A Year in Review

Today is a bittersweet day at the press—it is our last day as interns, but also a day to reflect upon the great accomplishments of the year. 

Our biggest event this year was the Women’s Anthology Tour that coincided with the release of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry.  As satisfying as it was to finally publish the book after months of proofing, the opportunity to meet four of the poets in the anthology was the ultimate reward.  The release of the book coincided with the national tour that, naturally, began with its first destination right here at Wake Forest University. Being an intern during the tour was a crazy experience. Each of us had to abandon our usual duties for a couple of months to instead focus on tour tasks such finding locations, brainstorming food, creating invitations, and obscene amounts of PR: blog after Facebook post after tweet. It all more than paid off though, and the experience was invaluable.

In addition to the publication of the Anthology was the creation of a brand new product for us- broadsides! Broadsides, I learned from this experience, could be described as poetry posters, but much classier.  Never before has the Press created or sold a broadside, but with the creative mastery of intern Ashleigh DePetro, these beautiful works of art were developed and have since been consistently selling on our website. 

A constant topic in our blog posts and daily discussion at the Press is the effect of technology on poetry, and in particular, poetry publishers. This topic was approached on a much larger level at the Tools of Change Conference in February.  Jeff and Candide returned from the New York conference with lots of frightening updates from the technological world. Their talk of “the cloud” and reports of the popularity of e-books led to a panicked couple of weeks where we were all certain we were facing impending doom.  However, three months later, we are still alive and running. The conference was a necessary warning about changes to come; while scary to us, it was still interesting, and may even have been considered exciting to publishers with less at stake.  The balance of tradition with technology is one the Press is always striving to maintain.  

One of the interns’ most exciting achievements this year was the launch of our revamped blog.  After evaluating our posts, reading online tips, and researching other poetry blogs, we came up with a list of potential improvements and began transforming the blog.  Our new blog has an attractive layout, new topics, and an organized posting schedule. We are all very pleased with it and have immensely enjoyed watching our followers increase.  Be sure to check it out for past posts about all of this year’s happenings!

This spring, we have made the big switch from paper newsletters to electronic ones, which we are circulating via email. This cool electronic format enables us to reach more followers and save paper, and gives us exciting new opportunities to include media and interactive links for our readers.  Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter using this link: http://wfu.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=bf736eb888addfccf38a53a24&id=9d7b4f0a5f           

This week, we received copies of John Montague’s new book Speech Lessons, which we have been proofing and editing throughout the semester.  It is a beautiful book, and we highly recommend that you get a copy!  We are currently finishing up Harry Clifton’s new collection of poems The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, which we look forward to releasing very soon!    Currently we are proofing the book Legend of the Walled-Up Wife, a collection by Romanian poet Ileana Mălăncioiu, translated by our poet Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin.  Keep an eye out for its release in October!             

Last week, we organized a poetry reading on campus by WFU poet-in-residence Caitríona O’Reilly, who was featured in the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry, which we published in the fall.  O’Reilly read to a packed auditorium of students, faculty, and community members, who all stayed to enjoy festive refreshments after the event.  The reading was a great success, and we all enjoyed putting it together.  O’Reilly will be heading back across the pond at the semester’s end, but she will be greatly missed by all of us here at the Press!

            Though we’ll all be parting ways for the summer, we encourage you to continue checking our blog, Twitter, and Facebook page for updates!

Posted by Chrissy and Maura

Her Memory Will Be A Flower

         Afghanistan is one of the most patriarchal societies in the world. Afghani women continue to be oppressed and silenced by the agents of fundamental conservatism, the Taliban. They are restricted to only the most traditional of roles - marrying, bearing children and running a household - and are kept strictly out of public life. The few women who dare to enter politics, medicine or other professions face routine assassination attempts.
         In her groundbreaking article in the New York Times, Eliza Griswold discovers a hidden side of this oppressive culture: the rich heritage of Afghani women poets, kept very much alive despite the danger. Griswold described her furtive meeting with a young Afghani woman who writes under the pen name Meena Muska, to conceal her identity. Meena, although only 17, has already faced a lifetime of tragedy: her fiancée recently died, and in accordance with Afghan tradition she must now marry one of his brothers. Writing poetry is the only way she can express her fear and misery; it has also served as her only means of education since her father pulled her out of school four years ago. Despite her evident skill, Meena can never share her poetry with her family for fear of being beaten, and instead she reads it secretly over the phone to the women's literary group Mirman Baheer. Meena does this at a high risk: if caught by her family, they would assume she was reading the poems to a lover, and she would be severely punished. This is a region in which honor killings are still practiced.
        Mirman Baheer has over 100 members and is Afghanistan's largest female literary society. Members who, like Meena, live in rural regions, have to participate in secrecy for their own safety. In Kabul, women can attend without fear, especially since they tend to be members of the elite, such as academics, politicians, and journalists. The women share landai, poems of only two lines, which are usually written collectively. Love and grief are common themes, but landai can be bawdy or tragic: for example, the miseries of marriage to a much-older husband, or the unending series of wars that have wracked their nation.  
        The most moving story of all, though, was that of a young woman named Zirmina, who wrote under the pen name Rahila. Zarmina was being forced into a marriage to a much-older man, instead of the marriage to the young man she loved. Zarmina's family caught her reading her poems to fellow Mirman Baheer members and assumed she had a lover. Her brothers beat her and tore up her notebooks. A few days later, Zarmina locked herself in a closet and set herself on fire, dying in a hospital a few days later. One of the leaders of Mirman Baheer wrote this landai for her:

