Andrew Merton’s Poetry Collections

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Poet Andrew Merton answers questions about his Accents Publishing collections. 

 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing books.

Early in 2011 Katerina published four of my poems in Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. Emboldened, I sent her the manuscript of what would become my first book, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs.  We corresponded for several months, she saying she liked the manuscript but was not sure she was in a position to publish it.  Then, on May 12, my 67th birthday, she called and said it was a go.  That remains the best birthday present I have ever received.  Accents has since published my second and third books of poems: Lost and Found (2016) and Final Exam (2019).

 

Do you still like them? Why or why not?

Yes, I like them all.  The first one retains a special place in my heart because 1) My colleague and mentor Charles Simic generously wrote the foreword and 2) although previously I had published poems in journals, I did not fully identify as a poet until Chairs was out there in the world.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for your published books?

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project named it their outstanding book of poetry for the years 2012-2013.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Lots of really bad poems.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

Why I Left The Poetry Reading Early

 

I wanted to applaud

after the very first poem,

in which the famous poet

 

revealed the secrets of the universe

and the human soul

with no more effort than a shrug.

 

The second poem put the first to shame.

I was forced to restrain myself

by gripping the edges of my chair

 

and sitting on my thumbs.

Soon it took all my resolve

to keep from shouting “Bravo”

 

after nearly every line.

Five more minutes of this

and nothing would have stopped me

 

from rising, unbidden,

and burbling superlatives.

So I left.

 

As I tiptoed down the hall

I thought I heard the famous poet say:

“Now we can really begin.”

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Many years ago—just as I was getting serious about writing poetry—Mark Strand, then at the peak of his fame as a poet, gave reading at UNH, where I taught, that blew me away.  The idea for the poem occurred to me as I listened to him read.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

A Brief Natural History of an American Girl by Sarah Freligh.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

If Accents continues to evolve as it has over its first decade I’ll be very happy.

 

What are you working on now?

More poems. (Okay, my most recent book has a kind of elegiac title, Final Exam, but who knows, maybe I’ve got another one left in me.  Possible title: Post Doc.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This one appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, September, 2019.

 

Transcendence

 

It comes every month or so

while I am shaving

 

or peeling a potato

or watching a woodpecker

 

hammer away at an old dead pine:

shimmering blues, greens, yellows,

 

a rainbow effect

suffusing whatever is before me

 

with an otherworldly aura.

Doctors say these episodes

 

are manifestations of migraine.

The bird and I know better.

Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014)

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Poet A. Molotkov answers a few questions about Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014) 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

“Your Life As It Is” arose from the perception that most of our lives consist of similar repeating building blocks: we go to sleep, we wake up, we form relationships, we suffer loss. I was interested in creating a series that would play with these recurring themes. I started it before a trip to Russia my partner Laurie and I took in 2011. (Russia, the former USSR, is a country where I was born and which I hate intensely.) As we travelled, I tried to write a page or two each day, incorporating small details from the lives of the strangers we ran into. To further enhance the interplay of possibilities, I added a layer in which chess figures appear as characters.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Yes, I’m still fond of it. I think it captured what I wanted it to capture, and readers seemed to appreciate it.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

I received an Oregon Literary Fellowship based on the submission of this poem. It ended up becoming the final work in my first full-length collection, “The Catalog of Broken Things” (Airlie Press, 2016).

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Everything made it. I wanted the book to represent a generic life most generically.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

The book is a single poem, so I’ll share a page:

 

You wake up in the morning. The clouds outside your window are strangely immobile, as if they were painted on the glass. Perhaps the wind is still asleep. You realize it would be nice to do something meaningful today, but no specific ideas come to mind.

 

Your husband’s car is still in the driveway. You are surprised he has not left for work. It’s not like him. You walk out into the living room and find him resting on your beautiful hardwood floor. You don’t feel anything at the thought of his absence.

 

Your skin is a reflection of your attempts to get closer to the true meaning of your life, but you suspect that it might be inside out. The bishop has given up faith and no longer finds satisfaction in diagonal existence. You remember your own memories better than your past.

 

You walk outside and find yourself on another street, next to another house. You might have been a different person all along, or perhaps there is a better explanation for all of this.

