! BOOKS !

Posted on December 2, 2025December 2, 2025 by Jami Macarty

Dear Gift Reader,

Hello, may you be healthy and in pursuit of what makes you happy.

I am happy to welcome you to this conversation about reading and making books. Today is a Big Day in my writing and publishing life. Today, December 2, 2025, is the official publication day for The Long Now Conditions Permit!

In this ! Books ! dispatch, I share with you the story of how my second full-length collection has come into being—from writing individual poems to their publication in literary magazines to the selection of the manuscript, The Long Now Conditions Permit, as winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize to finding the perfect cover image.

AnnouncingThe Long Now Conditions Permit!

**THE LONG NOW CONDITIONS PERMIT**
by Jami Macarty
University of Nevada Press, December 2025

The Long Now Conditions Permit confronts the persistent brutalities of our world through poetry that both names and resists the injustices shaping it. From the quiet sorrows of everyday slight to the overwhelming crises of ecological collapse and gendered violence, these poems document what is occurring—the horrendous and the intimate, the anguished and the magnificent.

With ethical attention, Jami Macarty’s collection engages the political, ecological, and personal forces that shape and mark our lives, offering an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Each poem meditates on power, insists on articulating what is being lost—and what must be saved and reclaimed.

Amid the exploitation and violence, these poems find moments of grace: the scent of a sea rose, a desert walk in spring, the company of birds, Earth entire. The Long Now Conditions Permit is both tender elegy and urgent call, exhorting readers to grapple with the devastating failings of humanity and the saving possibilities of love.

Winning the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize

On March 4, 2024 my second manuscript of poetry marched forth to its life as a book when I answered a call from Claudia Keelan, editor, who told me The Long Now Conditions Permit won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize!

The 2023 Test Site Poetry Prize Semifinalists, Finalists, and Winners!

The Test Site Poetry Series is the collaborative book-publishing project of Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and the University of Nevada Press. Interim, established in 1944 by the late Wilber Stevens, is housed in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is one of the longest-running “little” literary magazines in the United States. Interim editors and poets Claudia Keelan and Andrew S. Nicholson serve as Test Site Poetry Series editors. The Test Site Poetry Prize-winning book is chosen by Claudia Keelan and an advisory board, which includes poets Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.

The editors and advisory board are looking for manuscripts that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. The winning book will demonstrate an ethos that considers the human condition in inclusive love and sympathy, while offering the same in consideration of the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we’ll especially appreciate books with innovative approaches.

Now, some of the delicious words The Test Site Poetry Series editorial board members shared about The Long Now Conditions Permit!

from Sasha Steensen (on Facebook):

from Ronaldo V. Wilson (the book’s endorsement):

from Claudia Keelan (the book’s endorsement):

from Donald Revell (the book’s endorsement):

These poets’ words for The Long Now Conditions Permit, heart-expanding gifts!

Finding the Cover Photo

The first time I saw Masahiko Kuroki‘s photograph of the tree (above) was early December 2024, scrolling my Facebook feed. It was late at night after a long day’s driving in a highway-side hotel. I had been stressing over the just-right photo. The publisher didn’t care for my ideas, and I wasn’t wild about theirs. Such is the often fraught book cover conversation!

It’s a mystery as to why Masahiko Kuroki’s photo appeared in my feed. I wasn’t following him. I had never heard of him. Nor had I previously seen any of his photos. Yet somehow rather miraculously his photo appeared. When I saw it, I slid off the edge of the bed. Then recovering myself from the floor, I shined the image toward my partner’s face and asked, What about this for the cover? As if falling off the bed wasn’t enough!

When I shared Mashiko Kuroki’s photograph with the University of Nevada Press team, they said: “But we’re really loving the final image… It’s the most unique of all the images you’ve suggested, or that we’ve found, and I love that the tree can be interpreted literally as a tree, or with just a bit of imagination, as a woman with her arms outstretched.”

