Will any of this change? Possibly, but I cannot predict what kind of outcome a potential change might result in, and there are certainly no easy solutions. Regardless of these issues, as publishers we have do whatever it takes to get our books in the hands of readers, and help create a competitive marketplace.
In a way I think writing is really a more fluid part of reading/thinking/living, which shouldn’t be as limited as it is by the fairly extreme expectations and rules our culture has about publication.
“I strive to incorporate the practice of meditation throughout the entire publishing process. Poetry and books are patient, waiting to be created and read, so we attempt to work and grow like a small but well-tended garden. We search for flowers. We try to subvert the hurry of everything around us. I don’t have a car, so when it’s time to deliver chapbooks, I walk on a trail to the post office and look at trees as I follow the creek that runs through our town.”
2017 was a whirlwind of a year for Paloma Press! And none of what we were able to undertake would have been possible without the help of the Filipino American community and the wider network of writers, artists, reviewers and booksellers, from the Bay Area, DC, Philly, Southern Cali, Luxembourg, New Zealand and the Philippines. In our case, it really took a village to launch our books.
Perhaps, in the longer term, automation and basic income will address the matter, but that’s a wee bit like looking forward to dancing a tango with a golden dinosaur at the end of the automation rainbow; bizarrely lovely to think about, unlikely to happen just yet. Right now, all I can ask is that people make time to read poetry well.
We’re not exempt just because we’re editors: if we’re going to ask for this type of work, we better be able to do this type of work. We have to know what it feels like to make it. It’s beyond us, but we’re not beyond it.
We have called it “small work” in the past, by which we mean, solely in relation to its size and not its content. To us, everything worthwhile should be able to fit in your back pocket.
The press is an extension of Beatlick News Poetry & Arts Newsletter, named “a gem of the underground press” at the height of its influence. For twenty-two years Joe was editor and book reviewer, I was columnist and publisher. Keeping the name and Mission Statement, I modeled Beatlick Press after Beatlick News in an endeavor to bring Joe’s only book to the light of day.
We hand-bind all of our books. The covers for our journals are made from 6-packs of local breweries. We’ll gather friends to help us, buy some beer and pizza, and spend a lot of time cutting boxes, and sewing our books.
Website Submission Guidelines Interview with Chelsea Tadeyeske, Founder and Editor-in-Chief How did pitymilk start? In late 2012, I finally decided to trust that I knew how to make things pretty…
I’m striving to reach milestones in contemporary Black lesbian writing by helping Black lesbian writers navigate the world of publishing—which marginalizes our contributions and stories.
I put a great deal of effort into solid craft production, but not in a way that is precious or seeks to hide itself. NewLights books are tactile. They are emphatically produced, emphatically physical. They smell like ink and paint.
Tangerine’s mission is very simple: to search out authentic voices and publish them, be they dead or alive, new or lost and forgotten. Talent is everywhere it seems, there’s no shortage of that. But original work is the key, a certain way of seeing things. We’re not after book-shaped mirrors.
The name came up out of discussions we had about the nature of publishing. It’s meant to reflect how a published work is brought to life, but simultaneously buried. With so many publishers completely uninterested in previously published work, a lot of amazing writing is left to rot after its brief moment of recognition.