 

 

How did you arrive at the title?

I suppose there is some irony in it. “You” are the character in the book, and to state that “you” represents the reader is both correct and preposterous.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I need to read more of Accents Publishing books, but currently, “Grief & Other Animals” by Patty Paine is my favorite. It’s been a few years since I read it, but I was moved by its handling of grief. It’s a powerful collection.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

I feel that the press’s focus is very keen and necessary. Maybe Accents would be interested in publishing full-length poetry collections?

 

What are you working on now?

I’m always jotting down poems and editing new ones. Recently, I completed a memoir, “A Broken Russia Inside Me”, about my years in the USSR and my immigration. My agent is trying to sell it as I work on my next novel, about hate crime in America. (My previous two novels are unpublished so far, but my agent is working on that as well; I keep my fingers crossed.)

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This poem was just published by Salamander. It was written in memory of the Portland poet Sam Seskin and titled with a quote from his poem. Many in the Oregon poetry community knew Sam; he was an inspiration. Sam’s first encounter with cancer six years earlier nearly ended his life and allowed him to view the extra time and his impending death with serenity and wisdom. The Inflectionist Review, a small press I co-edit with my friend John Sibley Williams, published his final collection of poems, “To Have Been Snowed On”.

 

 

Breath’s Opinion

 

                                                in memory of Sam Seskin

 

 

All I know is: at this

moment, a young scholar solves

 

a century-old problem. A group of six

climbs Everest, a group of twelve

 

is rescued from a hurricane. The same

smile faces us in the mirror after

 

all these years, but we are

so much smarter, so

 

lovingly open. And just now,

the doctor is born who will

 

cure everything that ails us, in

other patients. Easy now, don’t

 

be sad, small engine. There is too much

breathing left to do.

 

Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive (Accents Publishing, 2019)

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Poet Pat Williams Owen answers a few questions about Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive (Accents Publishing, 2019)

 

Do you still like your book? Why or why not?

I still like Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive. I’m proud of the poems and the period of my life it portrays. It’s honest and heart-felt and represents several years of conscientious work.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

The highest praise I’ve received from it was from my granddaughter who said she loves it, that it made her laugh and cry.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

What didn’t make it into the book were poems of lesser quality and those that didn’t fit thematically.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

I’d like to share “After My Untimely Death” as a sample of a list poem that any writer can model.

 

After My Untimely Death

Sometimes as I leave the house
I foresee people coming in and finding
remains of my life spread out like the ruins
of Pompeii. For sure on the floor
my Birkenstocks, well-worn and embedded
with my DNA, journals, books and magazines
stacked by my chair, yesterday’s running shoes
beneath the table, shoe strings dangling
toothbrush standing at attention, maybe the towel
still damp, a coffee cup with the final dregs,
today’s New York Times spread out,
half read.

Did I leave a light still burning,
awaiting my return? The chairs
around the table askew,
a life in process, my fuzzy lap
blanket still on the footstool,
housing my sloughed -off cells
hiding out in the folds of the yarn,
fingerprints on the sliding door
belong to this particular life.

Thoughts and dreams religiously recorded,
black ink in journal after journal,
stacks of them. Shelves of books
underlined and notated, my sweat
smudged on each page. Light streams
in through the blinds as usual.

Funny, all the years of viewing Orion’s belt,
I thought my place on earth
was permanent.

 

How did you arrive at the title?

The title is taken from one of the poems in the book. In my poetry I try to address the intersection between the mundane and the transcendent. This poem is a metaphor for that.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

My favorite Accents book other than mine is Katerina’s The Porcupine of Mind.

 

What are you working on now?

I’m working on new poems, observations of life as it passes.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Last Wash for the Old Car

To honor our 30 years of caretaking
I take my place in line with all the others
seeking purification,

that one moment of perfection
when the grey face of the car emerges
shiny dripping wet through the soapy steam.

Blue-shirted, brown-skinned workers
white towels wrapped round their heads
embrace it with rags

scrubbing until all surfaces shine.
I climb into the leather seat one last time,
fresh lemon scent surrounds me.

 

Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010)

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Poet Barbara Sabol answers questions about Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010).

