Carmen Gimenez Smith

Carmen Gimenez Smith was born in New York City to parents who came to the States from South America. She grew up in California and studied English at San Jose State University and creative writing at the University of Iowa. She teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and is the publisher of Noemi Press which publishes poetry and fiction chapbooks. She live in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband Evan Lavender-Smith and their two children.



Web site:
www.noemipress.org

1) What projects are you currently on?

Noemi Press is publishing a whole mess o'books:
HOPE AND ANCHOR by Joshua Corey
CLOSED HISTORIES by Sara Veglahn
A MAN OF IDEAS AND OTHER STORIES by David Galef
THE EVENING PAPERS by Matthew Kirby
CAMERA OBSCURA by Rebecca Bednarz

We'll be publishing full-length books in the future.

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

Each book we do is a lesson in what not to do the next time. There are so many variables to each project, problems to solve. I think the most important thing I've learned is to try and anticipate as much as possible and to not be surprised when things go wrong.

Distribution is also an issue. At the same time, the poets and writers we publish do a good job of promoting their work so we're blessed that way.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

Again I wish I could do more to promote the work of the writers we publish. Overall though I am thrilled to have worked with each of the writers we've had the chance to work with.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

I am pretty crazy about Sina Queyras, Larissa Szporluk. I would love to do something with Mallarme's UN COUP DE DES but I don't know what.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

My husband designs the website and he's a great designer. We work with lots of different people on the covers but the text design is all done by a really fabulous designer named Peggy Chapman. We like to make beautiful objects so we're pretty fussy about what we put in the world, design wise.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

We were just featured in POETS AND WRITERS and one of our titles got reviewed in RAIN TAXI. I like that the writers we publish are happy with the books we make and that recognition is the most important.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

We'd like to be publishing more full-length books and also more collaborative books a la Granary Books. We would also like to publish more fiction.

8) What are some of your other interests?

If only.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

That's a tough question. I love so many poems for vastly different reasons. DESCENT OF ALETTE keeps coming to me as an answer. That book-length project is thrilling right out of the gate. It's cinematic and urgent. I love it.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

LEMON HOUND by Sina Queyras PIONNERS OF LIGHT AND MOTION by Susan Briante. I like the way she's distilled the lyric impulse, the way she's telling a story in fragments.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

Making a manuscript into a book and introducing the work of really thrilling writers to the world.

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Risks are good.

Shanna Compton

Shanna Compton's books include of For Girls (& Others), Down Spooky, and GAMERS, as well as several chapbooks. She is the founding editor of the DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative, the former editor of LIT at the New School, and recently ended a long stint as Associate Publisher/Editor/Director of Publicity at Soft Skull Press in Brooklyn, out of which she has spun the new poetry-only imprint, Bloof Books. She was born in Texas, was educated at the Unversity of Texas and the New School. After a dozen years in Brooklyn, she and her husband moved to a small town in Central New Jersey last January.

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

Bloof has just released Jennifer L. Knox's second book Drunk by Noon, reissued her first book (after Soft Skull sold out of the first printing) A Gringo Like Me, and published my own second book of poems, For Girls (& Others). So I'm sending out review copies, querying potential reviewers, alerting the bookstores, stuff like that, as well as promoting (and performing in sometimes) the readings related to the book launches.

This week I'm planning to sit down and type up my editorial comments for Danielle Pafunda, for her forthcoming Bloof book My Zorba, which we'll release in the spring. Then we'll work together on the cover design. I'm also booking a tour of the Midwest for the Jen, Danielle & myself.

Lessee, what else? I've been sort of neglecting the DIY blog, but am planning to publish some new reviews there soon, and figure out a way to set up an automated form for press announcements--I just can't handle them all, even with Sandra Simonds and Jess Rowan on board as coeditors. (The abundance is wonderful; I'm not complaining.) I'm also helping (designing, offering editorial suggestions, maybe doing some illustrations) Danielle with a feature for the group blog Delirious Hem, for which she's interviewed Arielle Greenberg on the concept of the gurlesque. Oh, and I have a freelance job to go to three days a week as well, at which I write and publish scintillating copy about fall's poshest handbags & shoes. Luckily, that job pays.

