Rusty Morrison, Co-Editor of Omnidawn Publishing
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with Rusty Morrison, co-editor of the literary press Omnidawn Publishing. Omnidawn Publishing was founded by wife and husband team Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan to create books that are most closely aligned with each author's vision, and to provide an interactive and rewarding publishing experience for poets and writers. Omnidawn has been publishing poetry since 2001, with Fabulist and New Fabulist Fiction added in 2006. Their books have won awards from PEN USA and have been favorably reviewed in Publishers Weekly, The Village Voice, American Book Review, and many other publications.
Omnidawn offers three annual poetry manuscript contests: the Open Book Poetry Contest for a full-length manuscript by a writer at any stage of their career ($3,000 prize, submission period November 1-December 31), the Poetry Chapbook Contest ($1,000, February 1-April 22), and the First/Second Book Contest ($3,000, May 1-June 30). In 2012, Omnidawn also launched a Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest ($1,000 prize, August 1-October 15).
Rusty Morrison's most recent poetry book, After Urgency, won the 2010 Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press (forthcoming 2012). The Book of the Given is forthcoming from Noemi Press. the true keeps calm biding its story won the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award, the Northern California Book Award, the Sawtooth Prize from Ahsahta Press, and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. Whethering won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She has received the Bogin, Hemley, Winner, and Di Castagnola Memorial Awards from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems have appeared in periodicals including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Gulf Coast, Lana Turner, New American Writing, Pleiades, Verse, and VOLT. Her essays and/or long reviews have been, or will be published in Colorado Review, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, The Volta, Poetry Flash, Verse, and in the anthologies One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe (Sarabande Books, 2010), and Beauty is a Verb (Cinco Punto, 2011). Visit her website for links to purchase her award-winning poetry collections.
Q: What does the name "Omnidawn" mean to you, and how does it reflect the press's aesthetic?
A: We took the name Omnidawn—"omni" (in all ways and places) and "dawn" (the first appearance of natural light)—because it is our hope that our books will offer many opportunities to awake to differences that engage the mind and inspire both courage and compassion, as the works participate in the constantly evolving conversation that is literature.
Q: What is your passion as a publisher? What unique niche does Omnidawn exist to fill?
A: My husband Ken Keegan and I began Omnidawn in 2001 because we believe that small, independent presses are essential: they disseminate fresh, lively, culturally pertinent and provocative literature. A society needs many small presses so that widely diverse ideas and points-of-view are easily accessible to everyone. As Italo Calvino tells us "...the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language." Ken had wanted to begin a press for years, but we never felt we were secure enough financially to do this, and we never felt that we had enough time. But, in 2001, we realized that there is never enough time or money to begin a project like this—we realized that if we waited any longer, then we'd never do it. So, we plunged in, aware of the precarious nature of publishing. We have no regrets, we've remained excited about every new book, though the excitement is always tinged by the challenges of small press life.
Since 2001, Omnidawn has produced chapbooks and full-length collections in the genres of poetry, poetics, translation, and fabulist fiction. We are currently publishing 3 to 5 chapbooks, and 8 to 10 full books, each year. All of our books are designed to align with the writer's vision for their work. In addition to our print editions, we now offer a monthly web magazine: OmniVerse. In it, we publish reviews and features of writers who are not published by Omnidawn. It's our way to bring attention to other voices and presses.
Q: Authors published by Omnidawn, such as Gillian Conoley, Lyn Hejinian, and Martha Ronk, write in a manner that I would describe, for want of a better word, as "experimental" or "avant-garde". That is to say, as the editor of a guide to contests, if someone wrote poetry in the style of Billy Collins or Maya Angelou, I might steer them toward a different publisher. Am I right? Do you perceive this dividing line (or spectrum of accessibility) and how would you characterize it?
A: We consider our books to be innovative and exploratory in their approach to subject matter and/or form. But we intend an enormous range in that description. Yes, many of our authors could be considered experimental. But that does not define our press: we actively seek work that has a great depth of meaning and excels in its lyricism and craft. Truly excellent work is always offering itself to readers as innovation on what we've read in the past. We don't subscribe to the idea that poetry should be marked by clear boundaries or dividing lines. Excellent poetry often rises above the limitations of poetic style. For instance, you might open Paul Hoover's Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn) and find some of the most accessible, and yet truly beautiful love poems being written today. Or, you might open Bin Ramke's Tendril (Omnidawn) and find many heart-wrenchingly moving poems that paint a clear, wry portrait of childhood in the South. It is my hope that writers and publishers let go of expectations about what constitutes experiment. To my mind, every poem, whether by Billy Collins or Paul Hoover, is a richly complex experiment in seeing the world of its subject afresh. If a poem offers insight to the writer and to the reader, then its experiment has succeeded.