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

I submitted the chap manuscript for Original Ruse during a “Winged Series” chapbook competition in 2011. The book was chosen as a semi-finalist, I believe, with your offer to publish it. I was just finishing up my MFA at Spalding University, and taking myself seriously as a poet; or should I say taking the presence and power of poetry in my life seriously. The prospect of having my first collection in print was  an absolute thrill. It really is a legitimizing experience when an admired publisher offers to make a book of your poetry!  

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

 Yes, very much! It’s especially special because it was “my first.” I’m still fond of many of those poems; a few have made an appearance in my first full-length book, and two others landed in this forthcoming book, Imagine a Town. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to read poems that you wrote years ago and not want to revise most of them! Also, the book is lovely―perfect bound with Simeon’s original art on the cover. In fact, I still read from it at readings, and continue to sell copies.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

In his jacket comment, Greg Pape  noted that the poems “explore connections between art and survival, the ordinary and the mythic. . .” Those tensions were exactly what I was aiming for, and what I continue to explore. To me, the highest praise is that of a reader who really grasps your themes and meanings.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I don’t think any poems were cut. I have a faint recollection of you questioning the inclusion of one or two of the poems, but at that point in my writing, I was too attached to each of my “darlings,” and resisted. I’m now much more willing to let a poem go if it doesn’t cohere with the whole. 

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Yes. The closing poem, “Happiness.” I sometimes close a reading with this one, as happiness is a note I like end on in any context.

the mouth

of the vase

is not calling out

 

for asters

for water

its cobalt glass

 

curves

around the notion

of flowers

 

a quenched stem

and window light

scattering

 

the blueness

 

How did you arrive at the title?

It’s taken from the title poem, which I thought had an enticing ring to it. It’s what I want in a title and in poetry: to be enticed.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

It’s difficult to name a favorite from among the terrific Accents books through the years. I actually have two favorites, equally favored but for different reasons. The first is Biblia Pauperum, by T. Crunk, because these spare poems  both challenge on an intellectual level and charm on a visual and emotional level―a wonderful combination.  And I’m completely enamored with Kingdom of Speculation by Barbara Goldberg. The element of magical lyric rendered in very sophisticated story book fashion completely engaged me. Plus, both books are physically beautiful.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Accents has grown so much since its inception – going from chapbooks to full-length books. I love that the press has now extended to include a literary magazine, and a wonderful one, at that. Two areas that appeal to me as a reader, that broaden the scope and service of a journal: book reviews and essays. There is no shortage of new books to be reviewed, and book reviewers are always looking for journals to place their reviews. Literary Accents  could be such a place.

 Anthologies also make for another really engaging read. It’s always so interesting to read the variety of voices and forms on a given theme in an anthology. The Accents anthologies have been terrific, and I’d love to see more in the future.

 

What are you working on now?

I’m wrapping up the edits for my second full-length book, which will be out later this month from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, titled Imagine a Town. As you well know, putting the finishing touches on a book is both a painstaking and exciting enterprise. So that’s consumed my time and attention these past months.

I am also well underway with my next book, a collection of persona poems in the voices of victims, both identified and “Unknown,”  of the  Johnstown  flood of 1889. An archival treasure trove has been made available to me by the Flood Museum and the National Park Service; I drew my characters from the original morgue book . This may sound like a depressing project, but not so! From the snippets of description in the morgue tome, whole characters can be concocted and reanimated.  I’m especially drawn to the “unknown” victims, of whom there were an estimated 2,200―people never claimed or properly mourned. The end of the 19th century was a true crossroads, culturally and economically, with the beginnings of the industrial revolution, railroad travel, etc., so that sketching out the books’  figures in this historical context  makes for fascinating research and material.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Sure, gladly. From Imagine a Town, this poem, “Ode to the Big Dipper,” is, on one level, an elegy for the decrepit roller coaster in an abandoned amusement park near my home.

 

Ode to the Big Dipper

 

Slip with me, child, through the ragged

cyclone fence; the air here sparks.

Let’s walk by the feeble coaster

where the wind turns shrill.

Even the Silver Rocket in orbit

over Chippewa Lake was eclipsed

by the Dipper’s serpentine reach.

