Becoming Visible—The Struggle to Circulate Radical Poetry

Of Tradition & Experiment VII: Becoming Visible—he Struggle to Circulate Radical Poetry ‘To be widespread—isn’t that the aim of every artist? —Vanessa Place, Les Figues Presse Vanessa Place’s half-joking question provokes those who believe avant-garde writing is only avant-garde because it is not (yet) seen by the mainstream. It’s not advertised to them, distributed easily to their doorsteps or lauded with prizes. As Joshua Clover said: ‘Avant-garde work… is nothing if it’s not a refusal of the very protocols which are preferred by mainstream venues and sales channels. If the work doesn’t set out to fuck up the gears of that mechanism, it simply isn’t avant-garde by deinition. Yes, some of it will be recuperated by commodity-life later on, but only later on, by which time it is (tautologically) no longer avant-garde.’ he question not only of being a poet—thus already naturally marginalized— but being a poet who is trying to push whatever is left of an envelope into a space of ‘the new’—i.e. avant-garde experimental hybrid writing—is one illed with debatable issues, issues which circle around the invisibility and visibility of that writing.1 Is being left-of-center, thus the odd misit observer with a sharp new sense of the society he/she is unable to partake of, synonymous with being unseen? Endless banter on writer social networks and chat groups attempts to grapple with this question. For some, the issue is to or not to publish. For most, it is when, where and most importantly how to publish and be published. To examine not the perspective of publishers or authors, but that of poets who are both publishers and authors2, I carried out a series of interviews with ‘avant-garde’ Anglophone and French poets from two generations who run their own small presses. Issues explored include receptivity, invisibility, distribution, collectives, book buying and reading habits, the capacity of authors to be seriously considered for literary prizes of a national and international stature, eReaders and eBooks, and the sense of the avant-garde as further marginalized by limited access to mainstream, recognized venues for their works as in on Amazon or in Barnes & Noble, FNAC or Waterstone’s. he twenty-six responses received thus far fall into three main categories: poets with small presses, poets with signiicant online magazines and poets who are not publishers at all. In the irst category, I received responses from fourteen poets who have or recently had a small press (some jointly) publishing print books. Of these, eight responses were from women and six men, all Anglophone (12 American, 1 Canadian, 1 English) who had authored a maximum of seventeen 110 Tears in the Fence full-length (48+ manuscript pages) books, four minimum. However, in the publisher-poets category, the number of books authored by these poets more than doubles if one adds their translations and anthology editing works. As for their presses, they publish on average 3-4 titles a year (max 7, min 1-2 annually) at an average print run of 1000 (max 1500, min 200/250) and at a sales cost of around $14-$15 a book (max $24, minimum $12). he majority of these presses also run a chap or art book series, though only two run press-related magazines (one online, another print). Surprisingly, given the USA annual average, two thirds of these small presses include translations among the books they publish—averaging a third of their overall print run—ranging from Cole Swensen’s La Presse which is 100% translation to Lost Road Publishers which includes only 5% translation among its published titles. (Some of the presses represented here include: Ahsahta, Counterpath, Corrupt, Les Figues, in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, Subpress, and Litmus.) he other poets surveyed, who make up categories two and three, include twelve poets who are not book publishers—though some have online magazines (such as RoToR or Drunken Boat), have worked on editorial boards, or are part of collectives. Of these, ive are French, one is English and six are American; including nine women and three men3. he most books published by one writer in the authors-only category are twenty, and the overall average was six. his average does not include two of the responses, which were from poets who have signiicant journal publications and chapbooks but who are still attempting to get a irst book out. I encouraged them to respond because I felt it would be interesting to include young authors’ perspectives of publishing options, especially when relecting on new kinds of writing. Of these twelve poets, ten would like to see their next book appear with a small—or, as Joe Ross renames them—‘serious about literature’ press, instead of a large, mainstream, ‘commercial’ press. hough I did not ask the publisher-poets what kind of press they would like their work to appear with, it is evident from their reasons for publishing that they, too, would prefer to go with a small press or—as Laura Moriarty suggests—‘a poetry-focused university press’ should that opportunity arise. For some, this is because of the ‘lexibility’ of such presses since, as Paul Buck said, ‘Major presses are a disappointment as they interfere and try to rewrite from either a commercial perspective or without any understanding or interest in the literary work itself.’ Most authors cited reasons for preferring small presses that parallel those that motivate the poet-publishers to run such presses— community and the nature of the kind of writing being welcomed at and by the readers of those presses. Jean-Michel Espitallier puts it clearly4: For me it’s linked to the nature of the book. A poetry book—an experimental book—will have more opportunity to encounter its speciic public through a small press publisher who is better equipped than a ‘big’ press to activate the networks linked to their Tears in the Fence 111 universes. he book will almost naturally ind the public it is, a priori, destined for. he location of a book’s publication also gives it meaning, thus gives it an additional value, political, aesthetic, etc., value (and I’m referring here to Gérard Genette’s book, Seuils, (hresholds), and this notion of paratexts, of thresholds [/ doorways] of reading). he radical poets interviewed main motivations for publishing also tended to be intellectual camaraderie and, as Forrest Gander said about his and CD Wright’s decision to create their press, a ‘sense of activist community, the opportunity to champion work I admire’. Forming a press has, for some, also been about illing gaps, getting books into print that might otherwise never exist. Cole Swensen started La Presse because she was fed up with the American noncommitment to translation. La Presse exists, she explained, ‘to address that gap in relation to the one tiny corner of literature that I happen to know.’ Similarly, Dylan Harris established Corrupt Press to give voice to Anglophone authors living outside the publishing circles of their native countries, authors he felt were marginalized and silenced. He later widened his publications to include writing in English by non-native speakers—especially Swedish and Danish—who write in ways that go unseen because they are linguistically unusual. Wanting to do something together, Julie Carr and Tim Roberts formed Counterpath Press instead of a journal5 because ‘this just seemed bigger and brighter. We were aware of a lack of venues for innovative work and for translation and wanted to help ill that gap.’ Janet Holmes said that she also, in taking the job at Boise which put her into the position of running Ahsahta Press, ‘chose to publish work of merit that was not being taken up by the mainstream small presses or the university presses.’ She was quick to point out, ‘My authors are eclectic, which is to say I am not promoting any single branch of the avant-garde nor any one aesthetic.’ On the other hand, E Tracy Grinnell’s press Litmus arose out of ‘An interest in participating in the San Francisco Bay Area writing community where I was when I began working on Aufgabe [her annual print magazine] and a desire to add something to the conversation happening through small publications.’ She adds that, ‘it [Litmus] essentially began as a social gesture—I was developing all these ainities through writing and reading and … working on a publication or small press created opportunities to engage the community and initiate intellectual and poetic exchange.’ his does not mean that all small press publishers are great community champions or devoted to poetry as a social service. For some it was simply, as Vanessa Place noted, ‘an aesthetic project’ taken up in her case as a kind of game, a ‘stupid challenge, and thus irresistible’. On a more terre à terre level, Joshua Clover explained, ‘I got a job, and it seemed like a good thing to do with money’. Joe Ross says simply that being involved in SubPress, a collective, ‘allows me to engage as a publisher as well as author’. 112 Tears in the Fence Community and involvement in local life are often cited as the primary motivation for participating in experimental writing collectives, where ‘intellectual involvements’ (Paul Buck) were a constant beneit, along with ‘FUN. Life. Community’ (Bhanu Kapil) or ‘community and exposure to others and learning about lots of new poets’ (Michel Noteboom, dittoed by Virginie Poitrasson). his said, some poets surveyed reject opportunities to be part of literary collectives because, as Laura Mullen said, ‘there is a pretense that it’s all about the individual’. Here she is not speaking for how she feels personally, but rather why she thinks American authors shy away from joining collectives6. Her impression is conirmed by Janet Holmes who admits, ‘I see them [collectives] mostly as self-marketing ploys rather than aesthetic allegiances.’ his fear of forced and thus at once inclusive and exclusive aesthetic allegiance, especially when one speaks of being part of an avant-garde or experimental movement, strangely motivated E Tracy Grinnell’s involvement in Laura Moriarty’s “A Tonalist Feature” in Jacket, Magazine. Grinnell explains: ‘Her A Tonalist movement is a sort of anti- or non- movement movement, which is why I was happy to be included. Her conception of what an A Tonalist is works for me because you’re as in or out as you want to be – even if she does outline general poetic characteristics. Movements and aesthetic group formations are interesting historically, but they are not neccesarily as interesting to me contemporarily because they can be aggressive and antisocial.’ In short, social space dictates many small press publishing practices, both from the author and the publisher’s perspectives, be that social connection or taking of a stance outside the social space profered to them. As E Tracey Grinnell sums it up, everything she does is for ‘community and art’. Partaking in a collective and book publishing go their separate ways when the issue of distribution comes up. For all of the publishers interviewed, inances are tightly intertwined with the constant mineields of distribution and promotion. For some, the concern with making the efort to get past the distribution/promotion barrier has pretty much been abandoned—their books get passed hand to hand via friends (Swensen’s press mostly works that way. Clover suggests such handof from one to another is promotion that ‘…may just be a way of saying that our model of promotion is not the same as what the big dogs mean by the term.’) As Place said about Les Figues, the press just does its general best, trying for ‘promotion, which includes encouraging the authors to self-promote and encouraging those we know who know these things to look at the work and speak about it promiscuously.’ By which she is hinting at the books-getting-reviewed issue, but also implying that commercial avenues are not her press’ main focus. She explains: ‘I think it’s useless to engage in a Barnes & Noble or Amazon comparison or to think of Tears in the Fence 113 SPD as anything but a distribution center; we’re living in a Facebook age, an age of dialectical and self-sculpted capitalism. It’s word-of-social-networks that sells avant soap.’ he ‘word-of-social-networks’ is currently the keystone of small press book promotions. Of Litmus’ book promotion methods, Tracy Grinnell explains: ‘We use as many free or cheap avenues as possible – social networking sites, website & email list[s]-- and we recently started a YouTube channel and have posted an interview there with Jefrey Jullich, author of Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis. We reach out – by phone and by mail – to a targeted list of independent bookstores across the U.S., and we help our authors plan readings as much as we can. We send out review copies, postcards and catalogs, and place ads in very targeted publications. We also host or co-sponsor readings, panels and release events throughout the year.’ his is pretty active on the part of the press. For Counterpath, also an active promoter, using ads, email blasts, FB pages, inding readings and reviewers for their authors, ‘the most diicult thing, is building a trusting and committed readership. We want people to buy the books because they know and trust our press, even if they don’t yet know of the author. hat just takes time.’ Building trusting readers has been central to many small press’ establishing annual subscription drives where their readers can purchase an entire year of books in advance. his—along with Kickstarter—have been two of the key funding drives for small presses, who depend on the same people sticking with them, attending their events, preordering books, spreading the news for them about their fundraising or book sale specials. Again we ind the concept of community at the core of the press—its power, its motivation, its livelihood, its audience, and of course the place from which spring its new authors. hat said, some of the poets spoke of a sense that they are somehow not able to see or reach the works they feel a need for. How does a new author emerge in these communities and publishing circumstances? Contemporary readers, even those who write, are not prepared to go purchasing books wildly on blind faith— they want a peek inside the cover. So they miss out on discovering new texts and authors because these works are not available in stores in the States. Some would argue that SPD ills this hole. However, as Michelle Noteboom says ‘SPD is great, but you have to know what you’re looking for. You don’t just get to walk into a shop and browse and discover some exciting new experimental work, because Borders and Barnes and Nobles won’t carry stuf like that.’ Noteboom’s perspective is also an interesting one, since she is here in France where small bookshops still lourish. She remarks ‘Again, in France, it seems diferent. [here are] lots of small independent bookshops with good stocks. You can just go in and discover things, 114 Tears in the Fence often.’ It is also not uncommon to see bookstores in Paris with poetry books in their main window displays. Julie Carr paints a picture of her own dismay about the bookstore situation in the States, saying she does feel that the avant-garde is being even more marginalized by the commercial bookstore monopolies. She adds, ‘I think the Internet (social networks especially) is making it easier to get the word out. But I very much wish the bookstores still existed (they hardly do) and that the ones that exist would stock avant-garde books. I get really depressed in bookstores now. hey used to be heaven.’ he bookstore, distribution and promotion questions are intimately linked to the issue of readership. Who is reading these works, and how did they become interested in them? For many mainstream readers, they picked up a book because Oprah promoted it, or it won an award or ended up on the NYT bestseller list. For many of the authors surveyed, inding their favourite small press poetry collection on the NYT bestseller list would be synonymous with selling out. Vanessa Place argues: ‘To win a national and international prize seems to me to replicate the very apparatuses that promote and perpetuate the kind of work I ind deeply uninteresting.’ By which logic I could argue that if everyday Joe had access to experimental poetry because it got advertised and marketed to him, so he read it, and, more importantly, bought it, then got on an award panel and rewarded what he read with a Pulitzer or a Booker Prize then that makes the writing less radical or surprising, makes it too commercial. In which case, many experimental poets and publishers who were so pleased—as I was—about Rae Armantrout’s, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrops’ or Alice Notley’s awards over the past few years should have shuddered in fear that this marked the end of their edginess. Which of course is ludicrous—the reception of the work did not change the work itself—a great example is that of Christian Bök who received the Griin Prize in Canada at a moment when he was only beginning to get going as an edgy, radical writer. Yet, for many of those surveyed, Vanessa Place’s statement sums up their own sentiment about awards—and so they often do not apply for prizes. he prize networks, like the commercial bookstores, are—according to most of the survey responders—functioning on a whatever-is-already-familiar-to-us-base. But Place goes on past her original sentence to add, ‘Rectiication—perhaps less hoary work will be discovered by these mainstream venues by way of the above alternate forms of visiblity/ distribution.’—where her use of ‘above’ refers to social networks, and online resources. For Joe Ross, the fame and readership issue is also linked to eforts that he expects to be made on the side of those who judge literary value, i.e. contests. He says: ‘I would also argue that it is the “job” of those who run and judge literary prizes to seek out works which may be diicult to ind. It is after all part the work of the prize to raise the recognition of superior works hidden in obscure places’. He is among those who wanted to change the predominance of mainstream poetry receiving the major prizes, and argued for placing more experimental poets on Tears in the Fence 115 prize boards, and for education playing a role in changing reading trends. Laura Mullen adds another angle to this when she says: ‘Now I think it is better for me to be worried about reading others than to be worrying about others reading me, and when I get the “Nobody loves me” feeling I make it a point to love somebody. As the rap song says: “If you WANT respect, you have to GIVE respect.” Too many Americans seem to feel that community (love) should low the way they feel it to low/see it lowing in terms of “fame”: one way street. Traic is key.’ For Mullen as well as Clover, inding a wider readership has a potential link to dangerously compromising the principles that make the avant-garde what it is: ‘Gabriel Orozco (and Proust) are very smart about the way radical art changes the ield of vision. It’s a break with the past, it’s a break with the social contract! In what world does it make sense to want to change the ield of vision and expect to be “popular”?’ says Mullen. When asked what the greatest obstacle to the difusion of her own works is, she responds by asking whether it is: he fact that poetry is not a money-making proposition? he fact that I want to write books that do not resemble other books? he fact that my community ailiations are various and constantly under revision? he fact that we are seeing the demise of higher education and with it a certain ield of reference and open-ness to exploration? he fact that there are so many competing kinds of media? (Really, a lot of our ideas of what should happen to/for books seem based in a pre-computer moment.) Mullen’s statements ind their echo on the publishing side when T Grinnell explains: ‘I think it’s also important to talk about why we embark on this crazy publishing path in the irst place and to keep a balance between supporting and promoting the books and authors as best we can and not being convinced that we should be operating as small versions of big publishers. Funding and award winning is important and validating but can also come hand-in-hand with expectations of organizational development and “professionalism” and can begin to afect decisions one might make as an editor. I just think it’s important to keep it in check and not worry so much if we’re not patted on the head by an establishment of any sort.’ 116 Tears in the Fence Mullen’s reference to the computer moment and its role in all of this leads to one of the most signiicant issues for all concerned—the future of the book in an era of the eBook, and how this changing reading method ties into an international avant-garde and an international readership of experimental works. To start of, Forrest Gander noted that although ‘…international avant-garde communities tend to ind each other… most international writers are exposed only to U.S. poets who publish with larger NY presses, those presses that have literary agents abroad and actively sell translation rights.’ For him, this could be solved if ‘U.S. avant-garde presses might more actively engage presses abroad to both publish foreign writers represented by those presses and sell rights for translation of their own authors to those foreign presses.’ But he also notes that the eBook format as an alternative to the print-book option is opening up work to those international readers, such as in Japan for his co-translation of Kiwao Nomura. Similarly, Moriarty and others mention that most of the international exposure for their works has come through online rather than print magazines in France, Australia, England, Germany, Switzerland and Canada. Moriarty mentions the domestic beneits that it may have for SPD and sales of more small press works to universities that already account for 25% of SPD purchases. However, most of the publishers and poets feel eBook and print formats are entirely diferent species, diferent kinds of reading experiences. For those publishing, the page format obstacles of, for example the Kindle which blocks all poems into prose paragraphs, remain a barrier to their expansion into eBook trade. For the moment, most publishers like the poets surveyed still prefer an oldfashioned book. Yet, as Clover said, ‘hey [eBooks] are easier to give away’ even though they are ‘a bit less pleasant to read’. As Swensen—almost an ePhobic—says ‘I don’t publish ebooks and am not interested in doing so. I think, for me, there’s something crucial about the materiality of the book, and about its portability.’ Carrying a book, taking it from one place to another, I return to the notion of the “circulation” of avant-garde poetries. he term ‘circulation’ is ideal for the avant-garde/experimental authors I surveyed—who generally choose to be part of, publish with or run small presses because they ‘are a conversation much more than big presses are’ as Cole Swensen said or, as Bhanu Kapil put it so wonderfully, ‘I would choose a small press [for my next book] for the community invitations that accompany such publication—to coastal cities, primarily, where my peers live. And where the next work comes from and towards, in a way.’ hus the book circulates from its point of departure, the writing, through a publication process back to invitations to read and share that book. And I shall leave it to French author and RoToR7 founding editor, Anne Kawala, to conclude: ‘he best kind of promotion remains constant work combined with the pleasure of encounters.’ Notes: 1 Where is the spirit of invention in all of this, and how much of the question of who gets Tears in the Fence 117 seen where is simple economics? 2 his said, I also have included some writer-only responses for comparison. 3 hese responses and thus relections are currently skewed by gender—many male authors have promised to respond but have yet to do so. 4 In my translation here. 5 hough their press has since added an online journal component. 6 Despite Americans abroad being some of the greatest champions of the collective—such as Susana Gardner who keeps the spirit of a collective alive with Dusie Press’ Kollectiv chapbook project, or, stretching the notion of what a collective is, Megan Garr’s Versal Magazine out of Amsterdam with a strong community spirit and collective editorial board and process in place. 7 My translation here, and RoToR is an online collective magazine with a print-it-yourself format. Jennifer K. Dick Nearly Brassed Of Andrew Crozier and the Ferry Press An extract from the irst section of hread appeared in Andrew Crozier’s American Supplement to Granta, March 1964, assembled and published whilst he was preparing for his Finals at the end of his third year at Christ’s College, Cambridge. His correspondence with Fielding Dawson, former pupil from Black Mountain College 1949-53, includes a letter from March 23rd 1964 which clearly replies to Crozier’s earlier request to publish the whole of hread as the irst volume in a new publishing venture: what was to become Ferry Press. I would be more than delighted if you could do it…here could hardly be a piece more studied than hread…I will be able to let you have a little money. I would like to do a cover myself, and may I hope there could be more than 300 copies? Jonathan Wms did Krazy Kat in an edition of 150 which was gone in a year; and Gil Sorrentino and I did our Supplement To Now in a 350 print, they are both long gone. he relatively small runs referred to here bring to my mind the recent to-andfro exchange of ideas on the UK Poetry list concerning what Tom Chivers had referred to as ‘boutique’ production on his blog reference to Crater: 118 Tears in the Fence