As we moved through the design process, their admiration for Kuroki’s photograph grew: “Again, our team just loves this image! It’s so evocative and interesting. I think it’s really going to pull readers in.”

And, as we arrived at the cover’s final design: “For what we’ve started calling the “tree woman” image here in the office, I still think this is the best option, by far. If you want something unique that you’re not going to find on another book cover, this is the image to choose. We were talking about it in our staff meeting this morning, and everyone agrees this is one of the most striking covers we’ve proposed in quite a long time.”

I experience Masahiko Kuroki’s photo viscerally every time I behold it. I feel an upward reaching within me. Masahiko Kuroki’s photo is perfect company for the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit which feature the figures of trees and women and seek a freedom from the threat of violence that all too often pervades natural and domestic environments.

Thank you to, Masahiko Kuroki, for agreeing to accompanying my poems with his photograph!

Writing the Poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit

I freshly wrote or deeply revised all of the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit over ninety-five days between January 2020 and January 2021. The poems were drafted/revised among a shifting cohort of other poets during five days in person at a goddess table in January 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was just coming to our attention. Then, over three thirty-day online poem-a-day writing sprees in July 2020, October 2020, and January 2021. I loved the practice of trying to write a poem-a-day. The intensity! There were duds, but there were keepers. The process gave me an experience of seeing just what writing I could accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It showed me the momentum of daily practice and power of cumulative effect in writing. The practice offered me a community of writers. And I made some poetry pals!

Generous Publishers of Individual Poems

What makes a full-length collection? Individual poems! They are the building blocks and act as gateways from poem to poem, and engender conversations between poet and editor, poet and publisher. Individual poems have their own lives and are part of the lives of full-length collections. Individual poems are the beginning of a book, and they point to a book when it comes into being.

While searching for my book’s publisher, I tweaked the poems and tried out the revised versions by sending them out for consideration with literary magazines in Canada and the US. This editorial process offered me valuable information about which poems would make up the manuscript of The Long Now Conditions Permit. Sometimes the poems editors believed in were also the poems I believed in. Sometimes not. So, I had to figure out which poems mattered most to the life of the book.

Thirteen editors of literary magazines selected individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit for publication in their the literary magazines they helm. I wish to acknowledge the hardworking and devoted editors, staff, publishers, and printers for giving time, attention, and space to my writing. Thank you, Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020). Special thanks to Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Vallum Magazine, and Vallum Chapbook Series for their ongoing support of my writing by publishing my poems in several issues between 2020 and 2024.

I take the time and space above to name these editors and publications as a gesture of gratitude because they took the time with and offered space to my writing. They are important to my writing life. And they are part of the valuable conversation I want to have about my poems and poetry in general.

Seeking a Publisher

In December 2021, I offered for consideration to The Test Site Poetry Series the first version of the manuscript. It was one hundred and twenty pages long! That’s long by most standards. Typically, the recommended length for manuscripts is around seventy pages. The manuscript’s title was, and has always been, The Long Now Conditions Permit. It was named a finalist for The Test Site Poetry Series. Spur! The next year and the one after that, the manuscript was on the shortlist with Canada’s Brick Books. Spur! Spur! Then, in March 2024 it won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize! In all, I offered the manuscript for consideration forty-one times.

For me, the story of how The Long Now Conditions Permit came into being sums to two words: Persistence! Perseverance!

Now, Seeking Readers

Now, for my book I seek readers! Gentle, generous readers who will give The Long Now Conditions Permit the gift of their attention. I would love to count you as one of my poetry collection’s readers! Will you be one of The Long Now Conditions Permit‘s readers?