 

See how bindweed twines the latticed frame,

and dried thistle, iron weed scale the

corkscrew tracks that carried cars slow,

slow to the rise then

plunged―

unhinged our grip to level earth.

Now un-done by oaks that split

the crossties’ nails and bolts; that

collapse the rickety shell of a thrill

into the abandoned park’s understory.

 

O Dipper! Splintered bone heap

of reckless joy, wooden relic of amusement,

heart-in-the-throat conveyance, you are restored

in memory’s gyres. I am transported

to ten, trespassed here at your crumble foot;

behemoth, splayed to the sky, to your

namesake constellation, given over

to a sad gravity, you bow to the ground

of our daring, our once shudder.

Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (Accents Publishing, 2014)

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Poet Lynnell Edwards answers a few questions about Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

I was teaching an ekphrastic community workshop for Louisville Literary Arts and we visited Flame Run studio where I had made a contact with the owner/artist Brook White. I wrote a short poem myself (below) during the workshop, and I was so taken by the process that I decided to ask him if I could install myself as a kind of poet-in-residence during that summer of 2010. I hoped to just watch and ask questions and write and see what happened. It was an exhilarating project that resulted in a chapbook-length manuscript which I kind of sat on for a while because I knew that my third full length book for Red Hen, Covet, was due out in the fall of 2011 and I didn’t want to crowd that publication release. There were a few of the poems published, so I had the sense that it was good work that would appeal to a wider audience even though the subject was a little bit technical and obscure (which is why there are some end notes explaining vocabulary). In fall 2013, I began the conversation with Accents about this manuscript and was delighted they were interested in the project! We had a really fun launch for the book at Flame Run after its release in June 2014 and the book got some nice coverage in the Courier-Journal.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

I loooove this book. I love chapbooks generally, but I am really happy with the way I experimented in the book (there are a couple of shaped poems) and the liberating effect of having all kinds of new vocabulary from glass blowing at my disposal.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

People have enjoyed this book and informally told me how intriguing and energy-filled it is. But perhaps the highest praise has come from Brook’s own endorsement of it and his sharing of the book among his friends, family, and the shop.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I think there were probably a couple of poems that I started but never really finished and I honestly can’t remember what they were. But there was one longer piece that I really worked on and wanted to make fit but didn’t which was about another glass blowing team that came in after hours to work – Brooke had invited them to use his studio. It was fascinating to watch them – in part because there was a whole different vibe – but strangely, I couldn’t make the poem quite cohere and it seemed out of step with the other poems. At that point, then, I realized that the poems I had been writing and the book they would become was as much about the spirit and work of a particular studio and its particular personalities as it was about glass blowing generally.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

This is the first poem I wrote, after my initial visit to the studio, and it ended up as the final poem of the book:

 

“Heart of Glass”

Feel its pulse and flare still —
beat of primitive fire, memory
of the molten womb from which
you drew it glowing and gave it
shaping breath: never
cold, never still.

 

How did you arrive at the title?

“Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop” came to me really early on and there were no other competing or working titles. Simply put, the glass blowing crew played loud rock music all the while they were working and there was such confidence and verve in what they were doing that it seemed obvious to me that this was a rock and roll hot shop.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I selected E.K. Mortenson’s The Fifteenth Station for the 2012 chapbook prize and I still think it’s a remarkable sequence imagining, with a nod toward the biblical, the “least of us” and the struggle in dark places we in the first world too often turn from. I also really like Sarah Freligh’s A Brief Natural History of an American Girl – an inventive and clear-eyed memoir in poems that startles and delights.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Keep publishing awesome books, for one! The new projects – the journal, the workshop series – all of these things help to nurture writers and readers and I am excited to see them succeed. I’m interested in the ways in which fine art and writing mutually resonate and it would be interesting to see some manuscript collaborations among poets, printmakers, and other artists.

 

What are you working on now?

