fellowships and grants, and scouting out reviewers, and having review copies sent to anyone who’s interested. I’ve been developing and maintaining a Web site, and networking on Facebook and other social media sites—making announcements and responding to people who have contacted me to say how much they like the book, which is always a pleasure. I’ve been doing readings, and getting my book into local bookstores and even a national chain in Canada. And doing interviews, both online and with journalists at newspapers. And so on. It’s like having another job. But it’s been such a pleasure to hear from readers and audiences and reviewers and other poets. So far the response has been wonderful.

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

I gathered so much advice from so many sources—including the interviews in this series—that I feel I was pretty well prepared. The best advice I can give is to be ruthless with your book, especially after it’s been accepted by a publisher. Make it the best it can be.

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

I published a book of essays a few months later, as I say, and between working on that, and promoting both books, and teaching, and so on, I haven’t written much poetry. But I do have some things I’m working on. I’m also editing a volume of selected poems by Daryl Hine, who just died last year, and writing a review-essay on the poetry of Stephanie Bolster.

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

Great poetry not only can, but does, yes. All the time. It happens on a much deeper and more enduring level than many other things in the world, and it takes time for it to happen, sometimes a long time. But just think of the influence of Homer, Sappho, Dante and Shakespeare on world culture, and you’ll see what I mean.

I have some things to say about this in the closing paragraphs of You Are Here, which come at the end of a long essay on poetic value. “Truly great poetry,” I say,

is one of the most powerful of all manifestations of language. Its object is ultimately the formation, and transformation, of the human self and community. Its power to do these things is not different in kind from the power of ordinary language to do them; it’s just greater in degree. This is because great poetry is a fusion of reason, emotion, sensuality and imagination, bringing to bear all these powers of the human soul at once, whereas other uses of language are usually more specialized: rational but cold, passionate but stupid, beautiful but shallow, effective but ultimately meaningless.

A lot of people—let’s call them Philistines—say this is all nonsense, that poetry is a marginal and specialized kind of playing with words, a strange kind of niche entertainment, of no interest to serious people, and certainly with no real power to make or transform anything. “Poetry makes nothing happen,” in the words of W. H. Auden, who, while not otherwise a Philistine, was channeling one, I’m afraid, when he wrote these words.

In response, I can only appeal to my own experience as a reader. Great poetry gives me pleasure. It stimulates my intellectual, emotional and imaginative powers. It deepens my understanding of myself and other people, and helps me pay closer attention to my life. It gives me the power to perceive things more clearly, to feel not only more intensely but more subtly and precisely. It resurrects the dead world I live in, and the dead words I use, and makes the sources of strong value in my life resonate again.

I know from experience, however, what it means to be part of a community without a great poetry of its own. Whitman and Dickinson are not quite the central figures in American culture that Shakespeare is in British culture, or Homer in Greek, or Dante in Italian; but as a Canadian I feel exquisitely the lack of such a major poetic figure in my own country. An important part of the community of Canada, and therefore of the self of every Canadian, has not been fully formed. Now, everyone knows achieving that level of poetic power is extremely difficult. But we also know it’s not impossible.

I want our poets to try.

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James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012), a current finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award in poetry, and runner-up for the Posner Poetry Book Award; and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada (The Porcupine's Quill, 2012), currently shortlisted for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, Poetry Daily, AGNI, and other journals in the U.S. and Canada, and listed in Best Canadian Poetry 2010. His critical essays and reviews have appeared in Contemporary Poetry Review, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. He earned an Honors B.A. in English literature and creative writing from York University in Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston, where he held several fellowships in poetry. He was a John Woods Scholar in poetry at the Prague Summer Program at Charles University in Prague, and a work-study scholar in poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is an associate professor at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, where he teaches poetry in the creative writing program. He lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin. You can visit him at his Web site at www.james-pollock.com.

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#74 - Jeff Newberry

How often had you sent out Brackish before it was chosen for publication in 2012 by Aldrich Press?

I spent a solid three years sending out the manuscript. In that time, I was continually revising and reshaping the manuscript, cutting out poems, adding poems in, and rearranging the order. Several of my writer friends read it and offered me all kinds of advice on it. Particularly, Al Maginnes and Justin Evans gave me some feedback that helped me re-see the manuscript.

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

The original title of the manuscript was Where Brackish Water Flows, a reference to the landscape I’m writing about:  North Florida. I shortened it to Brackish after a while. I like how that word sounds. I love that it has a hard “k” right in the center but ends with a soft “sh.” Of course, for me, the word is also a metaphor:  fresh and salt, life-giving and life-taking, sacred and profane—just like the places I write about in the book. I like to think my poetry as brackish, too, one the one hand firmly lyrical, musical poems and on the other hand firmly narrative and grounded in a particular place.  

