Monday, June 17, 2013

#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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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

#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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