Spring 2011 Newsletter by Alice James Books

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ALICE JAMES BOOKS

INSIDE A LETTER FROM CAREY

NEW BOOKS

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

NEWS AND EVENTS

DONORS

AJB POETS AT AWP

SPOTLIGHT: THE CELIA GILBERT FELLOWSHIP

INTERNS

ALICE ASKS

Shara McCallum

Lesle Lewis

spring

A lice J ames B ooks

n e w s l e t t e r 2011 Volume 16, Number 1

AJB STAFF Carey Salerno Executive Director Julia Bouwsma Managing Editor Andrew Thompson, Meg Willing Editorial Assistants Debra Norton Bookkeeper

poetry since 1973 Hi Friends, I’m so impressed by the outpouring of support you’ve shown to Alice James this year! I know I ask this question a lot, but “Where would we be without you?” Without you—sharing our vision for the press and believing in our mission—Alice James Books just wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t be writing you a spring letter, telling you about the first signs of thaw after an arduous winter, about the fantastic content that awaits you within these pages, nor about our spring books: lie down too by Lesle Lewis (winner of the 2010 Beatrice Hawley Award), This Strange Land by Shara McCallum, which is the first AJB book to be produced with an accompanying CD of McCallum reading selected poems from the work, and Heart First into the Forest by Stacy Gnall, a gorgeous debut book by a promising and talented poet.

COOPERATIVE BOARD MEMBERS Mihaela Moscaliuc, President Laura McCullough, Treasurer Nicole Cooley, Secretary Catherine Barnett Joanna Fuhrman

Dan Salerno

Daniel Johnson, Vice President

Monica A. Hand Stephen Motika Matthew Pennock Peter Waldor Anne Marie Macari, Alice Emeritus Ellen Doré Watson, Alice Emeritus

INTERNS Shawn Callahan Ben Gray Mellissa Jo LaPointe Kelsey E. Moore Alyssa Neptune Mara Steinhardt Front cover from Heart First into the Forest (05/2011) Image credit: “Three Women and Three Wolves,” Eugene Grasset Image of Alice James pf MS Am 1094, Box 3 (44d) By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University

You are the heart and soul of Alice James, dear readers and friends, and I’m so honored to be able to serve such a devoted community. Together, you’ve raised $18,000 this year, exceeding our fundraising goal by 20%. When I sent word out recently that the press suffered a heavy setback with our NEA funding (we lost $11,000 in funding for 2011), the support we received in response made us feel hopeful again. Please keep it coming. We really need you this year. Your friendship is the truest friendship, and I’m so humbled that we can always count on you in times of both celebration and uncertainty.

This year, we’re launching the AJB Translation Series, which is a goal that has been a long time in the making for Alice James. As you know, we’re committed to seeking out and publishing the best contemporary poetry, and that doesn’t stop with poetry written in English. It’s truly exciting to have the opportunity to present authors from around the globe and to open up the conversations that we’re having in American poetry to include more important and necessary voices. The first book in the AJB Translation Series, Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation by Amal al-Jubouri, co-translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Husam Qaisi, will be published in November. Have fun reading this newsletter, enjoy the spring, the melt and rain it brings (to most of us), and the bounty of fresh AJB books this season. Yours in poetry,

Carey Salerno, Executive Director

new books

Lesle Lewis’s books include Small Boat (winner of 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize), and Landscapes I & II (AJB, 2006). Her poems have appeared in Jubilat, The Massachusetts Review, Barrow Street, Sentence, The Mississippi Review, American Letters and Commentary, Bateau, and many other journals. She lives in New Hampshire and teaches at Landmark College in Vermont.

