No Free Lunch

Free Lunch is no more. Ron Offen's unique and noteworthy poetry journal quietly retired with the Fall issue (#42), due to the editor's health issues. Free Lunch was one of the small bright stars here in the midwest sky, and I was lucky enough to get a sampling of Ron Offen's very detailed feeback on some of my (rejected!) submissions over the last few issues. His comments were fair, detailed, and insightful, and it is a rare and encouraging thing to find an editor who has the time and grace to commit to such feedback. Best wishes to Ron Offen for better health, and thanks for his many gifts to writers.

Read more here: http://www.poetsfreelunch.org/index.htm
and here: http://chicagopoetry.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1304&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Resources for Poets

A blizzard of manuscripts have come to Cherry Pie Press in the last few months, a result (I think?) of the increasing readership for the nine chapbooks now in print, and of the unexpected and welcome publicity from a review in Prairie Schooner of Nan Sweet's chapbook Rotogravure, and finally the attentions of Poets & Writers in highlighting Cherry Pie in their recent articles on chapbook publishers.

Welcome, poets! I'm a little slow at responding to manuscripts because of the welcome flood (and also because of the demands of the non-poetry office job, taking up much of my mental powers and many of my weekends now as we wind through yet another corporate merger -- but hey I LOVE THAT JOB just in case my boss is reading). The range and quality of the poetry is wonderful to see. My process, as always, includes reading through a manuscript at least three times. If it retains spark and complexity after three readings, it's a serious candidate or, at minimum, receives a serious and detailed response, and whatever encouragement is possible through the venue of an email.

Of special note, poetry of extremely high quality has come in from exactly the type of poets Cherry Pie was meant for -- women in the midwest (or, stretching it a little, the west) who are excellent writers, with fresh viewpoints and use of language, active in their local poetry communities and in many cases giving back significantly to that community with their time and talents, and a little separated from the mainstream well-funded well-supported larger world of poetry in the city or poetry in the academy. I am encouraged, and not surprised at all, to note that some of the finest poetry I've seen in the recent flood comes from places like a feedstore owner in Nebraska, or a mother home-schooling her children when she's not out working the ranch. (Ladies, you know who you are -- please keep writing!) Poetry is essential, but there's a real life there too in the balance. Children or an office job or some other kind of ballast is frequently a very good thing.

Submissions have also come in from Chicago, Michigan, Missouri -- many of them compelling, surprising in the best way. Thank you all!

With only one or two chapbooks a year, I send out more rejections than acceptances, and wanted to highlight some resources for poets looking for encouragement and a way to keep up their daily obligations but still get some wider connection to poetry. One well-categorized and very useful resource is http://resources4poets.homestead.com/index.html, from Bernadette Geyer. It's a series of how-to guides and articles and recordings of readings that is easy to dip into or to take a long nosedive into, as time allows.

One more slot filled in the tool-belt, girls!

Chapbooks going to Poets House Showcase

The 2008 chapbooks from Cherry Pie Press are making their way to the annual Poets House Showcase. Work by Mary Ruth Donnelly, Niki Nymark, and Erin M. Bertram will be exhibited in the Showcase and then become part of the permanent collection.

Read more about Poets House and the Showcase exhibit here:
http://poetshouse.org/showcase.htm

Landing on both feet: Stacey Lynn Brown

I have watched from afar (well, not too far -- Brown lives and works about 5 miles from Cherry Pie Press) the unfolding of Stacey Lynn Brown's battle with small press publisher Cider Review Press after author and publisher moved to polar positions over differences regarding the production of the book. You can easily come up to speed by checking out Brown's blog (check the linked entry, and read backwards through the end of August 2007) and the counter opinion posted, surprisingly, on Poets and Writers (soon to be renamed Publishers and Publishers).

The story has a happy ending, of sorts -- Brown's book is being published by another press, and Cider Review has spiffed up their Terms and Conditions to clarify what authors may and may not talk about. (Huh?)

The real happy ending, though, is that Stacey Lynn Brown's evolving blog is a pleasure of clear writing and interesting opinions, and in addition to waiting for her book of poetry to hit the stands, I'm hoping and waiting for a collection of essays. Her blog, Ten Fingers Typing, moves to my "Blogs to watch" list (see right panel).

Rankovic's essay on Don Finkel

Catherine Rankovic, local essayist extraordinaire, has posted an interview she did with Don Finkel years ago. It is more than worth checking out -- go here to read it: http://ucollegeblog.blogspot.com/.

The essay is a tribute to Don, now one of St. Louis's lost treasures, and also an insightful and humbling portrayal of the arc of one great poet's career as the poetry publishing industry collapsed in the 1980s and left so many poets stranded, fading into "out of print" and with no publishing outlets available. Finkel's attitude toward life, his way of keeping focus on writing and on what mattered (the relationships around him), and his eternal good humor all provide good sustenance for any writer.

