first book interviews: elyse fenton

I think it’s easy to feel overshadowed by The First Book. As if you’ll never write another poem worthy of publication again. To combat that potentially paralyzing fear, I just try to write as much and as often as I can—which is really a pitiably amount at the moment-- and to banish thoughts of future submission periods. Of course, that’s easier said than done...

Read more...

first book interviews: sandy longhorn

Once the book is accepted, the work of getting it into the hands of readers begins, and that work will fall, mostly, on the poet. Some poets are good at this naturally; others are not. Know yourself and set realistic expectations. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Read more...

2 interviews

Leslie Harrison
I sent it, mostly out of curiosity, to a couple of contests, even though it didn’t feel finished, yet. I’d heard how awfully hard it is to get a first book taken, and I was worried about that, so I wanted to test the waters. Then, a few months later, I’d had a breakthrough concerning structure, and it felt finished, so I sent it out to five places—all on the same day. One of those places was the Bakeless. So, maybe seven in all, but I ended up withdrawing it from three of those places after it won.

Luke Johnson
After the Ark is, more or less, my MFA thesis from Hollins University. There are a few poems from the years before, and one or two from the year after. I think it came together in the relatively common way: poems strewn across the floor of my living room. I spent a few weeks walking among the poems I’d written during that three year period, moving them around, searching for connections in image and some sort of coherent narrative...

Read more...

first book interview: brent goodman

It's tempting to believe that the only important books being published are those seen advertised as contest winners in Poets & Writers, but this is not the case. Do you want to be the poet recognized by the imprint, or the poet who earns the imprint recognition? It's the living manuscript that ultimately finds its readers, so the circumstances surrounding how the book gets published shouldn't concern us much.

Read more...

first book interview: Mari L’Esperance

It's been an enormous relief to have my book published—I'd been living with some of the poems for so long—and it's also been a source of tremendous anxiety. I sunk into a post-book trough for a while, feeling anxious and directionless and unsure of next steps. In recent months, I've been mulling, reading, gathering material, and writing what I've called “transitional” poems, which may at some point become part of a second manuscript. I'm also a very slow writer. My core themes continue to inhabit new poems—how can they not?—but I sense an internal loosening that's reflected in these newer poems, which seem more lyrically associative and intuitively shaped than my previous work.

Read more...

first book interview: rhett iseman trull

Once I had over fifty pages of poetry, I thought I had a book. I now realize a certain number of poems don’t make a book. I’m not saying all the poems need to be connected or anything, but there does need to be an overarching idea or two or three that can weave through the poems and create the feel of a lot of parts that can stand on their own but also, when brought together, make a whole that is more than the sum of those parts.

Read more...

first book interview: jehanne dubrow

I know too many people who feel frozen as long as the first book is unable to find a home. As a result, they stop writing new poems. Then, once the first book finally finds a publisher, many of these poets have so lost the habit of writing that they have no idea what’s next. I know one poet who has been revising a first collection for 15+ years. This poet can’t move on to something new, because the first book remains a looming and oppressive presence.

Read more...