: : : :

Thank You Bows!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life here!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my precious community. To everyone who support my writing, especially women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows for supporting The Long Now Conditions Permit (2025): +Bows (continuous!) to my publisher the University of Nevada Press and staff for making my book The Long Now Conditions Permit with me. +Bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (University of Nevada Press, December 2025) as the 2023 winner of the Test Site Series Prize. +Bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan, Donal Revell, and Ronaldo V. Wilson for offering your word-endorsements! +Bows to Mashiko Kuroki for his luminous tree-woman photo for the cover! +Bows (continuous) to the editors of literary magazines who supported the publication of individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit: Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020).

! BOOKS !

Posted on October 21, 2025October 22, 2025 by Jami Macarty

Hello, Gentle Reader!

Thanks very much for meeting me here to talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. | Oscar Wilde

Lately, I have been thinking about artistic attention, luck, and obscurity—and how each shapes creative expression. I gravitate toward intransigent, nonconforming artists (Gertrude Stein, Leslie Scalapino, Diane Arbus, Ana Mendieta, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson…) who create on their own terms. Despite pressures to conform, I take inspiration from their windy lead and endeavor to do my own thing in the lines of my poems and in their forms on the page.

One can perhaps please one’s self and earn that slender right to persevere. | Marianne Moore

Honestly, few people pay much attention to my writing, which is sort of a gift. This freedom allows me to conduct experiments and make discoveries according to my own creative process and standards without being swayed by external expectations or trends. Without the anxiety of meeting an imagined reader’s standards of quality, I find joy and fulfillment in wordplay for its own sake. That often leads me to push language further to meaning’s margins and make a word-thing that surprises and pleases me.

Obscurity grants me artistic freedom and playfulness, and occasionally, my writing resonates with the “right” reader. That feels like true luck—when someone gives my writing their attention.

The lucky gift of attention! Judges MA|DE and Kevin Spenst named my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) a finalist for Meet the Presses 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Woohoo! What an excellent surprise!

This recognition as a finalist is especially special because the poems in The Whole Catastrophe are, to my mind, not trying to be anyone else’s or other than themselves. They are doing their own sonic linguistic idiosyncratic thing on the page.

I’m oodles grateful for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award judges’ acknowledgement.

Above is a screenshot from wee three-minute finalist video—the background cover photo of The Whole Catastrophe by Dennis A. Boyd, features thousands of sandhill cranes at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area—shown at H of the Night.

Hosted by Meet the Presses collective, H of the Night celebrates Canadian small press publishing and the glory of chapbooks! Hurrah chapbooks! This year’s H of the Night announced the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award finalists and shared excerpts from our short-listed chapbooks.

I couldn’t have made my three-minute video without pre-production assistance from JRW and post-production stichery from the collective’s Aaron Tucker. Thank you! Thank you!

You’re cordially invited to tune in to H of the Night! Click to 38:51 to listen and watch my reading from The Whole Catastrophe which includes a dawn liftoff of birds in the thousands! It has to be seen to be believed in your heart!

The gift and luck of attention! From generous editors of literary magazines to whom I am grateful for giving my writing airtime: Two poems—”Once Upon a Time According to the Promise” and “What moves in the river is only the river”—in Diode; Four poems—”Two Autobiographies,” “To the Jury,” “Dual Scythes,” and “Mind of Snow”—in BlazeVOX-Poetry Extra Extra section; “The Fire Walker” in Taos Journal of Poetry; “Cold Record” in Action, Spectacle; “Snow is” in JMWW; “Backyard Fable” in SWIMM Every Day. You’re cordially invited to read some poems!

These publications are important to me because they are tangible artifacts of writing new or revising draft poems and sending out those poems for consideration, even while I am between projects—The Whole Catastrophe (September 2024) and The Long Now Conditions Permit (December 2025).

“Start a new project,” a writer friend advised me in a long-ago conversation about what to do when a book project is resting in completion. I took that to mean: Don’t wait! Write! So, I write. Of course the “rejections” (71 poem batches!) outweigh the “acceptances” (8 poems!), but both offer me what Marianne Moore called “that slender right to persevere.”

