Slash Pine Press is a fledgling publisher of limited edition chapbooks, based at the University of Alabama and created in 2009. Both editors Joseph Wood and Patti White took the time to participate in this e-mail conversation about the challenge and excitement of starting a small press in today’s poetry and publishing scene.

Tell us a little about the history of your press, where the idea came from, and what makes your press unique.

Joseph:
Patti treated me to lunch at a steak place in Chicago at 2009’s AWP conference. We both were utterly overwhelmed by the massiveness of the conference—all those people, all those panels. Anyhow, Patti asked me if I’d wanted to start a chapbook press together—to do something, in Patti’s own words, “fun.” If there was anything that looked fun at AWP, it was the book fair with its myriad of tables—in particular, the chapbook tables with their beautiful books (and some even challenged the convention of what a “book” was). So, over lunch, viola, Slash Pine was born.

Even though we are new on the scene, I think the press is unique for a few reasons. We are part of The University of Alabama’s English department, albeit in our own little offices and with modest funding.  Because we exist within a university context, however, we are able to sponsor an undergraduate internship where we rely on the expertise of the students who assist in book making, event planning (for instance, help coordinate the Slash Pine Poetry Festival: a 40 person, 17 hour poetry festival in the spring), PR, and grant writing. The only thing students don’t do is editorial work for the press.

So, it’s weird: we’re using immersion learning in DIY chapbook culture, but most of the DIY movements seem to happen outside the university walls (though most of the people involved in DIY come from MFA programs). We have one foot in the school and one foot somewhere else.

Finally—and I say this with a smile—I have absolutely no impulse control. I will work and work and work, and that can lead to burn out (there was a terrific piece the Huffington Post did about how to survive the sophomore slump). Patti has had a good deal more years of work experience than I have—both within academia and outside of it—and so she brings a sense of balance and steadiness, and reins me in when necessary.

What are your thoughts on the accusation that the rise of MFA programs and the relative affordability of starting a small press or a journal are creating a glut of poetry—that there are more people writing poetry and seeking a publisher than actually reading poems?

Patti:
The notion of a glut of poetry is utterly alien to me. How could that be possible? It is as nonsensical as saying that there are too many narratives out there.

I am not very interested in these sorts of debates: questions about motivation, responsibility, membership. I don’t ask why another writer produced that book. I don’t mind if people publish and don’t read. I’m not the poet police. There are things on my shelf I haven’t read; this does not keep me up at night.

I like the ferment and frenzy of publishing that’s happening now; it feels democratic and honest, alive and risky. It seems to me the antithesis of the mood of AWP: that miasma of anxiety about status and credibility and possibility that hangs over the thousands of writers gathered there. I think the new publishers are trying to move outside that, to use their MFA training for their own, very specialized purposes. And what I like best about the so-called poetry glut may be the oddness and tenuousness of it all, the new presses that are completely of the moment. Much like the chapbook as a form: so tactile, so critical, so contingent and ephemeral.

I see that contingency—the coming together of forces for a particular purpose at a specific moment—as a very powerful thing. Potentially life-changing for those involved. So, no: there is not too much poetry in the world. Just barely enough, I would say.

What is the role or place of the small press in the larger publishing world? Is it hurt or helped by the current publishing and bookselling climate?

Joseph:
What are we defining as the larger publishing world? Seriously, this a term I’ve always found a little confusing. If it’s Random House or FSG, it’s the difference between a local food co-op vs. a supermarket chain—and all the economic and social implications that come with that analogy. We inhabit different universes. We’re not drawing on the same talent pool; we’re not remotely ever “competing” with those folks, nor do we really want to. They have their thing and we have ours.

If the term applies to university presses who publish poetry and often do so at a fiscal loss, then we’re all in the same boat—small chap presses, university presses, and independent book presses. We’re lucky to break even. Thus, one could make the quick conclusion: more presses equal less profit, perhaps even the overabundance of presses makes survival less tenable for all of us.