I have another chapbook length manuscript titled This Great Green Valley that will be published by Broadstone Books in the late spring of this year. It consists of poems I wrote during a sabbatical in 2018 and is based on my research at the Filson Historical Society into the pre-statehood history of Kentucky, along with a long poem about my own childhood on the Kentucky River. Red Hen has a full-length manuscript from me tentatively titled The Bearable Slant of Light that will likely be released in late 2021; it explores the explores the effects of mental illness on the family and is much more experimental in many ways. Very different from my last book with them, Covet.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This is the very last stanza from a very, very new poem titled: “Carpool, with boys”

“Remember where we were going and how
we couldn’t wait to get there: the impossibly
green fields, the bright lines of play, the whistle
to begin high and bright as birds lifting in flight.”

 

Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing, 2010)

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Poet J. Kates answers a few questions about Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing, 2010)

 

 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

Not sure there is a story to tell. I had written some poems, they seemed to fit together in theme, there was a chapbook contest from Accents Publishing, and I submitted to it. You liked it, apparently.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

The poems I write that stand the editorial test of time long enough to make it to publication are poems I like. The rest, I throw away.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

Not sure I’ve received any “praise” for Metes and Bounds. You published it, some people have bought it. That’s praise. Can’t recall if it was ever reviewed.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Most of the poems I’ve written in my life. Luckily, a good many have made it into other books, with, I hope, more still to come.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

I’d like to have your readers read them all. That’s why I wrote them. If it’s your blog, you choose.

 

Selected by Katerina and inserted in the text:

DOING THE WORMS’ WORK

The first April I am certain I will die,
the ground too cold, too wet for planting,
the river only a foot down from flood,
the compost heap a contradance of bees,
I need to be looking toward a harvest.

I will turn dirt. Without stooping
to pick rocks, I do the worms’ work
for an hour or two, see how I like it,
see how I enjoy the company of worms.
Not bad, they say, not bad for a beginner .

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Ah, there’s an interesting question. In New England, where I live, it has long been customary to establish boundaries not by formal surveying, but by noting and describing landmarks (or by creating them, as with walls and cairns). All the poems in this little collection somehow have to do with limits and limitations, and there is a rural cast to them; it seemed an appropriate title. I have worried, since, however, that the title sounds a little too bucolic, characterizing my work (unfairly, I hope) as “when the Frost is on the bumpkin.” Perhaps that’s balanced by the cosmopolitanism of an earlier chapbook (Mappemonde, Oyster River Press) and by other published poems.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

Partial to anthologies and to translation as I am, you can guess I’d single out The Season of Delicate Hunger, for its introduction and presentation of contemporary Bulgarian poets.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Succeed. On your own terms.

 

What are you working on now?

I have two full-length manuscripts being widely rejected. I continue to write — including some experimental, urban prose poems — and to translate.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

“The human in me knows how to retreat.”

Childhood (Accents Publishing, 2014)

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Poet Emily Grosholz answers a few questions about Childhood (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

I wanted to create a book with my poems about small children (my four children when they were small) to support UNICEF. I’ve been a supporter of UNICEF for thirty years, since my first child was born. I had a friend in Paris, Lucy Vines, who drew lovely pictures of small children, so I lobbied her for a year to collaborate with me, and finally she agreed. Just at the same time, I met Katerina and realized that Accents Publishing was a promising place for this book, and she too agreed! We have raised over $3500 for UNICEF since Childhood was launched in 2014.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

My affection for this book grows with every passing year.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

The highest praise for this book is the different ways in which it has been translated. It has been translated into Japanese, Italian, French and German, and now Katerina is translating it into Bulgarian. And some parts of it have also been ‘translated’ into songs, by Mirco De Stefani in his CD Childhood Songs, Koko Tanikawa in her CD First Piano Lessons, and by Bruce Trinkley in his CD Songs of Two Bellevilles. This fall, when we were working in Rome, my husband and I went up to Venice for a concert at a wonderful villa just north of the city. We were joined by Mirco and his wife, and the soprano Cristina Nadel sang and the pianist Igor Cognolato played the Childhood Songs to a warm and enthusiastic crowd. I just got the poster framed, to remember one of the happiest days of my life.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I couldn’t put in my poems about mathematics and science, but they do show up in other books, and in Great Circles: The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry, which helped to launch a new series of Springer Books about Mathematics, Culture and the Arts in 2018. Oddly, five of the poems in Childhood also show up there in Chapter 4.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Here is the poem that got turned into a song twice! This poem is dedicated not only to all my children, but also to their piano teacher, Leslie Beers, who taught them both piano and violin over so many years. (In Great Circles, in Chapter 7, I argue that music is the middle term between poetry and mathematics.)

