So given our topic, "The Joys and Challenges of Small Press
Publishing," I thought we could begin by hearing about some
of the joys of the work that you do.
What positive things keep you moving forward
with your publishing?
And I don't care what order we go in.
Whoever feels compelled to begin.
Well, I like what Drew said in his bio somewhere which
is I get to publish whatever I want, whenever I want it.
And that, I enjoy that kind of freedom as well,
and it doesn't come without constraints, which I guess,
we can talk about in a little later.
But that's totally thrilling to do what you love,
to get to read so much and do creative works
and meet amazing people and other writers
and really make a contribution that's
meaningful to the community, both local and national.
Those are just tremendous joys for me.
Just a few of them.
To me, part of writing poetry certainly
is to have a sense of engaging in a conversation,
a conversation that goes back to ancient times
and to the present with any poet you can imagine.
But starting a press makes that conversation sort
of more palpable, in a way.
You actually physically have to do with those people
that you want to be in that conversation with.
So you know, Drew says, yes, you absolutely
publish whatever you want to, but you not only publish it,
you know who those people are, your life has to do with them.
And so to me, it is not a job in the normal sense.
It is a total engagement of one's life with the work.
And it's full of surprises, every day,
when something comes in the mail, when something happens.
And so recently, we well we've published a few books
by the Vietnamese-American poet Linh Dinh
and I was so surprised the other day
to get a phone call, someone putting together
a conference in which they were featuring him.
And the person who called me from Brown University
was the fiction writer Robert Coover.
And so I just thought, Wow, Robert Coover is calling me.
You know, I mean, when I was a graduate student, he was it,
and maybe still is, I don't know.
But you know, it was just so that's
another example of that conversation is always
extending to and that is a great joy.
Like Lisa and Charles said that I said--
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know.
For me, it's been feeling a whole lot
like a really awesome club.
Like, I get to go places and there's Kevin Sampsell
at Powell's in Portland.
He is a lot like me, but more coherent, better spoken.
But I have no, no real rationale for what we're doing.
We started with an objective and the objective
has evolved into us really wanting to do books.
And we really like to hang out with each other.
And because we do everything by hand,
that requires a whole lot of hanging out
with each other, which has become for me, kind
of the greatest part of everything that we do,
which is these people that I like,
we sit there face to face, hours and hours, a day, weeks on end,
just to get this little thing done that we
sell for almost no money.
And we-- this is the coherence thing
that I was talking about a second ago.
It reminds me of when we were in high school,
having our big dreams, that part of our brain understood
would never come to fruition.
And we have come to a point where now, we're
doing these things that we think are so super awesome.
And we're drawing pictures on our peachy folders,
and they were turning them into plates,
and pressing them on our big presses.
And it all seems very unreal, and very beautiful,
and very awesome.
And it's a hell of a lot more fun
than I thought we would be having, doing literary stuff.