The House of Words (no. 15): Small presses: Phoenicia Publishing

Beth Adams talks about small press publishing, continued

Three small stones observed,
made of pigment, paper, love--
January's gifts.

31 January 2011

Another strength of a micro-press is that it can be a speedy hare. We can bring high-quality books out a lot faster than the typical publishing cycle, and sometimes there’s an important reason to do that. Rachel Barenblat’s book happened very fast indeed – there were only about six weeks from the decision to do it until the publication, which was timed to coordinate with her ordination as a rabbi. And Christmas and New Year’s came in-between! I wouldn’t want to do that often, but with this process it’s possible.



"Cycladic Figure in a Quebec Landscape," 2010
Preparatory drawing in Conté crayon and chalk

Because I’ve spent my professional career – more than 30 years now -- in graphic design and communications, with a focus on print and digital publications, I’m used to tight deadlines where quality has to be maintained, and the whole publishing process is very familiar to me. But if I couldn’t act as editor, designer, and publisher, and had to pay someone, this wouldn’t be financially viable. Even so, it’s a labor of love; I don’t pay myself anything, and the goal is to break even, which we are doing.

I’ve worked with many other artists, photographers, writers, and musicians over the years-- and that’s important. Publishers need to know what really means to be a creative person, especially in today’s world. We need to be collaborative, and empathetic, never exploitative: then it can be a creative partnership and a rewarding process.

Ashley Cooper, "Homebodies," April 9 - May 14

"The Madonna of the Laptop" (casein, 2010)
ashleynorwoodcooper.com

Yesterday I spent the afternoon driving over to Earlville (five miles from Colgate University in Hamilton) to attend the opening of Ashley Cooper's show, "Homebodies." If you're in the region, I highly recommend a visit. The show will be up from April 9-May 14 in the East Gallery of the Earlville Opera House.

It was a sunny day, and I enjoyed the drive and visiting with Ashley to talk about the paintings and what she might do next, meeting a few people, and mulling over her wonderful work, narrative paintings in which dollhouse-style-cut-open houses and their nearby yards and street reveal unexpected threats. The fragility of domestic life is undermined by accident, death and time (cut-away earth reveals bones that sometimes wish to devour what is living), wildness, strangers, or occult threats.

Ashley is a fellow Southerner who lives around the block from me, and so--thinking of her images--you may imagine us each working away in the daytime in our cut-open houses, children at school or away, cocooned in a fragile nest. I picked "The Madonna of the Laptop" to illustrate because it reminds me of how I wrote my first book.

"The Marriage Bed" from THE THRONE OF PSYCHE



"Touched" by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Cover and jacket image for The Throne of Psyche
(Mercer University Press, 2011)


Time for an excerpt from The Throne of Psyche: this passage is about halfway through the title poem. I thought maybe you needed a little drama, a little visit from Eros, a marriage of your Psyche-soul and Eros-body here at the start of the weekend...

The poem was originally published in Mezzo Cammin.

III. THE MARRIAGE BED

And if the palace seemed bewitching, how
Much more the bed, a marvel of the gods—
Like nothing for an earthly king and queen,
A lustrous treasure box packed up in silks,
Four-legged, each leg a tree of ebony.
As shadows slid across the windowsills,
Collecting in the corners of the room,
The trees began to send out wands and leaves,
Darkening the air with gleaming branches.
Whoever saw such freedom from the laws
Of earth? I stared, forgot to tremble in
My wonder as new tendrils wove a maze
Above a bed that glistened, beetle-black.
Unseen hands drew dusk across the portal
And windows, carried off the glowing lamp,
And strewed fresh petals on the inlaid floor.
If this was how my promised husband’s house
Received his bride, perhaps the feathered snake
—for so Apollo’s oracle foretold—
Could be more beautiful than I had dreamed,
If flying terror could be beautiful.
Shade took the room until I could not see.
A mimic springtime blossomed on each branch
As tiny stars shone out, began to crawl
And sometimes blink like phosphorescent bugs.