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

Time. I get really excited about new projects and (as you can see from the list above) things can pile up on me if I'm not careful. But I really wouldn't have it any other way. I love making books--whether by writing them, editing them, publishing them, or hand sewing them. I find it all very fulfilling.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

I started out working at Random House. Didn't enjoy that, but I don't regret it. I learned a lot, and what I found repellent about "the industry" has informed all my current theories and obsessions about small-scale publishing, and how smaller is better w/r/t poetry.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

I really wanted to publish Anne Boyer at Bloof. Luckily, she already has a publisher (Coffee House) and they're working on her book (The Romance of Happy Workers) right now. I would have liked to have published Alice Notley or Bernadette Meyer in LIT, but never got around to asking them.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

I build all the websites myself, because I like messing around with html and Dreamweaver. But my web-design skill set is very much acquired on a need-to-know basis, and I get plenty of help from online tutorials and Dreamweaver for Dummies.

Charlie Orr (my best friend and awesome graphic designer) did the covers for Jennifer L. Knox's two books, as well as several for Soft Skull. (He also works for presses like Penguin and Top Shelf comics, etc.) He's a painter, and works in advertising, and is indulgent about our small-to-nonexisting budgets. We enjoy working together. Sometimes I take the photographs for some of his other design projects.

I do some of the cover designs myself, too. I did the design for For Girls (& Others), several Soft Skull books, and I do the interior design for all the Bloof books and most of the Soft Skull books I edited as well. When a staff is small, each person on the team tends to wear several hats. I also did the cover for Bruce Covey's Elaspsing Speedway Organism for No Tell Books. It's just something I really enjoy doing--the typesetting and design--and of course it saves money not having to pay someone else. I learned Quark and basic layout stuff working on fashion catalogs, actually. It's come in very handy.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

Jane, a poetry memoir by Maggie Nelson I edited for Soft Skull, won a Pen Award, and that was pretty cool, but the recognition really belongs to her.

Jennifer gave me a customized bowling trophy last week at her book launch party, plus some free hot wings. That's about as much as I could ask for. It's great when the books sell too, of course. Please feel free to "recognize" my efforts by buying them!
More seriously, being asked to do interviews like this one is gratifying, and I'm sometimes invited to teach or talk about small press publishing or write essays about it--I really like doing all of those things and it's always nice to be asked.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

Bloof has just started, but I'm planning to keep it small and focused. Four books a year, max. I want to be able to concentrate on the books in the way each deserves--that's the most important difference between industrial and small-scale publishing.

8) What are some of your other interests?

Photography, cooking, film (watching them, though I'd love to make one too). Since I've gotten out of the city, I'm getting into more outdoor stuff like hiking and kayaking. Reading, obviously. I like to travel, especially road trips.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

Oh, this is too hard. I don’t have a favorite color, food, or type of music. When it comes to poetry, I tend to read a lot of different kinds of things. I guess my tastes learn mostly toward the “experimental/innovative/post-avant,” but I also seek out other kinds of work. I think reading ruts can be just as damaging as certain ingrained habits of writing, so its important to remain open, to listen and look around.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

Alma, or the Dead Women by Alice Notley. It just knocked me for a loop.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

To know the books are being read. Getting to hear/read a reader’s response in a review, on a blog, or after a performance is a bonus.

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Forget about the recipe. Enjoy the process.

Elizabeth Treadwell

Elizabeth Treadwell was born in Oakland, California (although her maternal line is Oklahoman), and lives there now with her husband and their children. She is a graduate of Berkeley High School, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State, where she got MFA'd. Her essay on studying with Paula Gunn Allen at Berkeley will appear in Women Poets on Mentorships: Efforts & Affections (Iowa UP, 2008).

Treadwell is the author of seven books including the recent Birds & Fancies (Shearsman Books) and the forthcoming Wardolly (Chax Press). She is also the author of six chapbooks including The Graces (Dusie, 2006). She is currently working on a long poem of North American history centered round the figure of Pocahontas and titled Virginia or the mud-flap girl.