Petronia Street Artificial roses spill over from the Christian side. Every dawn day here, we build up to sentences. Is everything ready for language? Everything is not. I am surprised again and again by this arrowhead. Instead of a pink taxi, you come to my gate in a pink flower. Hannah Lewis

lie down too

Lesle Lewis Praise for lie down too:

April 2011

“Lesle Lewis is alive with conflict. She wishes she were alive and not alive. Lucky for us readers, she is very alive. Scintillating with all her private and not so private mythologies, her poems beam down situations of utter contradiction both terrifying and calming. She sings the song of life in all its multitudinous guises. Finally, though, this is a book of joy, impossible to put down, impossible to deny.” —James Tate “The intrepid and witty narrator of lie down too shows a psychic range—euphoria, anxiety, confidence, confusion—and always disarms our expectations. In “March Sun Grief,” ‘Temptation takes me to the river...Then Doubt attacks; I let him is all.’ Lewis directs her poems as John Gay directs his songs in The Beggar’s Opera: eye to eye, heart to heart.” —Caroline Knox Previous Praise for Lesle Lewis: “...full of fractures and rifts, rich with non sequiturs, dense with surprise...[Lewis] excels at the quirky, disturbing single line...” —Time Out New York

new books Stacy Gnall is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

The Lace-keeper’s Lament Just as well that this be my lot. To tend such a finely-knit flock. Days, I make their velvet cribs, their canopies of glass. Nights, I call them home, calm their open rustling. Nick Parker

What man could want my needle eye, my neck always bent to the web? What man could win my spinneret having had bedfellows so rich, so delicate?

HEART FIRST INTO THE FOREST May 2011

Stacy Gnall Praise for Heart First into the Forest: “Stacy Gnall’s brilliant debut collection, Heart First into the Forest, explores those timeless yet inexplicable mysteries of worldly (and some other-worldly) transformations as they ﬁrst emerge and then—all too often—continue to haunt our lives. These poems echo the childhood fears and adolescent fevers stoked by both the growing knowledge of sexuality and the violence we ﬁnd erupting in fable and fairy tale. With her exquisite lyric delicacy, Stacy Gnall brings a constant music and a candid, luminous perspective to every poem. This is a forest whose intricate darkness—whether of family or desire, the poet knows we will inevitably be shown over and over again. It is a darkness lit, of course, only by the heart.” —David St. John “Heart First into the Forest intoxicates with high altitude, mesmerizing, razor eloquence. Gnall’s debut is a tightrope of risky equipoise, of embodied metaphor, bristling insight and gut. One reads with held breath. Here are brides that can’t marry, magicians, mirrors, howls, strange trees. The book, part fairy-tale, part witchcraft, part female Poe, is a rare elixir of wonder and violence.” —Susan McCabe

author interview

Shara McCallum is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) and The Water Between Us (University of Pittsburgh Press 1999). Her poems have appeared in journals, anthologies, and textbooks in the US, UK, Caribbean, Latin America, and Israel and been translated into Spanish and Romanian. Originally from Jamaica, she lives with her family in central Pennsylvania, where she directs the Stadler Center for Poetry and teaches creative writing and literature at Bucknell University.

April 2011

Miss Sally on Politics He is a one-eye man in a blind-eye country. But how him can do better when no one want to see what going on. Every time party man come around him jumping up and down— lickle puppy eager fi please. Him tell mi is not woman business, this election. Is not fi mi fi understand. Mi tell yu all the same what I know: If yu see jack ass, don’t yu must ride it?

This Strange Land Shara McCallum an interview with Shara McCallum

Alice James Books: What were your initial inspirations for writing This Strange Land?

AJB: This Strange Land begins with two epigraphs: “Now we must bear the pieces and parts / together, as if they were the whole” by Rainer Maria Rilke and “(And when is a piece that resembles a fragment—really the whole?)” by Kimiko Hahn. How do you interpret the significance of these quotes in relation to your book?

SHARA MCCALLUM: I began with the long sequence that opens the book, “Dear History,” a poem about Jamaica in the 1970s and about the story of my family during that time period. For the first few years, I thought the book might solely be about those overlapping public and private histories; and then I started writing poems about motherhood and the book changed, becoming even more about that subject but from a different angle, I hope.

MCCALLUM: The two experiences of rupture in my life, and in this book, are my migration from Jamaica to the US as a child and my father’s death a few days after, and then, roughly twenty years later, my becoming a mother. I put the two quotes together because I think we tend to imagine fragmentation and wholeness as opposed to one another, but in my life they have often felt the same to me, or at least are part of the process of being as I know it.

AJB recently asked Shara McCallum some questions, and she graciously gave us her answers. This interview highlights family, identity, history and the process of making her latest book:

Steven Shwartzer

author interview

(continued)

Alice James Books: This Strange Land has numerous references to Jamaica’s political and cultural history. In your notes, which begin with the year you were born, you write specifically about the death of Bob Marley br inging Ja m a i c a together in a time of chaos. Will you elaborate on that?