Rankovic has written a number of essays based on interviews with poets. It is a true pleasure to have this one posted online. She is precise, aware of the vast local and industrial background against which her subject matter is poised, and her eye for her subject matter is more accurate, and tender, than any camera.

To poets interested in publishing a chapbook --

Publishing a chapbook is very different from publishing poems in journals. With journals and magazines, the publication has a ready-made audience and your poem is introduced to that audience. With a chapbook, there is no audience but the one you already have in hand and the one you are willing to expand through your own efforts. Cherry Pie will do its best to help – send out review copies, send out announcements, place the book at the best independent bookstore in St. Louis (Left Bank Books). Ideally, your chapbook will benefit from prior and future Cherry Pie publications, sharing those existing audiences, and expanding that audience for other Cherry Pie authors. However, with chapbook marketing you – the author – are the bottom line.

Here are some questions to help you determine if you are ready to publish and support marketing of your chapbook. Don’t let the questions overwhelm you but do allow them to push you. The marketing of a chapbook has much more to do with author effort than it does with the quality of the poems. (There you have it, the dark but true underbelly of chapbook publishing.)

If you don’t already have an established audience or faithful reading friends, a chapbook gives you a good chance to build that, if you are willing. If you are not willing, then the chapbook will sit on a shelf and be read by very very few people. It will not be worth your effort, or mine.

If you are merely looking for the satisfaction of seeing a small collection of your poems nicely printed, please go ahead and do that yourself. If you think having a small press name on the book adds some mysterious air of legitimacy, then make one up. (I’m not being sarcastic – I applaud this approach. It will encourage you to regard your work more seriously, and that’s a good thing.) Your local copy shop or a good desktop printer can accomplish this cheaply and you will be in total control of the effort. Consider giving out copies free to all your friends. Consider giving it to strangers. You will gradually build an audience, and you will have a small collection of poems to be very proud of.

You don’t need me for that.

On the other hand . . . If you have read some of the poems from Cherry Pie authors, and you want to be associated in the reading public’s mind with those authors, and you feel your own work is equal to or better than their work, and you feel you have something to say or show about U.S. poetry that is bone and root part of the Midwest experience – its rivers, its cities, its world-blend of cultures and histories, its plains and its Ozark mountains that are more ancient and more worn and therefore smaller than the Rockies – then let’s talk.

The following questionnaire is intended to help you think through the reasons for and implications of publishing a chapbook. The answers you come up with are not for me, but for you. They will help you figure out if this is really what you want to pursue. And they will help you ensure your work, if it published as a chapbook, does get read.

AUTHOR CHAPBOOK MARKETING QUESTIONNAIRE

Title of chapbook: _________________________________________

What response does the title elicit? Would it make a reader want to pick up your chapbook and open it? Is the title about tangible things (objects, senses) or is it about an idea (to be pondered)? Is the title simple and memorable, or would an interested reader need to write it down to remember it? Have you checked Books In Print or Google for books or songs or anything with a similar title? Did that search turn up anything you don’t want to be associated with?

About you and the background you can bring to the effort of marketing your chapbook --

URL of any blog or website you might use for publicity:

Present occupation (your day-job):

Previous jobs:


Educational background (traditional or nontraditional):


Principal cities and states in which you have lived and in which you still find memories and personal relationships:


About your poetry and your work within the world of poetry --

YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO ANSWER ALL OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.
JUST ANSWER THOSE THAT YOU CAN, BUT DO THINK ABOUT ALL OF THEM.

Please list other books you have written, including publisher, year of publication, and type of book (i.e., poetry - specify book or chapbook, or fiction, how-to, essays, children’s book, biography, etc.). Include any anthologies your work was included in. Do any of these books share a potential audience with your poetry chapbook?

If you listed any books in the item above, describe what marketing was done by the publisher and by yourself. Tell if the book was adopted by a book club, reading circle, academic class, workshop.


Have you ever edited a publication? Have you ever served as a reader or on the board of a literary publication? (Literary journal, anthology, etc.)


Have you done community service work related to poetry? Poets in the schools, poetry workshop organizing, any volunteer or officer or board role in an organization supporting poetry, etc.

What local poetry groups do you participate in, and what is your role in each?

What local poets have you openly supported – by attending readings, buying their books, asking a local library branch to order their books, writing reviews for them or recommending their work to others?