While living in Venice, California in 1993, Treadwell started a zine called Stilts which morphed later into Outlet magazine and Double Lucy Books, which she edited and published from 1997-2002, with the help of Sarah Anne Cox, Grace Lovelace, and Carol Treadwell. In 2000 she began working as director of Small Press Traffic in San Francisco and in that capacity in 2005 founded the journal Traffic, which is an extension and expansion of the organization's long-running newsletter. Her latest editorial project, thimble, is due to begin sometime in 2008.

She has a semi-retired blog and a working website.

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

I've left the completion -- the 4 -- of Traffic #3/4 in the fabulous hands of Dana Teen Lomax, who is the interim director of Small Press Traffic (SPT) while I'm on leave; it includes a paper by Joel Nickels on Laura Riding's critique of modernism and her utopian suggestions. I look foward to doing more Traffics when I'm back at work.

It might be a bit early yet to talk about my new project, but -- it's called thimble, and it will engage with writing by women as folk traditional, in the sense of cultural survival(s).

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

Social awkwardness.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

No, not really.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

I'm sorry to have missed the chance to blog it out with our Miz Gertrude Stein.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

I clunked around in the early days to build a site for Outlet/DLB, and I did all the print design for those and Stilts, with artist and photographer friends (and relations) contributing imagery--and some 'found' imagery, mostly from the old Urban Ore in Berkeley (when it was across the street from SPD). Nowadays Traffic is professionally done -- and I choose the cover art. For the first issue I wandered the studios of the California College of the Arts (where SPT is housed) and found some work, left a note, and the maker of said work agreed. For the second issue the image was by poet/artist Yedda Morrison, whom I also interviewed for the issue.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

For me the very best thing has been being told by several younger poet/publishers that Outlet/DLB was an inspiration.
& I sure liked what Sina Queyras said about Traffic.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

I'm not sure but I can't help myself so no doubt it'll be something. Maybe a micropress.

8) What are some of your other interests?

Hanging out with my husband and our dear kids; the neighborhood trees and creatures; our local relatives and friends. I'm thankful.
And walking and drawing are grand; the internet both a doggle and a boon.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

Stein's "Patriarchal Poetry" is often timely, and very witty.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

I like Hanksville, Native American Storytellers Online, and would also recommend Ella Cara Deloria's book Waterlily, which my sister the novelist Carol Treadwell wrote about in the context of Stein and Cather, in Traffic #2. (She was also a contemporary -- and colleague -- of Zora Neale Hurston.) In a bossy mood, I'd also say "ev'ry American" ought to read Paula Gunn Allen's biography of Pocahontas in order to realize a deeper sense of "what's happening."

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

First, community. For example, when I started Stilts I had an opportunity to write to Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, whose poems and essays had been (& remain) important to me; her warmth was encouraging and her work ran in several issues, of Stilts and Outlet. She also sent me homemade paper dolls. Second, finding work that truly astounds me, work that brimfully inhabits its idiosyncratic sensibility and information. "Oh hey, I didn't quite know that, yknow" -- that's the feeling I want from poetry. News some call it. It's a treat and a gift. Of course having said that, there are about a thousand other things I crave from poetry as well, like the limitless echoing comfort of a true folk song.

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Whatever's in the fridge.

Arielle Greenberg

Arielle Greenberg was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1972 and raised in upstate New York. She attended SUNY Purchase where she received a BA in drama studies and Syracuse University for her MFA in poetry and a certificate of advanced studies in women's studies. She is the author of two collections of poetry (Given and My Kafka Century) and a cultural studies/composition reader (Youth Subcultures) and several forthcoming anthologies on women and poetry: Women Poets on Mentorship, co-edited with Rachel Zucker (Iowa, 2008); Gurlesqe, co-edited with Lara Glenum (Saturnalia, 2010); and an anthology of contemporary poetry for teenage girls co-edited with Becca Klaver.

In the early 90s, she was the editor of the pop culture/riot grrl zine William Wants A Doll; she is currently one of the co-editors of the poetry journal Court Green and the poetry editor of the literary magazine Black Clock and is a former editorial board member at How2: an online journal of innovative women's poetics. She lives in Evanston, IL with her husband and their homebirthed daughter and is expecting a son in early 2008.