Q: Tell me about some of your recent contest winners and what you found innovative and striking about their books.
A: To be fair, I should talk about every recent winner, but that would take up too much room in the interview. I'll share with you a few lines from just two of our fine contest winners.
Here is an excerpt from a poem by Kelli Anne Noftle, from I Was There for Your Somniloquy (winner of the 2012 First or Second Poetry Book Contest):
"You feel listless as underthings
unravel. At the bottom
of an ocean, near her neck
where the collar dips—some of the habits
you acquire are ancient."
—Kelli Anne Noftle, from "Mating Rituals", I Was There for Your Somniloquy, p.13
You can hear the subtle alliterations that move the reader through the lines, yet the language consistently surprises. The meanings come forward and assess experience so accurately, but the humor and delight of the language creates an intimacy that makes the poems truths feel quite immediate.
Here is a short prose poem by Sarah Gridley, from Loom (winner of 2011 Open Poetry Book Contest, forthcoming in 2013):
"Inside is a museum of natural history whose walls are now and again transparent. An otter whips tight circles in her tank, confusing the sense of humors. Water sloshes the sides like joy, in turmoils of minute bubbles. Press a hand against the glass. To say live animals is to call up figures of those who are not. The expression wall to wall can mean radical, as well as comprehensive. A taxidermist works in the basement with meticulous ambiguity. There is the barn owl returning to the fullness of barn. And trays of glass or acrylic eyes."
—Sarah Gridley, from "Anatomy", Loom, p.36
I'm delighted by the ways that the author's allegories are born of real experience. The surreal descriptions are so exact, they have the feel of the actual. And they are imbued with layers of meaning that suggest to a reader the many emotional, moral positions humans take when observing, and interacting with, the nonhuman world.
Q: Apart from the quality of the individual pieces, what do you look for in the structure of a poetry manuscript or short fiction collection? What makes a book feel polished and satisfying as a whole? E.g. thematic coherence, structural innovation, cross-genre combinations of texts...
A: I think of the best manuscripts as a powerful constellation that makes a whole, yet it is often a unity born of growth, of evolving difference—I believe that each manuscript finds its center of gravity as it proceeds, and it teaches the reader to find that center as one makes one's way through the work. What constellates its wholeness might be an evolving subject matter, or not. It might be a cohering formal strategy, or not. I don't have preconceived notions about what the work must do, but I want it to be active in its work, as it engages my curiosity. I often feel excitement and challenge in both the art of the crafting and the lyricism. I think the best books use language to create a friction in my sensibilities that energizes me and enlarges, enhances my previous ideas of either subject matter or form.
Q: Do you have any pet peeves as a poetry reader? (For instance, awkward line breaks raise my hackles.)
A: Yes, I do know what you mean about awkward line breaks! But, for me, I try to continually consider the whole of the work, as I read it, poem by poem. What I want as I read is to find the pulse of what the author is trying to achieve. I am saddened when I see a manuscript that demonstrates all of the currently "in vogue" conventions of craft, but that has taken no risks in what it is saying. I look for the courage and maturity to feel deeply and to think deeply, and to share these with a reader.
Q: As an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction, I am happy to see a literary press like Omnidawn supporting writing that is too often dismissed as mere "genre fiction". Do you think there is still a realist bias in literary fiction contests and journals? Any notable exceptions?
A: Yes, I do see a strong realist bias in the USA. But I do believe this is changing. I believe that many excellent small presses are leading the way in this work.
Q: You have won some of the top poetry prizes for your collections and been published in prestigious journals. What have you learned as Omnidawn's editor that has helped you succeed as a contest entrant?
A: Practically speaking, what has been very useful is that I read hundreds of manuscripts every few months—both submissions and contest entries. As I read these works, I develop, almost subliminally, a sense of what is current practice (and what seems dulling or repetitive in those practices), what is entrenched in the poetry scene. Seeing that can help me to break out of those practices myself. And, it can also help me to be very attuned to whatever has become my own too familiar common-practices or patterns in my own work, even if these practices succeeded in my last book. Reading many many manuscripts helps me to see how the best manuscripts seem to evolve a form (or many forms) that will fit the content. Very useful is the moment when a manuscript simply rises above all others I'd read just before it—this is a thrilling moment. When I return to my own poems, if I'm not feeling as equally thrilled, then I know something is needed, I have more to do.