 

First Piano Lesson

For years they have been pressing the white keys,
Sometimes the black, occasionally, haphazardly
Great fingerfuls together. But where
Exactly was the music, they wondered? Gone.

Today they built a bridge from C to G
As if across Giverny’s garden pond.
Perhaps it is a rainbow? G to C,
Aural, slant-visible, inevitable, clear.

They stand amazed around the grand piano
Capable at last of lifting up
From sound’s long restlessness the dripping
Glittery net of intervals and in its knotted strings

That golden fish, a song!

 

How did you arrive at the title?

The book included all my poems about childhood (from the perspective of a parent), from conception to the day when the children leave to make their own way in the world.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I have two favorites. One is The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry, edited by Katerina. It introduced me to the life of that country in the last century or so, in abstract and concrete ways as poetry does. And my interest is now intensified by my reading, during the past decade, many books about the Black Sea, and also by the prospect of the Bulgarian translation of Childhood: I hope to turn that poetic experience into a real visit. My other favorite book is Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry, edited by Katerina and Bianca Lynne Spriggs. I remember intending to send some poems in to be considered for that collection, but somehow I missed the deadline, and was sorry about that: I do have some wild woman poems and I like the category. However, getting the book and reading through it is a consolation, inspiration and fun, because of the way it combines myth and modern life, transforming both.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Keep on publishing good poetry and thoughtful translations; and I think creating the related journal Literary Accents was a very good idea. How about publishing collections of literary essays?

 

What are you working on now?

I’m on sabbatical, working with one of my brothers who is a marine biologist in California and a friend from high school who became a population geneticist in Minnesota: I’m using their work (and political engagement) as case studies for a book on philosophy of biology and practical deliberation. Visiting their field sites on Tomales Bay, Bodega Bay and San Francisco Bay, and then all across the state of Minnesota, inspired quite a few poems, not surprisingly. Two months in Rome also inspired a few poems, and cosmology and number theory are still giving rise to the odd poem.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Here’s the beginning of one of my Rome poems: wherever you go in that city, you find a poem lurking behind a church or piazza or small forest of umbrella pines! Or the banks of the Tiber!

 

The bougainvillea blossoms lightly fall
Across the pavement and desert the trees.
The pomegranates splatter on the grass
And sidewalks, and disturb the sailing green
Parrots that come from Africa. All through
October those bright flowers and fruits still shone
And breathed their colors on the city streets…

Scotch Tape World (Accents Publishing, 2013)

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Poet Tom C. Hunley answers a few questions about Scotch Tape World (Accents Publishing, 2013)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

After the book came out, I got to do a three city book tour with fellow Accents authors Lynnell Edwards and Eric Sutherland. That was a good time.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Most of the time. Sometimes I think I just learned to write poetry and only my new work is any good, though.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

I don’t know. The blurb by Shane McRae is particularly kind.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

A sestina about President Obama’s beer summit got cut at the last minute.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Verse Daily reprinted the title poem. Here it is.

http://www.versedaily.org/2014/scotchtapeworld.shtml

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Several of the poems are about raising kids and trying to honestly explain the world to them. It just occurred to me that there are striking parallels between this book and Good Bones by Maggie Smith. If you like her book, you might like mine.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I’m torn between Black Achilles by Curtis Crisler and How Swallowtails Become Dragons by Bianca Spriggs.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

An offsite AWP reading.

 

What are you working on now?