Visit her web site for more information.

She is the owner and moderator of the private poet-moms listserv and has a forthcoming blog on personal style.

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

A book, co-edited with Rachel Zucker, Women Poets on Mentorships: Efforts & Affections, is in its final production stages and is forthcoming from Iowa in 2008. Rachel and I are also in the midst of writing a book-length lyric essay on homebirth. I have two other co-edited anthologies in the works--see my bio above. And I'm editor at two literary magazines (again, see bio) and at work on two collections of my own poetry. I'm also the founder and moderator of the poet-moms listserv.

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

Probably just time management. It's hard to balance all these projects with my full-time academic job and my family and my own writing, but like to keep busy. Sadly, my own writing often comes last, so I do feel like the editing projects take over some of the time I could devote to my own writing.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

Not really. Publishing the textbook was a huge amount of effort for what has thus far been little reward in some ways--the book was restructured several times over several years in the editorial process--but I'm still proud of it and glad it's out.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

Actually, my problem is keeping up with new poets so I can keep asking new poets for work! Most of the poets I've loved and asked for work have been responsive and generous.

I have yet to get in contact with Russell Atkins, a harder-to-reach Ohio poet. Since he takes a little extra effort, I've yet to reach him. I hope to. I love his work.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

A student at a school where I used to teach designed my website, and he did a lovely job, but I have no idea how to update it, and as such, it's been woefully neglected for years. This is one thing that's really fallen by the wayside, and I'm embarrassed about it. It's something on my to-do list I never quite get to.

I have frequently collaborated with my sister, D'vora Greenberg, who is a visual artist, on my book covers.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

Poems from Court Green have been chosen for Best American Poetry, for which we are very proud. My listserv spawned a print anthology, Not for Mothers Only, edited by Catherine Wagner and Rebecca Wolff, and I'm proud of that, too.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

I hope to still be working on feminist-driven poetry projects and editing at literary magazines as well.

8) What are some of your other interests?

Film, the vegetarian and organic food movements, homebirth activism, style and design.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

I can never answer this. I like far too many poems.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

Jean Valentine's selected, Door in the Mountain. She is a visionary, and this recent book (which won the National Book Award) shows how she's stuck with her vision for her long career. She is also a wonderful human being, and proof that a poet can be a nice, good person.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being poetry publisher/editor?

Discovering new talent. I am always looking for the hereto-unknown poet who will knock my socks off. I also love getting feedback about individual poems I publish, which happens rarely!

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Season to taste.

Deborah Ager

A Maryland native, Deborah Ager started 32 Poems in 2003. Her goal was to: create a magazine that offered 100% poetry 100% of the time, manage a financially self-sustaining artistic enterprise, and offer a magazine small enough to fit into a satchel, purse or, if you are good with origami, a pocket. 32 Poems, as you may guess, publishes 64 poems per year.

Her poetry collection, Midnight Voices, is forthcoming from WordTech. Poems from the collection have appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Tigertail: A South Florida Anthology, The Georgia Review, New Letters, New England Review, and the Writing Poems textbook.

She received the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Casa Libre en la Solana, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her education includes an M.F.A. from the University of Florida and a B.A. from the University of Maryland. Stop by her web site for more information.

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently working on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

I’m promoting a reading series called Once in Awhile. I’m also preparing for a Washington Independent Writer’s panel that will take place in November. I’m also in the early stages of planning for a panel for the fiction writer grad students at American University. The fall issue of 32 Poems (vol. 5 no. 2)is also in the works.

In between, I’m writing new poems and finalizing the manuscript of Midnight Voices (WordTech, 2009). I’ve also organized a strange and probably great event – a cross-promotional reading and musical performance, so to speak, with 32 Poems and the D.C. band The Caribbean. We liked their music and we thought it would be a great idea, doing something that burst the usual idea of what a poetry event might be. It’s at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.

One project I’d like to promote more is the “Memorize a Poem” Month I started this year.

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

Always the next issue.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

Nope. I’ve been happy with how our plans worked out.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

Elizabeth Bishop. Our people are in conversation with her people.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

We have total control over the design elements of the 32 Poems website and magazine. David Elfving allowed us to use a template he created. I knew his design is what I wanted in terms of clarity and simplicity. That said, our website design is now very 2003. We’ll have to update soon.