Some more lucky attention from organizers of readings and their audiences! Gathering with other poets—just look at those shining faces above—to read my poems aloud to an audience is nerve-racking and heart-special. It’s not like anything else.

If writing poetry is an inward-reaching gesture then reading poetry aloud to precious others is an outward-reaching gesture—two partner energies coming together in a gorgeous wholeness.

I and my poems have been out and about! In Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Tucson, and on Zoom with Mercy Street Readings and Lit Balm: An Interactive Reading Series. Click on the live link to watch my reading at Lit Balm!

At each event, I read a different mix of poems from The Whole Catastrophe and The Long Now Conditions Permit, adding in poems from The Minuses, Landscape of The Wait, and Instinctive Acts (out of print). It was creatively gratifying to connect themes across collections and discover what’s still relevant to me in the continuum of writing poems.

This year, I have also given my attention to other writers. In addition to teaching creative writing courses at Simon Fraser University, I moderated a panel at Tucson Festival of Books and offered workshops and a reading at the Mining for Gold Writing Retreat in Gold Bridge, British Columbia. These conversations were filled with the sweetness of learning and having fun with words!

A metaphor could change your life. | a fortune I received recently

Whether I offered a reading, moderated a poetry panel, or taught in a writing retreat, each of these occasions required accepting invitations, showing up, giving attention, and receiving attention. The luck of attention! The gift of attention!

: : : :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my community of women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vallum Chapbook Series and Eleni Zisimatos, Editor, and Leigh Kotsilidis, Designer, for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (2024) with me.

+ Thank you bows to Meet the Presses and the judges of the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award for their support and acknowledgement of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to the intrepid organizers for making space for me and my words at Sandbox Music, Chatter: Contemporary Chamber Music, form & concept gallery, Tucson Festival of Books, Tucson Arts Poetry Society, Interim, Mercy Street Readings, Lit Balm, and to the very fine writers who joined me and shared space.

+ I bow to the editors who supported the publication of my poems and the publications where they were published: Jen Karetnick at SWIMM; Jen Michalski at JMWW; Adam Day at Action, Spectacle; Catherine Strisik at Taos Journal of Poetry; Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Patty Paine at Diode.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025).

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts (2018) with me.

+ Thank you bows to (continuous!) Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! Books !

Posted on January 21, 2025October 19, 2025 by Jami Macarty

Welcome to our meeting place where we talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

I am writing to you on Martin Luther King’s birthday. I write to you on this auspicious day to honor Dr. King and you, Dear Reader, as a member of my Beloved Community. Though Fellowship of Reconciliation founder Josiah Royce coined the term Beloved Community, Dr. King popularized it with the intention of advancing goodwill for all people sharing life on Earth.

I have been thinking a lot about the connections books facilitate and how reading engenders community, communing, and conversation. Conversations like the one I have with you here, and the conversations I have with other writers.

On December 11, 2024, Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters hosted a space for Canadian poet T. Liem to interview me on the making of my fourth chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

In the interview’s introduction, T. Liem describes their reader’s enagement with the poems of The Whole Catastrophe:

Read my response to T’s opening remarks and the entire interview, titled An Inked Shorthand of Marks, in which we talk about exploding vilanelles, what poetry can do for us, verbing and nouning words, and personal and ecological grief. Join our conversation!

When poets offer poetry readings together, they make possible multiple facets of connection and conversation between themselves, among their books, and with the readers/listeners who attend. On December 7, 2024, POG Arts Tucson and Chax Press hosted me, Sarah Rosenthal, and Valerie Witte at Tucson’s 326 Gallery to read from our recent poetry collections.

The action shots (above) of us, our introducers, and some of the beautiful audience members who extended their ears and hearts to us, made for a lovely, rich, full evening of conversation about books.

Sarah, Valerie, and I have planned more gathering places for ourselves, our books, and others in Santa Fe later this month and early February. Join us if you can!