It is a sad fact the presses—for a variety of reasons, not always fiscal—fold. However, I also see all these jointly hosted readings off-site at AWP (where the real fun is), all these cross-promotions presses do for each other in the blogosphere or Twitter, all these chapbooks and books floating around my office, and I can’t but feel that I’m participating in a larger poetic community. And that’s where the excitement is for me—I’m not competing with these other chapbook folks; I’m conversing.

What is your feeling on e-books versus the printed book as an object?

Patti:
I have only had the smallest experience with an ebook. It does seem to me that the younger generations will find this mode of reading completely comfortable (which I do not). However, as an object in the world the ebook to date is not particularly appealing; it is literally cold to the touch and is singularly inflexible in terms of weight and texture. Still, as the technology develops, the ebook might offer more interesting presentation options, the electronic equivalent of book arts—so I wouldn’t want to dismiss it out of hand.

Joseph has committed Slash Pine to a certain amount of electronic presence, but for me the compelling thing about chapbooks is their physical manifestation: the containment of the text inside an object that has dimension, a different set of coordinates than a book or journal or website. I like how the chapbook manifests in the world: how it moves through decisions about poem order and font, to the origin of the paper and cutting of the cover, to the pattern of stitching or the weight of the binding thread. That beeswax might be involved. Or pots of paste.

So it would not be satisfying for me to simply upload a chapbook to the web. I don’t object to that sort of presence, and it does make the work available to a different, perhaps wider, audience. But I don’t see that as the main project of Slash Pine. Rather, we are interested in physical space and the work of the word within that space.

Joseph:
As someone who has an e-chap and “paper” chapbooks, I’d like to add my two cents here. The e-chap or e-journal can do amazing things in combining digital art and poetry, such as Blue Hour Press or Nate Slawson’s Dear Camera; these ventures fundamentally change how one reads. And even more “traditional” e-chaps can be solid and clean work, a beautiful object on screen, a labor of love.

That said, I agree with all of Patti’s claims about the pleasures of making physical objects and Slash Pine’s commitment to those pleasures. We have stitch parties and it is a real delight to commune with folks and just sew. I’m a bit of a luddite, but my sense is that the making of an e-chap is done one or two people at a time, and I’m more interested in hanging with friends or students and talking.

It’s a given that small presses don’t necessarily have the marketing budget or the name recognition of larger presses, so what is your approach to getting the word out there?

Joseph:
So, after my previous follow-up response to Patti’s last answer, now I must contradict myself some and talk about marketing, whose methods are largely digital, especially when one’s budget is slight and the promotional technology online low-cost.

To be specific: Brian Oliu, my tech-savvy officemate and terrific emerging writer, always asks this question: what is your web presence? It means having a centralized location that is constantly evolving and that is succinct, engaging, and takes on issues larger than the press itself. So, yes, we’ve thrown our hat into the oceans of Facebook and Twitter, but ideally, all these social networking tools lead people back to our press homepage. We want a presence that suggests we’re not only promoting our own books and events, but also commenting or questioning larger issues within chap publishing, independent reading series, and creative writing pedagogy. Those larger things are just beginning to surface on our blog, since we recently emigrated from Blogger as our sole method of web presence, which honestly was quite static.

All this said, nothing beats the hand-to-hand, personal meeting. This means going to AWP or other literary conferences and having a book table. It means having large-ass readings and inviting people from all walks of life. It means—at least for me—hitting the road, doing my own readings, and afterward, not just selling my own work, but also bringing work from my press. Of course, I have a wife and three year old at home, so I can’t whiz around the country every month. But when I do go places, I let people know about the press. Hopefully if they’re interested, they’ll buy something or at least check us out on the web.

What do you look for in a poem or a {chap}book as a whole?

Patti:
We have five editors at Slash Pine. Each manuscript gets three blind readings, and the final selections are made during a marathon discussion of the top 15 or so. We deliberately chose editors with different aesthetics, and one consequence of that is that the editors cannot make any assumptions about what works for the press. Selection depends upon reaching a consensus, so the discussion of the manuscripts is very much grounded in specifics: we talk about things as detailed as word choice and as broad as the momentum and arc of a manuscript narrative.