The cover art is provided by Dirk Fowler, who designs rock posters for Jeff Tweedy/Wilco, Loretta Lynn, Modest Mouse, and others. The inside of 32 Poems is laid out and designed by Rikki Campbell. Scott at Main Street Rag Press helped 32 Poems improve its look with perfect binding while still keeping the cost reasonable.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

Poems from 32 Poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets 2005, and Best New Poets 2006. We’ve also had poems appear on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. We also won the Nobel Prize, but we try to keep that under wraps.

We’re in libraries at Yale, Brown, Wisconsin, The New York Public Library, a few others. It’s exciting.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

More libraries, more readers. More volunteers organizing readings in other distant cities. More poems.

8) What are some of your other interests?

I own a company, Click Wisdom, that helps organizations find potential customers, or vice versa, through search engine optimization and marketing (http://www.clickwisdom.com). I’ve worked in Internet marketing, and it’s challenging, creative, ever changing; I really like it. I enjoy pilates, yoga, meditation, walking, and cooking with whole foods.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

Today, my favorite poem is “Bayonet” by Anne Sexton. The first stanza has an energetic force that pulls me in to read more.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

The No Tell Motel magazine comes to mind first. I’ve spent a bit of time there reading through the archives. They have catholic taste, and I admire that. It’s something we try to achieve at 32 Poems.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

Most editors say it’s discovering new work by new writers. Well, I agree. Meeting new people is exciting, too. I enjoy connecting with the writers I’ve met at AWP and when they come through town for readings.

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

The ingredients don’t matter much. It’s all about your choice of pan, and precisely when you take it out of the oven.

Daniela Gioseffi

Daniela Gioseffi is an American Book Award winning author of fourteen books of poetry and prose from major and university presses. Her first book of poems, Eggs in the Lake, contained poems which won her a New York State Council for the Arts grant in poetry, and was published by BOA Editions: Rochester, NY. Her second and third collections, Word Wounds and Water Flowers, and Going On were published by VIA Folios@ Purdue U, and her next, 2002, was an e-book from Rattappallax Press: NY, titled Symbiosis.

Daniela is editor/publisher of www.PoetsUSA.com --an archive of contemporary poetry and graphics. Her renowned anthology, WOMEN ON WAR: INTERNATIONAL WRITINGS, prose and poetry, (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) was reissued in a new edition by The Feminist Press, at the City University of NY, 2003. She has given hundreds of readings and talks throughout the United States and Europe and been heard on NPR and the BBC among many radio and television stations. Her first novel, a feminist satire, The Great American Belly (Doubleday/Dell:NY & New English Library: London, 1979) was optioned for a screenplay by Michael Christofer, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, for Warner Bros. She has taught Creative Writing and World Literature at various institutions around the Metropolitan area, Gioseffi. She published ON PREJUDICE: A Global Perspective (Anchor/Doubleday, 1993) with a fifty page introduction by the author and annotations on selections from world literature of poetry and prose. She won the Pen Syndicated Fiction Award in 1990, for her short story, “Daffodil Dollars,” aired on the Sound of Words, NPR. The story is included in her prize winning collection of short stories: In Bed with the Exotic Enemy, Avisson Books, Greensboro NC 1995. Her fiction appears in Kaleidoscope: Stories of the American Experience, Oxford University Press, and in many anthologies from other major presses, i.e. Viking, Harper Collins, Faber & Faber, Penguin. Professor Gioseffi has won a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD from The Association of Italian American Educators. Her verse has been etched in marble on a wall of PENN Station, near that of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and William Carlos Williams. In 2006, she appeared on THE POET AND THE POEM, a nationally syndicated radio show produced by The Library of Congress and The National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her latest book, 2006, is BLOOD AUTUMN, published at The Calandra Institute at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is a retired professor who lives and writes in Brooklyn Heights. She is the editor/publisher and webmaster for www.PoetsUSA.com which incorporates www.ItalianAmericanWriters.com/, Wise Womens’Web, and www.NJPoets.com/, as well as her own website www.Gioseffi.com/

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).