List any reviews of your work, with place of publication, reviewer’s name:


List any poetry book or chapbook reviews you have written, with name/author of work reviewed, place and date of publication (web or print):


Publications (specify web or print) where your individual poems have previously appeared:



Poetry readings you have participated in within the last 3 years (place, date, solo or group reading):


Poetry readings you have helped organize within the last 10 years:


Honors, citations or prizes you have received related to poetry:


Why did you decide to collect your poems in this chapbook instead of printing individual poems in a wide array of web or print journals? Or instead of putting together a full-length poetry book? Or instead of making a website or blog where you could post all your poems?


What is the theme of your chapbook or your mechanism for ordering the poems?


Are there groups, other than other poets, to which your book would have particular appeal?


How is your chapbook unique?


With which published poets do you feel your work has resonance? (A different way to state this is, If you like to read poet X then you will also probably like to read my work.)


As a poet, what are your strengths?


Does your chapbook have something in common with other Cherry Pie chapbooks? Does it solidify or does it extend (no wrong answers here, folks) the kind of poetry Cherry Pie has published?


Have you investigated other chapbook publishers (how many?), or self-publishing?


About your ability and willingness to market your work --
Are there any well-known people (locally) who should see an advance copy of your manuscript for purposes of giving a pre-publication promotional quote? If so, list their names, their contact information, and describe their relationship to you and/or the book. Indicate whether you think it would be more effective for Cherry Pie or for you personally to contact each one.


Please list any local or specialized media that should receive review copies of your finished chapbook. Indicate if you have a professional relationship, or previous reviews, with a reviewer or editor at the publication.


Please write a brief biographical sketch appropriate for the general news media and to be used on press releases.


Do you regularly attend any major conventions or conferences related to poetry, writing, academic studies, or any subject area related to your chapbook?


Have you read any of the previous chapbooks from Cherry Pie Press? What could you offer in terms of publicity for your own chapbook that would help get previous Cherry Pie chapbooks into the hands of new readers? What might you expect other Cherry Pie authors to do for you?


What do you expect your publisher to do in publicizing your chapbook?


Thank you!

Review -- In Mi'kmaq Country

In Mi'kmaq Country: Selected Poems & Stories is a new book by Alice M. Azure. I was delighted to be gifted a review copy from Alice, who is a solid and enlightening presence in two of the local writing groups I participate in.

Alice Azure's poems have previously appeared in publications such as Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. I'm excited to see her work now collected in her own book.

I'll excerpt two poems that I think convey the flavor and some of the range in her book.

Northwoods Haiku

Spring was cold that year,
the trillium wouldn't open.
Then you came to me.

Gisoolg

...is a verb, an action. When we say "Gisoolg," it means that you have been created, and you are being created. Stephen Augustine, Mi'kmaq Elder

listen
listen
a voice
pulses above
above in the stars
they pulse
clear
like the voice
early early
this winter day
listen listen
Paradise pulses
participates
Paradise participates
at times
times
times like this
participates
with thee
thee
listen
thee listen
Paradise participates
pulses
for thee
listen listen listen
thee listen
participates
with thee

The book is beautifully produced by Albatross Press, with a striking woodcut by the author as the cover image. It is available locally from Left Bank Books, which is always glad to handle mail orders, and is also available from the author (speelya@aol.com).

Poetry chapbook publishers and contests

Publishing your poetry with Cherry Pie, or any other chapbook publisher, is fraught with the usual limitations. What if you don't fit the basic M.O. of the press? For Cherry Pie, you need to be a woman and have some link to the midwestern states. What if you write great poetry but I (no, say it's not true!) don't like it? Or what if I love it but (it happens) your style is simply not what I can produce and promote, given the synergy I'm trying to develop among the Cherry Pie publications? (For example, if you're a language poet or a visual poet, I can't do you justice.) What if your work isn't suited for a chapbook, but would work better as a traditional poetry book, and you just haven't figured that out yet? What if I simply can't publish everyone who's good? And I can't -- I only print about two chapbooks a year.

There are a hundred reasons to check out other poetry chapbook possibilities. Here are some starting points.

http://www.chapbookfinder.com/publishers.html lists quite a few chapbook publishers and their websites. Notice that many of these have a clear emphasis.

http://www.everywritersresource.com/chapbooks.html Another list, with some overlap of course.

Some chapbook publishers of note:

Finishing Line Press has its long-standing New Womens Voices series at http://www.finishinglinepress.com/newwomensvoices.htm

Concrete Wolf produces astoundingly beautiful chapbooks. Like many chapbook publishers, they are looking for chapbooks cohering around some central theme; check their submission guidelines. http://www.concretewolf.com/

Kristy Bowen's Dancing Girl Press is definitely something to look at. Kristy does the production work herself, specializing in hand-crafted chapbooks, so you'll find beautiful and unique covers, nice layouts, but perhaps spotty stapling and trimming. The work she publishes is excellent, fresh, frequently amazing, and all of it is worth reading. http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/. Spend some time wandering through her websites -- she is innovative and energetic and has lots of stuff going on. She's recently set up a studio space (this is in Chicago) and is apparently using it for workshops and sessions on both writing and producing chapbooks. Definitely someone to watch.