Reviewing is another facet of conversation that spirals out from books. A review faciliates conversations between author and reviewer and between reviewer and other readers of the book, and carries the possibility of building a community of readers around a book. In 2024, I offered 40 reviews, totalling almost 12,000 words, to poetry titles. Two long-form reviews were published in Colorado Review and The Malahat Review. Thirty-eight short-form reviews were published in NewPages. I tried to write four reviews a month… See the list below for when I achieved that goal.

2024 REVIEWS: An offering of 40 reviews!

In Colorado Review
- 5.27: Ishmael Mask (Autumn House Press, 2023), by Charles Kell
In The Malahat Review:
- 1.2024 #225: Lent (Book*hug Press, 2023), by Kate Cayley
In NewPages:
- 12.31: Pine Soot Tendon Bone, by Radha Marcum
- 12.28: Ojo en Celo/Eye in Heat, by Margarita Pintado Burgos
- 12.26: Invisible Lives, by Cristalle Smith
- 12.21: Thank you for Letting Us Know You Are Alive, by J. Tseng
- 11.28: Ordinary Entanglement, by Melissa Dickey
- 11.26: EtC, by Laura Mullen
- 11.24: Susto, by Tommy Archuleta
- 11.23: Nest of Matches, by Amie Whittemore
- 10.31: She Falls Again, by Rosanna Deerchild
- 10.29: Blue on a Blue Palette, by Lynne Thompson
- 10.26: Song of the Ground Jay, edited by Mojdeh Bahar
- 10.22: Ghost Work, by Robert Colman
- 10.19: Precedented Parroting, by Barbara Tran
- 10.15: Stedfast, by Ali Blythe
- 10.9: Tangled in Vow & Beseech, by Jill McCabe Johnson
- 9.26: fox woman get out!, by India Lena González
- 9.21: Whipsaw, by Suzanne Frischkorn
- 9.12: American Scapegoat, by Enzo Silon Surin
- 9.3: Listening to Mars, by Sally Ashton
- 8.19: In Violet, by Margo LaPierre
- 8.10: à genoux, by Morgan Christie
- 8.6: Open Leaves, by Harryette Mullen
- 8.3: The Word for Standing Alone in a Field, by J. I. Kleinberg
- 7.15: Wonder About The, by Matthew Cooperman
- 7.13: The King of Terrors, by Jim Johnstone
- 7.11: Permission to Relax, by Sheila Murphy
- 7.9: Only Insistence, by James Lindsay
- 6.28: One, by Haley Lasché
- 6.22: Mechanical Bull, by Rennie Ament
- 5.8: Poèmes deep/Gravitas, by Amy Berkowitz
- 5.2: If This Isn’t Love, by Susana H. Case
- 4.30: Thine, by Kate Partridge
- 4.5: Romance Language, by Amy Glynn
- 4.3: A Rupture in the Interiors, by Valerie Witte
- 2.20: In a Body, by Emily Hockaday
- 2.17: A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery, by Tina Carlson
- 2.15 : Life Cycle of the Mayfly, by Maya Clubine
- 2.12: We Could Hang a Radical Panel of Light, by Sarah Rosenthal

Reviewing is much more than a numbers game to me. I think of my reviewing as a practice in attention for myself and as service to writers in my/our creative community. I focus my attention especially on the underrepresented voice of writers who identify as women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ, and the small presses within the publication world. I write reader’s response reviews to understand how a book has impacted me, to support the writers and publishers of books, and to support the magazines that publish reviews, which in turn support me by publishing the reviews I write. Together we form a big, beautiful community, congregating around books. Hurrah, books!

Before there can be any of the outward spiralling from books described above, there is the inward spiralling as reading impacts my reader’s imagination. Books teach me how to read. They teach me the thrill of discovery—of knowledge, interest, art. They offer company, and through representation, inspire me to be the person, woman, and artist I want to be in the world we share.