Our mission is to foster work that addresses the notion of place, whether construed as location or situation. We want work that is at risk, however that is understood. And we want work that has edge, heft, and weight. To put it another way, we are not particularly interested in the facile, the precious, the pretentious, or the gimmick.

If I had to produce a rubric for a manuscript, it might list things like facility with language, control of voice, attention to line, respect for the reader, things like that. But really, I want a manuscript like a spiral galaxy: radical movement, blinding light, incredible density at the center.

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing the small press community today and what is its best advantage?

Joseph:
Well, a press needs resources, and I don’t mean this solely as a fiscal statement. Like I said before, we live in an era where poetry—particularly the chapbook—is decentralized and grassroots poetry communities are springing up everywhere. On one hand, this is terrific in that it suggests there’s not some singular, hegemonic rubric everyone needs to follow to be published, to be heard. On the other hand, a press requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience, often at the expense of editors pursuing their own writing (assuming they’re writers) or other extraneous hobbies. And from what I’ve witnessed, the presses that survive either have one or two editors who possess a drive that is borderline superhuman or there is infrastructure in place to help with the workload. I think Slash Pine is lucky to be able to use undergrad interns—not to serve Patti or I in “grunt work”, but to take leadership and ownership of the press’s book and performance projects.

In other words, Patti & I might have big, broad ideas, but the interns have voices that refine and revise and hone the scope of our publishing and reading series ventures. And they too will throw out their own ideas about potential projects—and if there’s consensus among other members of the press, we’ll roll with it.

What have I failed to ask that you’d most like to say about your press and publishing?

Joseph:
When Patti & I had the lunch a year ago in Chicago, you could have never told me this where we would be a year later—a press, a poetry festival, a hike/poetry reading in the Fall, and even bigger plans to come. You never could have told me that the sterility and coldness I initially felt from the AWP conference was the home of a thousand voices, many of whom are generous, modest, and in it for the discourse, not the reputation. In my early to mid 20s, I saw publishing as a way to build poetic “credibility”. Now, in my mid 30s, I see it as a way to communicate and contribute—however minutely—to a more empathetic and sensitive planet.

But most importantly, you never cold have told me this venture could be pedagogical—not only for the students, but from the students to me. An assortment of twenty year olds—with a variety of majors and interests (we deliberately draw from the English Dept. and other creativity driven majors or initiatives)—could help me learn the finer points about PR, web design, or grant writing. Something’s happening down here in Alabama and it blows my mind.

Patti:
I had no idea what I was getting into. This thing has exploded in our hands and I see shards of it lodging in all kinds of unexpected places. But I can’t say (at least not with a straight face) that Slash Pine is making a more sensitive and empathetic planet—or if it is, that’s not at all what drives my interest in publishing. For me, it’s an opportunity to exist in the world of words in a more immediate and personally dangerous way.

That desire for words (and new ways to encounter them) has a logic of its own, one that leads almost inevitably from chapbooks to things like poetry hikes and festivals and a swarm of interns who share that hunger. I see Slash Pine Press as following that logic to its illogical consequences: pushing the boundaries and borders of what is feasible and sensible, locating itself on the very edge of what works. Part of what makes it possible for Slash Pine to find that edge and succeed in that space, is—as Joseph said—the union of publishing and pedagogy. What we teach and learn in the process defines us.

So we’ll return to AWP this year with a different attitude, and having engaged in some conversations that are making that vast enterprise a little more meaningful for us. Thus, one of the unasked questions might be: what makes us, and Slash Pine, different from every other writer and bookseller in the room. In the end, probably nothing. And maybe that’s an honest and good thing: to realize that what made me so unhappy that day in the steakhouse was my own disengagement. Which is not to say that every anxious person at AWP needs to start up a press. But I would say that for some of us, the hunger for words will never be satisfied unless we get to print those words ourselves. And read them out loud in Alabama. So picture this now: a young writer at the edge of a pond, or standing in a field of goldenrod, and the words falling out of the blue sky. Like that. That’s what we want to do.