If you compare these three chapbook publishers, and Cherry Pie, you'll note we have obvious and unique leanings toward certain types of poetry, certain audiences. We all differ in what kind of marketing support we provide to an author. Look for a publisher who fits what you want to do for and with your own work. Look also for what you are offering the publisher. (If that one's over your head, skip down and read Chris Hamilton-Emery's article from Salt.)

Think of a chapbook as one more way to get your poems out into the world. A chapbook is not instead of a book or other publication. A chapbook is something unique, offering a special format and different audience and marketing possibilities. The chapbook you publish today will follow you forever. I picked up Frannie Lindsay's recent book, Lamb, mostly because I had read an obscure chapbook she'd published with Pikestaff Press over 25 years ago. You've probably never heard of Pikestaff but the founders, Bob Sutherland and Jim Scrimgeour, are friends from far back and provided me with a vision and example of poetry as a moral and creative force, long before I could have imagined such a possibility on my own. (http://www.pikestaffpress.com/) So I tend to pay attention when I see a name that has passed their scrutiny. Evidently Perugia Press, who published Lamb, agrees, and I'm glad. I read many of Perugia's titles (always remarkable) but might not have tried Lamb if I hadn't remembered that older chapbook.

Here are some thoughts on how to pick a publisher, how to figure out if a chapbook is really what you want, and general good advice on writing and getting published:

http://www.happenstancepress.com/Want%20your%20pamphlet%20published.htm Happenstance is a Scottish chapbook publisher with a loaded website. (The graphics are simple and wonderful!) Follow the link above to the document called "Bluffer's Guide" for wise and helpful advice. Also well worth the read (but maybe not worth the download time -- you'll need to be patient if you want to see this one) is the DO's AND DONT'S guide.

Salt Publishing has a great article on publishing. This is an excerpt from Chris Hamilton-Emery's book, 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: The Salt Guide to Getting and Staying Published. http://www.saltpublishing.com/info/submissions.htm. It's an excellent, witty and humbling article that any poet wanting to publish anywhere, in any format, needs to read. The language here is direct and blunt (and entertaining) about the truths of poetry in the marketplace, and what you as a writer can do to influence that. And it talks forthrightly about the importance of reading and reviewing. (How many new poetry books / chapbooks have you written reviews for lately? Even on Amazon? Come on, 'fess up...) Much to ponder here. The complete book is available through the website. (Keep in mind that due to our weak dollar, the price of 10.99 pounds will translate to a bit more than 10.99 U.S. dollars.)

For many writers, the do-it-yourself route is an excellent option. You control the production and the marketing. The chapbook can be elegant or simple. You have books in hand to give away or sell at poetry readings. You can market them through local bookstores too, or via a blog or website. (But poetry readings will always be the best and main place to sell or distribute your work.) Here's an entry point into the do-it-yourself and micropress world of blogs and website information: http://diypublishing.blogspot.com/.

Chapbooks are only one way to print and distribute your work -- don't forget broadsides, bookmarks, postcards. The possibilities are endless. A small item with a sample poem and contact information is inexpensive, useful, and generous to the reader.

Postcard poems

Sometimes it's lonely out there. Oh heck, most of the time it's lonely. Of late I've been involved in some "poetry postcard" projects that set things back in balance. I have a list of names -- bless the organizers of this thing, Lana Hechtman Ayers and Paul Nelson -- and every week I write a quick poem on the back of a postcard and send it off to the next name on the list. Postcard poems are intended to be written quickly, not pored over, not edited -- hey, what's outside your window right this minute? Write it down!

And every week I receive, from some poet I don't know, a lovely poem on a postcard. Postcards range from beautiful to whacky, from commercial to fully hand-fashioned with scissors and glue. Poems range from the silly to the sublime, and are sometimes a response to a picture or poem received. A great idea, and in this lonely world of poetry this effort guarantees that for every poem written there is at least one reader.

Here's one of mine, with that thought in mind, and the postcard I sent it off on was a computer print of a nebula with red and blue and black gases from a photo found at the NASA website.

Audience of One

Go fling yourself, blue nebula,
into the red and black spin of the universe.
Go on, nobody you know is watching.
Follow the laws of your own
physics, the chemical command
you've no choice in.
From the inside, you must feel
so woozy, gases going in all directions.
Galaxies away from you, I see
who you were, who I
might be, if I stare
hard enough
at your vast
and passing
art.

Putting your poems in a chapbook and passing them out to strangers is often like that, I think. The effect is immense and tiny at the same time. Awesome.