MCCALLUM: This comment about Marley is a personal observation. I think Bob’s funeral was a reminder for many—as the death of someone you love often is—of how out of proportion other aspects of life in Jamaica had become. At the time when Bob was coming up in the music world, Jamaica was awash in violence, wrought by electoral party divisions that represented larger, long-standing divisions within the society. Bob and his music were a symbol of hope that there could be a new order in Jamaica—a political as well as social process that would honor all people and not be marred by the same old allegiances and narratives (sound familiar?). I know this was true especially for my parents, who were Rastafarians and belonged to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the denomination of Rastas of which Bob also was a member. AJB: As an Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University and the director of the Stadler Center for Poetry, you have the fortunate opportunity of being exposed to many great poets and different styles of writing. What are a few insights that visiting poets or your own students have given you about writing? MCCALLUM: My students constantly remind me why poetry matters. When I see them getting excited about a poem they’ve read or one they’ve written, I remember how I felt at that age and how vital poetry (and all literature, really) was for my development as a human being from adolescence through my mid-twenties. It remains a part of my life, but not in that visceral way as often as once was the case. The business side of poetry is deadening for me, as is running from meeting to meeting when I’m on campus. Teaching is an antidote to this—as is having conversations with and hearing readings and lectures by writers who come through the Stadler Center.

AJB: Is there a particular poem in this collection that you are the most proud of, or that is the most memorable to you? MCCALLUM: I think poems are memorable for me in terms of their writing process, rather than for their subject matter. For example, “From the Book of Mothers” stands out for me because my process with writing it was very different from most of the other poems in the book. This is a poem I assembled by gathering together and reworking lines from poems I had worked on but discarded over a ten year period. I remember at various points, sitting on the floor of my study at home and cutting out strips of paper with the parts of the poem—then moving them around and assembling them, as if I were making a visual collage. AJB: In the last section of This Strange Land, the most prominent topic is family. How do you think being a mother has influenced your writing most? MCCALLUM: Most is hard to answer for me. I think becoming a mother made it initially more difficult for me to write. While I was pregnant and nursing (a period that lasted for about four years since I had two children in quick succession), I didn’t have the mental acuity nor the time to write or read in the way I’d been accustomed to doing. On the other hand, being a mother has deepened my appreciation for language’s limitations and communicative possibilities, both. Being a mother has also extended, I think, my long-standing interest in women’s lives, in myth and mythmaking, and in the relationship between public/collective and private/familial histories.

e tend to imagine fragmentation “ wholeness as opposed to one but in my life they have ...Wandanother, often felt the same... ” AJB: How do you feel this book fits into, or rebels against, the landscape of today’s motherhood poetry? MCCALLUM: I didn’t know there was such a thing. I’ve read poems here or there and a few books of poetry about motherhood, but I don’t have a sense that it occupies a significant area within contemporary poetry, as is true, it seems to me, of other topics in which women’s bodies are part of the fabric of the poem.

author interview

(continued)

AJB: Your work has been heavily anthologized, as well as translated into several different languages. Could you tell us more about the experience of reading your poems in different contexts and even different languages? MCCALLUM: Mostly, it’s been surprising to me. A year or so ago an editor of a world literature textbook, being published for high school students in Israel, contacted me to ask for permission to include a poem. My first thought was, really? I’m truly grateful but mostly stunned each time something like this has happened. In terms of translation, I remember the first time a poem was translated it was rendered in Romanian—a language with a different alphabet. I couldn’t even make a stab at reading it. The words could have said anything, I wouldn’t have known the difference. That was an odd feeling. When later, I had some poems translated into Spanish, a language I have a working knowledge of, I expected it would feel differently. But it didn’t really. It felt strange, like I was reading a poem someone else had written. AJB: This book is alive with mythological references ranging from the more familiar mermaid to the Greco/Roman tradition to Caribbean folklore. Many of the stories cited deal with notions of physical transformation or of having a body that is not fully human. Would you say that the notion of transformation is a theme in This Strange Land? If so, how does it play into the collection as a whole? MCCALLUM: That’s a very interesting question. I hadn’t really thought of the poems or collection this way, but yes, I would say that transformation is an important idea in this book. I think, though, it’s less about the notion of transformation as change and more about the process of being transformed. For example, the aspect of the mermaid I find most fascinating is not that she can go between being a woman or fish but that she is unable to exist fully in either form. AJB: This Strange Land is your third poetry collection. Tell us how you have developed as a writer over time. Has your style changed? MCCALLUM: I hope that I’ve been able to deepen the issues I have gravitated toward writing about (family, identity, history). I’m not sure how or if my style has changed. I think I’ve been moving toward using a longer line (and at the same time smaller stanzas— lots of couplets in this book) than in earlier work.