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 think that contests give you name recognition. And I don’t say that to put contest down. Rather, I think that winning, say, the Miller Williams Prize, gives your book some legs that help it on its journey. I entered several contests:  the Miller Williams Contest, the Backwaters Press contest, the Crab Orchard Review contest. At first, I really wanted to win one. I thought that I had to in order to get the book out. I thought that no one would read it otherwise.

But then, I started looking at alternatives, particularly presses that had open reading periods. Aldrich Press is a small press, and when I sent to them, I had no idea that Karen Kelsay would pick the book; and when she accepted it, I was a little nervous at first. Alrich is a print-on-demand press (like Dream Horse and many others), and I worried that it might be vanity publishing. After doing some research, I found that although it is small, Aldrich is a widely-respected publisher whose books have been reviewed in many journals. I am more than pleased with Aldrich. They’ve been amazing. I was involved with every aspect of the publishing process, right down to the font choice for the manuscript (it’s Goudy Old Style, by the way).

My advice? Read the market. Know the market. Send to places that publish books you like. I think that some poets have this idea that a contest is the only route. Contests are great (and lucrative, sometimes), but they’re not the only route by any stretch of the imagination. I’d keep an eye on open reading periods of small presses. Broaden your net; send to several places. Understand that winning a contest is a route to accolades, but not the only route to publication.

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

I really struggled with the architecture of Brackish. I didn’t know how I wanted the book to look. I knew that the book was about a place—a specific place—but I didn’t want it to be limited by its geography. Instead, I wanted the geography to enhance it. Two books really helped me to see the structure of Brackish:  Richard Hugo’s The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir and Jake Adam York’s A Murmuration of Starlings. Hugo’s poetry has a profound influence upon my own, and his book taught me that geography is in a large sense a psychic landscape. Charles Wright once said that “All forms of landscape are autobiographical,” and I agree wholly. So, the geography of Brackish is very much the geography of both the literal place (North Florida) and my mind (my conception of the place). The book begins with “How to Come of Age in a Mill Town” and ends with the image of a drowned boy in a riverbed. The journey is from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience. In that way, the landscape is secondary (but certainly not incidental).

Jake Adam York’s A Murmuration of Starlings includes a longish poems about Sun Ra. Jake had organized that long sequence so that each section of the poem had its own page, its own breathing room, and its own white space. The concluding poem in Brackish is a long poem entitled “North Florida:  An Autobiography.” I broke the poem into un-numbered sections and put them on separate pages in an attempt to capture the breathing white space that gives so much life to Jake’s poem, “At Sun Ra’s Grave.”

An aside:  I still miss Jake, an amazing poet whose work and presence gave life to the world. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

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

I was very involved with the design of Brackish. I had an idea in my head about what I wanted the book to look like. I’d originally laid the book out in Cambria font, but I didn’t like how that looked. Then, I switched it to Garamond and then to Perpetua. Finally, I settled on Goudy Old Style. Karen Kelsay indulged me on every change.

I chose the cover image. It’s by a South Georgia-based photographer, Steve Robinson. Though the cover looks like a painting, it’s actually a filtered photograph of a beach scene in Apalachicola, Florida. Steve is amazing. You can find more his work here.  

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?

A great many of the poems in Brackish were published in journals. Early on, I worried that if I didn’t have enough of the poems published, no press would consider the book. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that some publishers look at the little magazine market as a proving ground. So, in a sense, I did continue to send the poems out, even as I was shopping the manuscript—that is, even as I was submitting to contests and open reading periods. I didn’t worry about the majority of the poems being published as much as I wanted them published.

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?

Karen and I worked together on the manuscript. She did the layout, emailed a PDF proof to me, and I sent her back corrections. Since she lives in California and I live in Georgia, I worried that this kind of back and forth would get tedious. It didn’t. Karen is a consummate professional. She made any changes very quickly. I was quick to read my proofs, as well.

I did edit some of the poems, but overall, the book looks exactly as it did the day I sent Karen the manuscript. I didn’t want to drop a wholesale rewrite on the book after she’d accepted it. In fact, the contract for Aldrich Press asks that poets not completely rewrite the book. I think the only major change I made was to drop one of the poems (a very weak poem) from the second section of the manuscript.