A major yearly project of mine is the overseeing the publication of a bilingual book of poetry. I am the founder of The Bordighera Annual Poetry Prize for $2,000 and bilingual book publication of poetry in English by an American of Italian decent. The book is translated into Italian by a native Italian writer, and published each year with a celebration, reception and reading in New York City, usually at Poets House. So far we’ve published 10 books in the series, The latest two are Water Under the Sun by Grace Cavalieri, 2006, translated by Maria Enrico and The Alchemy of Grief by Emily Ferrara, 2007, translated by Sabine Pascarelli of Florence. I administrate the prize. Judging which book should win is very difficult each year, because there were at least 20 manuscripts out of the many that come in that could qualify for publication, but only one can be chosen, and it is all done very anonymously and fairly.

As for myself, I’ve just finished a new novel titled WILD NIGHTS, The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson based on new research about the poet. Also, I’m always writing new poems, and refurbishing my websites. I edit five websites incorporated under one URL title, www.PoetsUSA.com. Then, too, I am always reviewing books and have reviewed at least seven new books this year.

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

The biggest challenge I’ve faced as a publisher and editor is narrowing down to the work that I have the time to publish and edit. I am also webmaster for my websites and maintaing and building the sites is very time consuming, but I’ve helped to minimize the work by using templates.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

I only regret that I do not have more time to publish more, but I need time to write myself. Sometimes, I feel it would be easier just to concentrate on my own writing than to work at publishing others.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

I’ve been lucky enough to have the poets I admire most appear on my website, Galway Kinnell, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Meena Alexander, David Yezzi, Grace Paley most of all. I can’t think of anyone else I’d like to have appear on my website. Perhaps, Robert Hass would be really good to have. Also, I am planning to put up some poems by Sapphire and an interview with her that I’ve been transcribing.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

Thea, at TK Multimedia has helped with my web design and maintenance She a good designer and can be found on the internet at www.TKMultimedia.com. We designed the site together, and she taught me how to maintain it. Thea has also designed the book covers for my two latest books of poems and collection of stories. I feel she does a wonderful job and I’ve recommended her to friends like Rochelle Ratner and Stephen Masimilla, Also, Juanita Torrence Thompson all of whom have sites on the net that they are happy with. In future, I will be adding audio as soon as I have time. I do not care for flash graphics on a literary site. The attention should stay on the words. Or, at least, that is my feeling, but audio files are good for poetry.

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

When I began the publication of Wise Women’s Web, the initial division of my website, now a part of www.PoetsUSA.com, I designed and built it myself with a grant from The Thanks Be To Grandmother Winifred Foundation. The first issue was financed by that $1,800 grant award. I did it completely by myself with no help from TK Multimedia. : It has since been
redesigned by TKMultimedia and incorporated into www.PoetsUSA.com, but initially it won BEST OF THE WEB 1998 Award and was featured as one of the best literary sites in an article in Poets & Writers Magazine. That was rewarding, indeed, as it was such hard work for me to learn to build and design a website. As editor of two major anthologies, WOMEN ON WAR; INTERNATIONAL WRITINGS, and ON PREJUDICE A GLOBAL
PERSPECTIVE, I won an American Book Award, 1990 and a grant award from The Ploughshares Fund, a World Peace Organization. Also, this year www.PoetsUSA.com was chosen as a favorite literary website, 2007, by PEN's Membership Forum. Both books were presented in programs at the United Nations. Also, this year, for my new and selected poems titled BLOOD AUTUMN, I won the 2007 John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

I’m 66 years old and in five years, I’ll be 71 years old. I hope to be doing the same things I’m doing today and to continue with editing my websites. I plan to complete editing an new anthology of poems about the Brooklyn Bridge this year as well. I live near the bridge and it has fascinated me as the 8th wonder of the world. The drama with which it was built is fascinating and it is a beautiful piece of architecture, old world granite and new world steel. “Harp and altar of the fury fused…” as Hart Crane said. I created the First Brooklyn Bridge Poetrty Walk with a grant from The New York State Council for the Arts in 1972, with David Amram as Pied Piper. Poets House took up doing a walk every year, but has not credited me with the idea, even though I am credited with it in many sources, including Richard Haw’s book, A Cultural History of the Brooklyn Bridge which talks about my event in 1972 and quotes my poem about The Bridge. I won a grant in multimedia poetry that allowed me to create it.