AJB: Some of the most wonderful poems in this book are written in the voice of Miss Sally, who speaks in Jamaican Patois. Can you tell us more about this character and why you included her perspective? MCCALLUM: Miss Sally comes up in the “Dear History” sequence and is a character based on my maternal grandmother. She is the voice of wisdom, often delivered through wry humour and irony. Her observations about the unfolding events are rendered in a tone that is less elegiac than the one my own poetic voice tends to fall into when I write about Jamaica and, from an aesthetic point of view, I hope her voice gives the “Dear History” sequence a wider range. On a personal note, her presence in these poems is a reminder to me of what she has been telling me my whole life: “Shara, you have to learn to have a sense of humour. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” AJB: This Strange Land is the first AJB book to be published with an audio CD recording of select pieces. Can you explain what the experience was like making the CD and your thoughts about its inclusion with your book? MCCALLUM: It was my suggestion that we include the CD and I was thrilled that Carey and Julia said yes. I know with my poems in Jamaican Patois, it especially helps a non-Jamaican reader to hear them aloud. But I think that’s true of all the poems. I believe that poetry is meant to be experienced aurally, as well as on the page, and I hope this CD works toward achieving that end.

T K G A Open to poets living in New England, New York, or New Jersey for an unpublished manuscript of poems 

For guidelines, visit our website www.alicejamesbooks.org 

Winners become editorial board members, recieve $2,000, publication, and distribution through Consortium

news and events

Kathi Aguero read at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge, MA on February 28th. She will be teaching at the Skidmore Young Writers Conference and at Pine Manor College’s low residency MFA program in July. Doug Anderson has had a new poem published in The San Pedro River Review. Dan Beachy-Quick has recently been published in the fall 2011 edition of Wonderful Investigations: Essays, Meditations, Tales (Milkweed Editions). He also has an upcoming publication in the Spring 2011 edition of Circle’s Apprentice (Tupelo). Catherine Barnett’s second collection will be published by Graywolf Press in fall 2012. Nicole Cooley gave readings this year at Arizona State University, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, Bucknell University, Gettysburg College, Hamilton College, Brookdale Community College, River Valley Community College, SUNY-Adirondack, and the Queens Public Library. She has recently published “The Poetry of Disaster,” in American Poet (fall 2010) and has worked on Salem Lessons, a mixed-media project in collaboration with visual artist Maureen Cummins. Cooley will be having a book signing and reading at Maple Street Bookstore (New Orleans, LA) in late April. She will also attend the 3rd Annual Kinereth Gensler Awards Celebration Reading & Book Launch at Poets House in NYC on April 23rd, and the Sarabande Reading Series on October 24th in Louisville, Kentucky. Deborah DeNicola has a brand new book, Original Human, from WordTech Communications. She contributed an essay on “Healing with Creative Dreamwork” to the anthology, Allow Your Spirit to Soar. Her memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here (2009), is also available on Amazon. Deborah read at Porter Square Books in Boston, MA on March 7th and will be scheduling more readings in Florida. She taught a workshop on Generating Material for Memoir at The Mango Writers’ Conference in Miami, FL on February 12th. She recently won first prize for her poem, “The Tree at Casa Cara,” from the Carpe Articulum Literary Review. Amy Dryansky had three poems appear in the Dogs Singing anthology, recently published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Two of her poems will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Morning Song published by St. Martin’s Press (also availible in e-book and audio format). She also has a poem forthcoming in the fall issue of the Harvard Review. Joanna Fuhrman will be publishing a chapbook called The Emotive Function in April by Least Weasel Press (an out-growth of Karen Randall’s Propolis Press) in April. She has poems forthcoming in the spring issues of The Believer and Hanging Loose. She has a video poem posted on CA Conrad’s audio journal Jupiter 88, and an audio collaboration/sound piece with text from Pageant that will appear on a new web journal called Lyre Lyre. A long interview by Tom Fink about Pageant will appear in Galatea Resurrects. She will also be talking to classes about Pageant at the University of Pittsburgh and the Writers Studio in NY, and will be reading at LaMama on June 20th with a host of others. She is involved with a new music project called the Sanctuary Project.