I fell asleep and shinned the olive tree
That waxed inside my mother’s garden walls
And heard a crinkling of the leaves that spoke
Oracular to me of love and fate,
But where was dream and where the waking world
I hardly knew, and when the feathered snake
Came wooing with eternal promises,
I let him hold me in his arms that seemed
More like a man’s than like a serpent’s grasp.
Yet fear is strange: at times he seemed all scales
That snagged against the linen of my gown,
At times he seemed as yielding as a child.
I woke to find that what I dreamed was true—
The rustle of his wings was like the leaves,
The arms that pinned me close were like a man’s,
Although no man could emanate such fire,
A darkness glowing in the chamber’s pitch.
But what did I, long sheltered in my home,
Know of the ways of monsters or of men?
A tree of nerves sprang into trembling life
Inside this body that the world desired
But never knew—the starry insects swarmed
Among the maze of limbs and multiplied
Until the dark was pricked with flecks of light
That gave no seeing to my open eyes.
The snake kept winding on the tree of me—
I flashed with nervous fire from root to leaf
And shivered as my gown was tugged aside.
A rush of wood: new saplings broke the floor
And forested the chamber, wild with growth.
The room dissolved as floor was changed to earth
And roof transformed to sky and swarming stars.
In midnight’s wilderness my lover struck
Asunder all my childhood’s innocence—
The little stars went shrieking through the wood
As jet-black trees contracted, splintered, fell.

I lay within a nest of shattered twigs.
A shape with wings was sobbing on my breast,
Some wall between us battered down to dust.
I touched the face invisible to me.
His serpent pinions beat convulsively.


***Available via Indie Store Finder (find an independent store near you), Amazon, and other outlets, etc. We appear to be in the very end of the pre-order period.

The House of Words (no. 14): Small presses: Phoenicia Publishing

Elizabeth (Beth) Adams is the founder of Phoenicia Publishing, a small independent publishing house in Montreal, and co-managing editor of qarrtsiluni online literary magazine. Her prose and poetry have appeared in venues from The Witness to Tikkun, and in June 2006 her book Going to Heaven: The Life and Election of Bishop Gene Robinson, was published by indie NY publisher Soft Skull Press. She is the author of The Cassandra Pages, a blog about art, life and spirit that has just entered its ninth year.

Such struggle gave these subjects to the queen

that consuming them with relish

gave her pleasure.

(olives, watercolor, 22 January 2010)

Marly: Writers are now confronted with many choices—there are major houses and midsize, presses of various sizes, nanopublishing, and self-publishing. What are the strengths of a micro-publisher like   Phoenicia Publishing? What do you see as your special strengths and past experience that contribute?

Beth:  Marly, I don’t know that we have any “strength” at all – all publishers are having a hard time. But there are several things I’m able to do that bigger houses can’t. One is to have a fairly narrow focus about what I publish, so that over time Phoenicia’s list will, I hope, can have an identifiable integrity. This will only emerge slowly, but it’s something that matters to me.

Her self-portrait from October, 2010.

I do know what I like and what I’m after. Some of that has come from a lifetime of reading and writing, but I think my skills and confidence as an editor have been honed by co-editing qarrtsiluni and working closely with my colleague and friend Dave Bonta. We see so much writing, poetry in particular, and have had to articulate to each other not only what we like and don’t like, but why. We almost always agree, but I know I’ve learned a huge amount and gained confidence through qarrtsiluni, and also through relationships with other writers that I’ve been fortunate to develop through eight years of blogging.

The main difference between a small house like Phoenicia and a large one is that we can afford to take risks on high-quality but quirky work that doesn’t fit elsewhere. If I see something that I’m crazy about and believe in, I can do it, while the big houses often can’t.

Beth's "Vermont Autumn" (2010)

Continued
Come back for more of The House of Words on Monday. Up tomorrow: "The Marriage Bed"