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