If you have been following these ! Books ! posts, then you may recall #mypersonalBigRead project. Begun in 2018 to address the stacks of unread books towering around my desk (and, if I am honest, throughout my house), the project now centers around my education in poetry and connection with other writers and readers.

In 2024, I read 262 books! Here are the stats for the project’s seven years:

Ahem, that is a total of 2000 books, Dear Reader. I read 2000 books in seven years. I have to repeat it to believe it. Perhaps because I was a child of a single parent who neither read to me nor encouraged me to read, perhapas because I have a learning disability, perhaps because I am scared each time I pick up a book, wondering if I will be able to read it, reading 2000 books in seven years is a big deal! Hurrah books!

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The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and Eleni Zisimatos, Editor, and Leigh Kotsilidis, Designer, for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (2024) with me.

+ Thank you bows to T. Liem for their generous and generative conversation on the making of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to POG Arts Tucson, Chax Press, Sarah Rosentha, and Valerie Witte for making and sharing space.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Stephanie G’Schwind at Colorado Review, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ I bow to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press).

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts (2018)with me.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!

! Books !

Posted on November 14, 2024November 19, 2024 by Jami Macarty

Gentle Reader,

We meet again here, where I share with you another word-ante into our ongoing conversation about making and reading books. Hurrah, you are here!

What makes a chapbook or full-length collection? Individual poems! They are the building blocks of poetry chapbooks and full-length collections. Individual poems act as gateways from poem to poem, and engender conversations between poet and editor, poet and publisher. Individual poems have their own lives and are part of the lives of chapbooks and full-length collections. Individual poems are a beginning of a book and they point to a book when it comes into being.

Behold Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics (Since 1944!) Issue 41.1, the “Winners & Finalists” Issue, featuring the eight finalists and the winners of the Test Site Poetry Series Award—Jami Macarty!—and the Betsy Joiner Flanagan Award—Geoffret Babbitt.

The issue features five of my invidual poems. Four of the poems are from my Test Site prize-winning manuscript The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025). The fifth poem, “Whole Catastrophe,” is from my September-published chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (#38, Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024). This Interim issue is an example and celebration of how individual poems lead to and become books.

Discovering individual poems and poems that make up a manuscript is the purview of editors of literary magazines and presses. In Interim‘s case, that is poet and editor Claudia Keelan. Poem by poem and book to book, Claudia has changed my life as a poet. She has published indivual poems from my first and second full-length collections and my fourth chapbook in Interim. She endorsed my first full-length collection, The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020):

“The poems in Jami Macarty’s devotional collection swing upon a hinge that is the recurring site of the poet’s perception in time, where what is seen shows the inherent connection of each thing to its other: ‘honey given : honey taken.’ The Minuses‘ brilliance lives in what the poet is able to give up for the possibility of finding a wholeness that is ongoing: ‘I come and go / from myself as I am / I will not return.’ A seer is, after all, one who sees. Jami Macarty is one who sees.” -Claudia Keelan

It takes a seer to know a seer. Claudia Keelan is also a seer. Under her penname, Lucy Aul, she wrote a review of The Minuses that made birds take flight in my heart. Her words blew me off my perch. I tell you true; I fell off the couch when I was reading her review of my book. And Claudia was part of the editorial team that selected my second full-length collection The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025) as winner of the Test Site Poetry Series Award.

I do not know Claudia but in her I find a dream-come-true ally to my poems; Claudia understands and reads for the devotional spirit of my poems. Her readership is a poetry-expanding and heart-expanding gift.

Gentle Reader, your readership is also a gift! I cordially invite you to read my poems in Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics. To whet your reader’s appetite, I offer “Harbinger” (above). Read my poems and be introduced to The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025). While you are visiting Interim Issue 41.1, visit my colleagues, the other poets whose individual poems join mine. May your reading kindle inspiration for your pages. Happy Reading!

: :

The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.