And since I am often involved, as a publisher, in closely editing the books I bring to readers, I must become very articulate about my choices—when I talk about the work with the writer, and when I attempt to market that work to the reading public. This skill naturally bleeds into my own inner dialogue with myself.
As a poet, I believe that I can use the logic of the publisher's mindset to usefully disrupt the ways that my poet-self becomes trapped in her system's beliefs. As a writer, I believe whole-heartedly that I must trust myself to follow my inspiration, but the paths I travel for that inspiration can become repetitive, narrow, and self-serving—yet this can be very difficult to realize. We fall into ruts in our writing.
Q: On the flip side, how has your own experience as a poet seeking publication informed your business model and editorial policies at Omnidawn?
A: I do bring my poet's-mind to the work of decision-making. I remind myself not to just take books that will easily align with our previous successes, nor simply ask myself "what is the market for this book and how will this book increase readership for our press." Instead, I also use strategies that serve me as a poet; I let those strategies strongly impact my decisions.
One of the most important poetic strategies that I use as a writer, and one that is probably most antithetical to any business model of publishing, is that I trust my body to help me proceed in a poem.
When I'm writing, and when I'm choosing manuscripts to publish, if I feel a kind of shiver, a physical tingle of energy, then I know the work is strong. This might hasten me, speed up my writing or reading, or it might slow me down—but regardless, it is attuning me to the fact that I'm tapping into a new or significant movement. I might call the feeling a kind of fear as well as excitement.
Q: Tell me about the contest screening process. Who judges your entries, and how many are sent on to the final judge? How do you pick a guest judge for each year's contest?
A: Every manuscript is read by at least two "screeners", and those screeners are Omnidawn's Senior Poetry Editor and our seven Poetry Editors. We don't have interns read submissions. It's important to us that our editors do this work. We believe that our editors have been trained to be open to a wider range of interest—we pride ourselves on being open in our attunement to quality.
Those screeners give the manuscript a level score and a comment. Then, all of the manuscripts are read again by at least one other editor who also has the authority to move a manuscript "up" in its score. Editors are looking for works that might be moved up, never "down".
None of these editors have access to the identities of the submitters, and we are careful to remove all acknowledgements pages and identifying information.
For the sake of avoiding any conflict of interest, if an editor believes that he/she recognizes the work of a colleague, student, or friend, then that manuscript is given to another editor.
After all reading is completed, then the full group of poetry editors meet for a long day and discuss the manuscripts that have elicited interest. At this meeting, we select the semi-finalists to be sent to the judge.
The number of semi-finalists we send depends on the judge's preference. We always recommend that a healthy number of manuscripts go to the judge. Some judges will read as many as 30, others prefer fewer, maybe 20, or the number of their choice. But we always work this out with the judge when we select the judge, so that there will be no surprises.
The judge then selects the winner and five finalists (no ranking order for the finalists). If the judge wishes to see additional manuscripts, she or he may request them; the judge is not, however, permitted to request specific manuscripts. Colleagues, students, and close friends of the judge are not eligible to compete. Past or present Omnidawn staff and interns are also not eligible to compete. The judge is not allowed to choose manuscripts that present a conflict of interest.
Ken and I choose the judges based upon our appreciation for their writing. Some of the judges we've had in the past and/or are upcoming: CD Wright, Carl Phillips, Brenda Hillman, Donald Revell. Rae Armantrout, Cole Swensen.
Q: Who are some of your favorite authors (classic or contemporary) and what can potential entrants learn from them?
A: I am a very eclectic reader! I could list all of the authors Omnidawn publishes, but I will not put any in this list, since that would be unfair. From earlier centuries, I return often to Rilke, both the Snow and the Stephen Mitchell translations. I love Celan too, the Hamburger translations. I love Hopkins, the wonderful music of his work. In more contemporary work, I am an avid reader of so many poets. Elizabeth Bishop and George Oppen and William Carlos Williams are very important to me. Their books are on my night stand so that I can open them for solace and hope. My copies of their books are very marked up, from my need to underline favorite passages. The authors of the books that happen to be stacked here at my desk right now: Brenda Hillman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Claudia Rankine, Kay Ryan, Rae Armantrout.
Winter 2012-2013