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

Aldrich shipped my author’s copies, but they were slow in freight. The book appeared on Amazon and at Kelsay Books’ website before I actually had a copy. A writing student of mine got a copy before I did, and he posted a picture of the book to Facebook. I remember sitting in my office, staring at my book on my Facebook wall, and thinking that this had to be the most surreal moment of my writer’s life.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife had actually ordered a copy of Brackish from Amazon. She brought it to me later that same day. So, I purchased a copy of my own book before I even saw my author’s copies. It was an amazing experience. In many ways, I’ve been writing Brackish my whole life. To see the book in print finally was very much a cathartic experience.

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

Honestly, not much different. I’m still teaching, still writing, still fighting the good fight. I do feel that the book have given me a measure of credibility in the writing world. The Gulf Coast writers I call friends are a wonderful group, however, and never dismissed me before the book. It feels good, though, knowing that I’ve carved out my place.

I do find myself working hard to promote the book. I’m constantly emailing people and constantly calling folks trying to arrange readings. I update my website much more than I used to. I think that one thing the publication of Brackish taught me is that it’s definitely up to me to ensure that the book finds an audience. I work very hard at getting the work into the hands of appreciative readers.

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

I have my website, and I’ve asked several people to review the book. The Florida Book Review and Apalachee Review have published reviews of the book, both favorable. Several friends (both writer friends and non-writer friends) reviewed the book on Amazon.com. I’m active on the conference scene in the Southeast. I serve as the president of the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers, and at our conference in March of this year, I read from the book and sold several copies of it.

In addition, the town where I live—Tifton, Georgia—has an active farmer’s market. This past December, I was invited to sell and sign books at the annual holiday market sponsored by the Wiregrass Farmers Market. It may sound odd for a poet to be selling books at a farmer’s market, but let me tell you:  I sold a lot of books. People of all stripes were very kind, asking me questions about my writing and my past. These weren’t academics, mind you. These were people from all walks of life. Wiregrass Farmers Market draws in a wide variety of folks, from older country-type to young hipsters interested in sustainable living. Since my writing is concerned with natural environment, I think that selling books at a farmers market is incredibly appropriate.

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’s an interesting question. On the one hand, the book’s about my past. I make no apologies for writing autobiographical poetry. On the other hand, the book is about the environment of North Florida. Furthermore, in an oblique way, the book is also about music—the music I grew up with (classic rock and blues) as well as the music of the landscape, those syllable-twisting town-names in North Florida:  Apalachicola, Wewahitchka, Sopchoppy, names like that.

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

Take it slow and take it easy. Don’t be in a hurry to publish. Some young poets see publication as a route to a job. I find this a very troubling view of writing poetry.

Back when I was a PhD student at the University of Georgia in Athens, I was struggling to put together my dissertation, which wound up being a very early draft of Brackish. I remember asking my mentor and advisor, the poet Ed Pavlić, how I should go about writing a book of poetry. How, I wondered, does one put together an entire book? His answer still resonates:  “Line by line, man. Line by line.” Sage advice indeed.

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

The big news is that Snake Nation Press will be publishing an anthology that the poet Brent House and I are coediting, The Gulf Stream:  Poems of the Gulf Coast. The book should appear sometime this summer. I’m excited about the anthology. I’ve long wanted to edit a collection about the place that’s given me such inspiration over the years. Brent’s a wonderful co-editor, too. He has a keen editorial eye and a deep understanding of contemporary poetics.

I’ve continued to write new poems, as well, and I’m building a body of new work. My new poetry isn’t as autobiographical or place-focused as the writing I did before, so I’m interested to see what a new manuscript will look like.

I’m actually working on a novel now, tentatively titled A Stairway to the Sea. Since I teach a heavy 5/5 load of courses, I don’t have the energy to devote to a novel during the semesters, so I work on the book during the summertime, when I teach only one course. I’m probably 45,000 or so words into the book now, though I’m not sure how much of that is actually usable prose. I hope to finish a solid draft in summer 2013.

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

I’m going to quote a better poet than I’ll ever be. I think that poetry is a way of happening, a mouth.

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Jeff Newberry is the author of Brackish (Aldrich Press, 2012) and A Visible Sign (Finishing Line, 2008). With Brent House, he is the co-editor of The Gulf Stream:  Poems of the Gulf Coast (Snake Nation Press, forthcoming). Recently, his writing has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Sweet:  A Literary Confection, and Waccamaw:  A Journal of Contemporary Literature. He serves as the president of the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers. He teaches writing and literature at Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton, Georgia, where he advises Pegasus, a regional undergraduate literary magazine. Jeff lives in Georgia with his wife and son. Find him online at http://www.jeffnewberry.com or Tweet him at @NewberryJeff 

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#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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