8) What are some of your other interests?

I started my career as an intern television journalist on WSLA-TV in Selma Alabama during the Freedom Rides. I was menaced and abused by the KKK for my work as a Civil Rights activist. I’ve been an anti-nuclear activist and peace activist for many years. My second career was as a classical actress with The National Players, acting in Shakespearean plays and other classic dramas. I played with Anne Revere in Brecht’s “Mother Courage” and Helen Hayes in “Good Morning Miss Dove.” I was a professional Equity Card carrying actress for some years. I’ve been a dancer and a professional jazz-singer. I toured the country with my multimedia poetry and dance celebration titled The Birth Dance of Earth for which I composed the music on five tracks with a grant from the ABZ Foundation. I also enjoy painting and drawing portraits of friends and family. I’ve specialized in painting wild flowers for awhile. I’ve worked in pastels, oils and acrylics, and some of my paintings have been in gallery shows. I performed The Birth Dance of Earth; A Celebration of Women and the Earth for the Brooklyn Museum Show which included the famous work of Judy Chicago, “The Dinner Party.” We were all part of a feminist arts show in about 1978 or so at the famous Brooklyn Museum of Art.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

My favorite poem, I’d have a great deal of trouble naming. There are so many I like. “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman is still a favorite of mine. It was an epiphany when I was 18 years old. I wept copiously when I first read it through. I loved Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renaissance,” and won a oral interpretation contest in college reciting it by heart. It is so full of youthful realization, but these are still favorites, today. I still think Millay is a great poet who needs to be revived. I love many poems by Emily Dickinson, including “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, Hope Is a Thing with Feathers that Perches on the Soul,”and several others. I love the work of C.K Williams. His poem “Tar” is a favorite of mine. These poems reach me on an emotional level and that’s why I like them.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

There are many good blogs and websites out there, but I haven’t got much time to participate in blogs. I find the Poets & Writers, Inc. website very useful for authors for keeping up with deadlines and contests in particular at www.pw.org. The National Book Critics Circle of which I’m a member has just started a very good blog on favorite books of professional book reviewers that I enjoy. I enjoy listening to the poetry interviews and readings on
Grace Cavalieri's POET and the POEM RADIO SHOW at the Library of Congress website.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

The most exciting thing about being an editor is reading through work to find a poem that knocks your socks off. It doesn’t happen often, but it is great when it does. It is thrilling to come upon that poem that “makes you feel like the top of your head has been taken off,” as Emily Dickinson explained. What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

For me a great poem has to include a feeling, an emotional experience that the reader can participate in. It has to say something in an original way, a way that uses language stunningly. I do not care for dry poetry. Poetry has to be intensely interesting, even if delicate and subtle. It has to share a human experience or realization or irony in a new and engaging way. Marie Howe’s poem “The Good Thief” is one that knocked by socks off and has these ingredients. It makes us dwell on the experience of death, something we all contemplate at times and have great wonder about. I believe that a poem should not only be, but mean, despite Archibald McLeich’s famous statemen that “a poem should not mean but be. “

C.M. Mayo

C.M. Mayo is founding editor of Tameme, a bilingual (Spanish / English) nonprofit chapbook publisher that promotes the art of literary translation and new writing from North America--- Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. She is the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions), and Sky Over El Nido (University of Georgia Press), a collection of short stories that won the Flannery O'Connor Award. She is also editor of Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press), an anthology of fiction and literary prose by 24 Mexican writers. A long-time resident of Mexico City, she divides her time between Mexico City and Washington DC. Her website is www.cmmayo.com.

Publication Questions:

1) What projects are you currently on?

For Tameme, the big project right now is our second bilingual chapbook, "Ghosts of the Palace of Blue Tiles," a collection of poems by Mexican Jorge Fernandez Granados, beautifully translated by John Oliver Simon. Pub date is January 2008, so we'll have copies at the AWP bookfair in New York City. We will also have T-shirts! If you're in NYC, come on by!

