Danielle Pafunda was born in Albany, NY. She is the author of two poetry collections: My Zorba forthcoming from Bloof Books in 2008 and Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull Press), and the forthcoming chapbook A Primer for Cyborgs: The Corpse (Whole Coconut). Her third manuscript Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies was a recent finalist for the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Poetry Prize. She has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2004, 2006, and 2007 editions, as well as in Not For Mothers Only: Contemporary Poets on Child-getting and Child-rearing (Fence Books, 2007) and Efforts and Affections a book of essays on women poets and mentorship forthcoming from University of Iowa press.Danielle received a BA from Bard College, MFA in Poetry from New School University, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Georgia Creative Writing Program. She is co-editor of the longstanding online literary journal La Petite Zine, former assistant to the editors at The Georgia Review, and a contributing curator at the new and soon to officially launch Delirious Hem. She will be the spring 2008 Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago. Updates and information can be found at her Iron Caisson blog. She lives with her partner, anthropologist Adam Henne, and daughter Hazel. In houses with yards, she also lives with cat Ursula and dog Clea.
Publication Questions:
1) What projects are you currently on? (Include issue #s, books, chapbooks, broadsides, special projects, print and web).
Currently, we're catching up with the wonderful deluge at La Petite Zine. Co-editor Jeff Salane and I of late suffer some absurd scheduling both professional and personal--new baby, new book, international and cross-country moves, PhD exams and dissertation chaos, new jobs, toddler gymnastics, fire ant attacks, etc. Sincere apologies to everyone who waited longer than usual for us to give your work a careful read. Issue #21 barnstorms on the horizon, and we're already plotting #22. If you haven't seen the journal lately, please check out our new InteReview section. We're really excited about these combination book review interview conversations between author and friend, author and admirer, author and colleague, author and clone, author and self, author and rotten meat slab, author and extraterrestrial trinket, etc.
My other current folle de joie enterprise: Delirious Hem! Things are yet a bit inchoate over there as we suss out the curatorial duties, the range and scope of this blog-cum-poetics journal-cum-platform for maximum gaga. Last year, the Delirious Hem concept sprung out of a conversation among experimental women poets. Why weren't more of us writing poetics statements, publishing experimental articles, etc? Well, myriad obvious answers to that ol' chestnut, but the result was a format that would allow busy poets to duck in, curate a posting on a topic dear-to-heart, and duck back to their other projects. A drop-by forum, a one-time deal, or a biennial hoopla. A teaser: we plan to launch with a fantastic conversation, Arielle Greenberg on the Gurlesque. Arielle coined this aesthetic some years back, and I get to travel with her down its many provocative new tangents.
2) What has been your biggest challenge as a poetry publisher/editor?
Banal, but accurate, finding the time. Because we set our own deadlines, because our schedules don't neatly complement, because we're each conducting not just one, but often two full-time careers in addition to editing, it's not always easy to prioritize the journal. Someday, there will be a managing editor, or an intern. There will be money for that super new software, or the degree will be done, or it will turn out I only need five hours of sleep a night. Until that day, we do our best, and then we do a little more.
Secondarily, it was initially difficult to get women to submit, but in the past three years, we've seen a real turnaround. We're seeing about the same number of submissions from men and women. We'd like to do a better job representing across race and class lines. We'd like to do a better job bringing in translation, international writers, and critical writing, and in time, we will.
3) Do you regret any paths you have followed as a publisher/editor?
No, I wouldn't say regrets. Just plans yet to manifest.
4) Name one poet who has not appeared in your publication which you would love to have included and why.
Oh, loads. In fact, you there! You reading this right now--hey you, send us some work! Not just poems, but essays, fictions, hybrids, drawings, you got it we want it. Check out the submission guidelines and our editorial bent at La Petite Zine.
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 believe Mike Neff originally designed La Petite Zine via Web Del Sol. We have a little input, elements that change each issue, but the design hasn't really been altered from the original. Because LPZ's been around so long, we're kind of pleased with this consistency.
6) What recognitions have you received as a publisher/editor?
"Real Toads" by Heidi Lynn Staples (formerly Heidi Peppermint) from La Petite Zine #13 was chosen for Best American Poetry 2004.
We were also selected as “Featured Editors” for Center for Literary Magazine Production’s Literary Press and Magazine Directory 2007/2008 and for the LOCKSS New York Public Library online publications archiving project.
7) Where do you see your publication/editing in 5 years?
The same, but more and better and endlessly delicious.
8) What are some of your other interests?
I'd love love love to start a micro-press, and keep inching toward then away. When I lived in New York, I worked for a boutiquey little design firm, and so enjoyed the search for just the right textile, that perfect linen weave, the most pleasing font. Gluestick happy collage freak, too, so handbound art books would be ideal. There's such an abundance of thrilling work out there; I'd be honored to give some its due in bulk. When there's some money in the bucket. The money bucket, argh, for better or worse even my financial metaphors refuse upward mobility.
9) What is your favorite poem as of today and why?
Today, my favorite poem is anything from Ronald Palmer's Logicalogics. My Advanced Creative Writing class will discuss it Wednesday, and I can't wait to hear what they think of, as Mark Bibbins puts it, "what finally resembles an effort to make at least some small part of a fucked-up world habitable again." Swoon. The book's admirably unapologetic in its most sinister and its tenderest moments. Later today, my favorite poem will be A Hole is to Dig, which my daughter will ask me to read six thousand times, though she can basically recite it from memory herself. Tomorrow, I plan to read Tina Celona's Snip Snip! so maybe something in there will become a favorite. And of course there are always my permafavorites in Plath and Loy, in Dickinson and Berryman. I've just heard some of my cohort here at UGA read, and can't say enough about Sabrina Orah Mark's new "Oldest Animal" poems, or Lara Glenum's knocked-up pirate grotesquery. Oni Buchanan's poem about the guinea pig and the green balloon always makes me cry. Fascinated by the "I am inside someone who hates me..." from earlier LeRoi Jones. Anything that shakes the existential borders, that deconstructs the subject by race, biology, culture and ontology. The eviscerated I, the physical body reintegrated into the poetic field, grotesque as opposed to classical, that is with labyrinthine and live interior. That's all speaking very personally. Editorially, my stomach's nearly as big as my eyes. I'm agog re: the poems in our upcoming La Petite Zine, and drooling over a shelf full of grandly dissimilar books from last spring's AWP I've yet to read. This past spring, I gorged on 20th century works for my PhD exams, which was a fab way to recalibrate my thinking on influence, favorite, good, bad, ugmo, jettison-worthy, and reanimation-ready.
10) Recommend a poetry book, blog or web site to our audience (not from one of your press) and why.
Action Yes chronicles a welcome shift in some major poetics paradigms, and has got the poetry to back 'em up.
11) What is the most exciting aspect of being a poetry publisher/editor?
Being one of the first to read an exhilarating new piece, particularly when such is by an as yet little published creature.
12) Leave us with a recipe for poetry.
Take one finished poem, run over with car in gravel drive, or bury in yard for one week, or slice up and freeze in ice cubes, or bleach selectively, or coat in eyeshadow from 99 color palette, or cut into strips bundle strips around teeth drop into cola wait twenty-four hours remove, or give to bird-stamp wielding toddler, or float in tub after long hard day, or read aloud amid mechanical growls record and playback, or stitch into lining of skivvies, or lace into beloved pooch's collar, or or or. See what remains.