My wife and I are raising three sons and a daughter. Our eldest son is on the autistic spectrum, and a lot of my poems are about him. We adopted our daughter from state foster care when she was 16 1/2, and she has a lot of challenges. A lot of my poems are about her. A lot of people don’t know anyone like Evan and Elizabeth, so I’ve been grappling for words to explain who they are.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/pounds-by-tom-c-hunley

Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku (Accents Publishing, 2010)

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Poet Barry George answers questions about Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku (Accents Publishing, 2010)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

At the time my book, Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, was published in 2010, I had just graduated from the Brief-Residency MFA program at Spalding University. I had been writing haiku for about fifteen years, and in the two years at Spalding had concentrated on studying and writing haiku, as well as tanka. Katerina Stoykova was a classmate of mine, and her ambition to start Accents coincided with my eagerness to have a book of haiku published. Most of the poems in Wrecking Ball are taken from my Creative Writing Thesis at Spalding. I remember that after assembling the longer thesis (which included haiku, tanka, and longer poems), the selection and ordering of the haiku for Wrecking Ball just kind of fell into place.

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Yes. I still like the poems and the sequence in which they appear. It was my first chapbook, so it will always have a special meaning for me.

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

An important goal of mine is to write poetry that is enjoyed not only by other poets and poetry enthusiasts, but also by folks who don’t generally read contemporary poetry. So what I especially have valued are the comments I’ve received, from various people, that Wrecking Ball is a book they’ve kept close by on the nightstand, or on the coffee table or hair salon counter for themselves and their guests to read.
What didn’t make it in the book?

My only wish is that it could have been longer, that it could have included more poems. But I do like the spare format of only one haiku per page. And I feel fortunate that my Wrecking Ball haiku seemed to be well-suited for the first generation of Accents publications: in-house printed chapbooks sold at a popular price.

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Since haiku are short, I would like to share a pair of them that represent two different stages of a related theme.

after the storm
he is rich in umbrellas—
the homeless man

 

older
wearing glasses now
the homeless man

 

How did you arrive at the title?

I wanted to emphasize that this was a collection of urban haiku, poems that adapt the traditional forms of haiku and senryu (haiku-like poems about human nature) to city life. One of the poems is about a “wrecking ball” that “swings in and out of darkness.” Since a wrecking ball is not usually what comes to mind when one thinks about haiku, I thought that image, as a title, would emphasize and draw attention to the somewhat unusual, even iconoclastic, nature of the urban-themed haiku.

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I especially like Barbara Sabol’s Original Ruse for its playfulness and the variety of forms Barbara uses to develop different aspects of her theme.

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

I would like to see Accents, in either its journal or published books, encourage experimentation with writing that considers the ways that our assumptions and perceptions about what it means to be human are, necessarily, changing in light of the climate emergency.

What are you working on now?

First, let me mention that I have something new coming out from Accents Publishing later this year!—a book of haiku called Sirens and Rain, which explores beyond Wrecking Ball the varieties of urban life in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, I am writing the haiku, senryu, and tanka that occur to me on my daily rounds—or, as often as not—in the middle of the night. I am most interested in finding poetic ways not merely to express an observation about “nature” or “human nature” as something separate from “me,” but to embody an intimation of my essential unity with other aspects of creation.
Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

A tanka:

this river now
I’m falling through
what surfaces
I once considered
ice

I Am Proud that We Have Persisted and Survived: Interview with Katerina Stoykova

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Writer and journalist Alan Lytle interviews Katerina Stoykova about the upcoming 10 year anniversary of Accents Publishing. 

Accents is about to celebrate a milestone – 10 years of publishing. Take me back to the days when you were trying to get this idea off the ground. What were some of the obstacles you had to overcome?

I wanted to create the press that I’d want to be published by. At the time I had just become the author of two poetry books, one published by an American press, another by a Bulgarian press. Both experiences taught me a lot about the process, and I found myself having strong opinions about what worked well and what could have been better. I had experience as an author and as an editor, but none as a publisher. That part I had to learn through trial and error. We decided that we wanted to be an independent press, so we relied on ourselves for any bootstrapping investments and equipment. We started with handmade chapbooks. We actually physically produced all copies of the first dozen titles in our catalog. My business partner (and husband at the time) Dan Klemer is an engineer and he designed several fixtures to streamline a production line in our dining room area. The first floor of our home was packed with books, reams of paper, printers, boxes, toner cartridges, a paper cutter, a book-binding machine, glue strips, stacks with company documents, envelopes of various sizes, and a small mountain of post office receipts. Once, the now late poet and publisher Charlie Hughes visited us to prerecord an interview, and a year later inquired, “I’ve been meaning to ask, that place … do you actually live there?” So, for a bit of time, Accents Publishing was pretty much my whole life, needed all my time, but I was happy to pour all my attention into it. I had to be mindful, though, to not abandon my own writing, so I made a concerted effort to balance working on other people’s writing with continued commitment to my own. I’d say this balance has been the biggest challenge through the years. That, and constantly having to be on top of records to pay sales tax four times a year.