2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?

For literary work, and literary translation especially, supply and demand, though both are ample, do not always come together in a market solution. Why is this? I sometimes think selling literary work to the general market is akin to trying to sell couture at Wal-Mart. Or, say, foie gras at Burger King. But then, look at what Oprah did, taking literary novels, some of them several years old and mid-list obscure, and, abracadabra, mega-best-sellers! So, who knows how a work will find its readers? It's a fascinating question. At least, fortunately, I remain fascinated. I might add: over the past few years I have developed a healthy respect for publicists.

3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?

I wish I'd launched Tameme's chapbook series earlier. Tameme began as a literary journal--- a 225 page anthology really--- it was so much work, so expensive, and I found that, well, my experience in this regard was in no way unusual. So, I had closed the journal, and was about to close down the foundation as well, but then--- voila--- I got the idea to do the chapbooks. The Tameme chapbooks are the same format as the journal was--- English/ Spanish side-by-side--- but instead of featuring, say, 25 writers and another 25 translators, each chapbook has but one writer and one translator. So they are infinitely easier to edit and produce, far less expensive, and more appealing for readers as well.

4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.

C.M. Mayo, c'est moi. It's terribly tempting to publish one's own work, but so far, whether out of wisdom or some other concatenation of reasonings, I have resisted the urge. I have included my translations of Mexican poets Marianne Toussaint and Tedi Lopez Mills, and of Mexican writers Agustin Cadena and Juan Villoro, however.

5) Who is the designer of your web site and how much input do you have in the design of the web site and the other design elements including covers for books, etc.?

I designed and manage the website with the help, occasionally, of my dad (who, bless his heart, put together the first version back in 1999) and an assistant. As for the covers of Tameme (the journal) and the chapbooks, from the beginning, we've used a professional graphic designer. This is expensive, but well worth the money. Kathleen Fetner did the first one and she's doing another book that's in the pipeline; most of our titles, including the first chapbook, have been done by Ines Hilde. The four-color covers of Tameme the journal and the chapbooks all feature original artwork. These have included works by Francisco Miranda, DeLoss McGraw, Derek Bucker and Edgar Soberon. The cover of the new chapbook will feature--- I hope the permission will come through soon (one must always get permission!)--- a work by Mexican artist Elena Climent. How much input do I have in the design? Well, I am the customer, so I have final say, but I try to stand back and respect the work the designer can do that I can't--- because if I could, then I would be a designer!

6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?

One of the nicest was the recent review poet Rigoberto Gonzalez wrote about the new chapbooks series for the El Paso Times. We've also gotten reviews for the chapbook in The Bloomsbury Review, mentions in Inside Mexico, and blogs galore, including The Quarterly Conversation, Chez Robert Giron, Daniel Olivas's widely read column in La Bloga, and Leslie Pietrzyk's Work-in-Progress. The blogs--- this is rich territory for any publisher, and especially for a chapbook series.

7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?

I'd like to have an array of beautiful chapbooks, all messages towards convincing more people that literary translation is an art; that there is a Magic Mountain of untranslated literature out there--- especially in Mexico (its literature has been grossly under-translated); that there are these many writers and poets well worth reading. (For more about Mexican literature, click here.)

8) What are some of your other interests?

My own writing and my own translating. My forthcoming novel is The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire and my latest translations appear in the anthology I edited, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. As a poet, I have a collection titled "Meteor" that's making the rounds. And I teach creative and travel writing via Dancing Chiva in Mexico City and at the Writers Center outside of Washington DC. I blog as Madam Mayo. I read a lot about neuroscience. Right now I'm especially interested in learning more about Iceland.

9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?

Charles Simic's "Fork." It's so visciously vivid.

10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.

Beltway--- it not only publishes a cornucopia of excellent new work, but its resources pages are a treasure.

11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?

To play a part in creating and sharing beauty--- this is always exciting. And it's been a joy to meet many of the writers, poets and translators--- and fellow editors and publishers.

12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.

Keep your pen on the paper. When you are finished, lift your pen. If you are not finished, remember: keep your pen on the paper.