"Her memory will be a flower tucked into literature's turban. 

In her loneliness, every sister cries for her." 

      The most tragic aspect of this is that this fate is not uncommon for young Afghani women. In a nation where 3 out of 4 women are forced into marriage, and almost all women are married before 16, her story is not uncommon. Zarmina is unique only in that she had the courage to put her suffering into words.
     As young women who have never suffered such restrictions on our words, much less our choices and actions, we were particularly moved by these stories. The poems themselves are beautiful, but far more impressive is the courage it took to speak or write those words. We hope that one day these young women will enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that we do.

Posted by Elizabeth and Katie

Fall in love with the weather and poetry!

Today we interns are feeling especially cheery. There are a glorious seven days left until crunch time for finals, and we intend to take full advantage of them. We're in love with this beautiful spring day, so what better way to express our happiness than by finding inspiration in Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's poem about falling in love?

It's Friday, and the sun is shining. So, read this poem, enjoy, and have a great weekend!

I Fall in Love
By Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

I fall in love, in the fall of every year,
with the smattering of rain on my windshield
and the pale and wan light toppling over the sheer
edge of my field
of vision, with leaves strewn in my way,
with the bracket-fungus screwed to a rotten log:
I fall in love with bog and cold clay
and what they hold in store for me and you, my dear.

I fall in love with all that's going off:
with blackened spuds
rotting in their beds, wit
Brussels sprouts nipped in the bud
by a blast of frost, rat-eaten artichokes, and,
like so many unpicked locks,
the tares and cockles buried in shifting sand;
it's as if I fall in love a little with death itself.

For it's neither the fall nor the coming to in spring--
neither shrug of the shoulders nor sudden foray
down that boring 'little road of the King'--
but something else that makes me wary:
how I throw off the snowy sheet and icy quilt
made of feathers from some flock
of Otherworldly birds, how readily I am beguiled
by a sunny smile, how he offers me a wing

Possession

Caitríona O’Reilly’s poetry is a visceral experience. Her subtle words embody the senses, allowing the reader to experience every emotion, vision, and memory.

Possession

That anxious way you have of closing doors

(like the brown of your eyes and hair)

was never really yours.

My arms and elongated nose were owned before—

fragments of jigsaw

in the rough art of assemblage whose end we are.

Sometimes I don’t know where we live

or whose voice I still

hear and remember

inside my head at night. In darkness and in love

we are dismembered,

so that the fact of our coming to at all

becomes a morning miracle. Let’s number

our fingers and toes again.

Do I love you piecemeal

when I see in your closing hand a valve-flower

like a sea-anemone,

or is it our future I remember, as the White Queen

remembered her pinpricked finger? All of you

that’s to be known

resides in that small gesture.

And though our days consist of letting go—

since neither one can own

the other—what still deepens pulls us back together.

by Caitríona O’Reilly

from The Nowhere Birds

World Book Night

     
        Tonight is World Book Night, a day celebrated in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland that is about spreading the love of reading to the community. Twenty thousand volunteers each distribute 20 books in a public area to whomever they choose with the hope of distributing over a million books in one night. There is a special focus on reluctant adult readers, though some of the 30 book selections are young adult books. To compile the list of books, the public were encouraged to nominate titles on the World Book Night website. From all the suggestions, a top 100 was selected, and then an editorial committee made up of librarians, booksellers and authors (no publishers) choose the final 30. The organizers hope that the books are able to reach people in such places as hospices, care homes, and prisons, as well as those who are serving in the military overseas. Even after the night is over, World Book Night hopes to keep promoting the value of reading, printed books, bookstores and libraries year-round by using publicity and social media.
        The event was started just last year, but only in the U.K, which makes this the first year the United States is getting involved. The specific date was chosen because April 23rd is also UNESCO International Day of the Book, chosen because it is the anniversary of the death of Cervantes, as well as the birth and death of Shakespeare.
        You can follow the event on Twitter or on Facebook and should visit the website to see the complete list of books that will be distributed tonight.


Posted by Elizabeth