 

Talk about the mixture of emotions you felt as that first publication came out. What do you remember? What did you learn from that experience?

We released the first two Accents chapbook simultaneously in a book launch celebration at Common Grounds Coffee Shop. It was February 5th, 2010. The authors were Jim Lally, a retired teacher/farmer, and Jude Lally, a man in his mid twenties, tied to a wheelchair due to progressive Friedreich’s Ataxia. The building was bursting at the seams with a standing-room-only crowd. We sold out of all copies we had. I was a bit nervous, but also elated. I had had a dream the night before in which I saw a series of blessings for the new beginning, so I carried that confidence with me to the book launch.

 

Describe the moment (how far was it in the process) when you could exhale with the full knowledge that Accents was here to stay.

I always knew Accents was here to stay. There was/is a need for a press like Accents and I believed in the principle “if you build it, they will come”. I also believed in the capability of the Accents team to make smart artistic and business decisions and to fully deliver on commitments. So, I guess the moment when I exhaled with the relief that we have something of value was the moment I decided to commit to building Accents into the physical world. I remember the constant buzz of creative excitement, the brainstorming, the joy of the possibilities, the hard work, the learning, the marvel at how everything was coming together.

 

What do you think makes Accents unique as a publishing company?

I’m not so sure anymore. We started with handmade chapbooks and I used to say that I’ve personally printed, trimmed and shipped every one of our books. As the books became popular, however, we had to give up this practice and start sending our books to be “professionally” printed. That was bittersweet – we lost our unique look, but gained the potential to publish thicker books with glossy, color covers. Then I used to say that we’re a poetry publisher, but now we’re starting to branch into novellas, collections of short stories, memoirs. Are we becoming more like other presses? Probably so. We like to adopt best practices of independent publishing, even though we reinvented a few wheels. If I have to point to one thing that may make us unique, it would be our willingness to adapt.

 

Describe what you’re putting together for the February 4th anniversary party at the UK Art Museum.

We’re thankful to the UK Art Museum for their hospitality and for the opportunity to celebrate our milestone among the highest quality works of art. Every poet who has ever published a book with us, or had an individual poem in one of our anthologies or magazines is invited to read. We have a fantastic lineup of authors and expect a great turnout. There will be refreshments, awards, surprises, giveaways. In the days and weeks leading up to the event, we will feature a series of interviews with Accents Publishing authors looking back on their Accents books and/or sharing current and future creative plans.

 

As you get ready to celebrate the milestone what are you most gratified, thankful, or proud of regarding Accents Publishing?

I am proud that we have persisted and survived. I am grateful that the vision for Accents not only hasn’t diminished, but has in fact expanded with exciting and innovative ideas. I am thankful for the support of the readers, authors, the media, the local and global poetry communities. I am grateful for the gifts Accents has brought into my life, for how this labor has changed me over the years, for how enriched I feel after everything read, edited, published. I feel gratitude for witnessing dozens of transformations of authors into writers. I am grateful for the beauty and the miracle of it all.

 

What’s your vision for the next ten years for Accents?

We do have plans! It is important for Accents to be a vital part of the contemporary literary conversation. We want to continue building and serving the community. I’d like for us to continue establishing ourselves as a premiere poetry publisher. We expect to release a series of novella-length books and memoirs, and also add short story collections to our catalog. We plan to offer writing classes and manuscript services, organize writing retreats. And we have a new goal of further developing the Accents Publishing blog and posting regular and relevant content. And more!

 

What advice would you have for someone who wants to start their own business be it a publishing company or some other venture?

Start small and know what your goals are.
Do have faith that you’ll manage.
Do not overcommit.
Avoid debt.
Review your goals often and let them evolve.
Rest is part of the process.
If you do not love doing it, do something else.