Frank Gaspar had his latest novel, Stealing Fatima, published in late 2009. He just finished a manuscript of a new collection of poems, Late Rapturous, which will begin circulating in the spring. He has new poems in The Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, The Packinghouse Review, Chautauqua, and Verdad. From June 17th-20th he will be reading and holding workshops at the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival in Chautauqua, New York. From June 19th-July 1st, he will be participating in Disquiet: The International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. For more information about upcoming publications and events, visit his website at www.frankgaspar.com. Celia Gilbert will be the featured poet in the spring issue of The Tower Journal, an online publication. She will have new poems and a short story in the issue. Joan Joffe Hall has published a new book, Getting Out of Troy. She gave a reading in Ellington, CT on April 3rd. Linnea Johnson’s new book, Augury, is now available from The Backwaters Press. Janet Kaplan’s third full-length poetry collection, Dreamlife of a Philanthropist: Prose Poems & Prose Sonnets, winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, has just been released from the University of Notre Dame Press. The prize was judged by poets Cornelius Eady, Joyelle McSweeney, and Orlando Menes. She also has a series of prose poems, titled “The Chronicles,” which have appeared or will appear soon online and in print, courtesy of The Prose Poem Project. She read on March 2nd at The University of Notre Dame, and will read at various venues in New York City, including the Cornelia Street Cafe on May 25th. Ruth Lepson’s poems have recently appeared in, or are forthcoming from, The Tower Journal, The Boog City Anthology, Wood Coin, Anything Anymore Anywhere, poetsforlivingwaters, rogueembryo, and moriapoetry. She will be reading at the Zinc Bar with her jazz/poetry group, Box Lunch, in NYC, at the Newton Public Library (Newton, MA), the Lily Pad (Cambridge, MA), and the 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA. She also will be participating in the MA Poetry Festival (Salem, MA) in May with Box Lunch, as well as XFest 2011 (a music/art/poetry conference) at 119 Gallery with a group of Canadian jazz musicians. Margeret Lloyd has recently taken up an interest in pairing some of her poems with watercolor paintings that she has painted. She had a poem and a painting published together in Poetry Wales and another pair published in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. She also has a poem forthcoming in Poetry East, along with two sonnets in Measure. Margo Lockwood has a new book out, her seventh book of poems, More Than I Want To, published by Pressed Wafer. She wrote a treble chorus oratorio, titled, “Call Across the Generations,” commissioned by the Town of Brookline and composed by Chris Eastburn. It was performed at Jordan Hall in Boston, MA, and will also be performed this summer in Hancock, NH.

news and events

(continued)

Shara McCallum’s book, This Strange Land (April 2011) is new from Alice James Books. At the Water’s Edge: New & Selected Poems, from Peepal Tree Press, is coming out in September 2011. She will be reading at the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA on May 4th, 2011 and at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA on September 20th, 2011. She will also read and teach workshops at the Rehobeth Writers Association in Rehobeth, Delaware on June 10th-12th and at the Chautauqua Writers Instititue in Chautauqua, NY from June 25th-July 2nd. Idra Novey has recently had poems published in the spring issue of Subtropics, the Telephone Project (a multi-poet sequence with At Length magazine), and in the anthology, A Season of Poetry, with Open Letter Press. She gave a Valentine’s Day reading in New York City and was also a guest poet at Fordham and at Florida Atlantic University in March. She will be participating in the Princeton Poetry Festival on April 29th and 30th with Charles Simic, Sharon Olds, Mark Doty, Kathy Graber, and others. Carol Potter has two poems in the anthology, Open Field. Her collaboration with sculptor Micki Conroy is in Switched-on Gutenberg. She will be reading at the Green Street Café in Northampton, Massachusetts on April 27th at 7pm. Lia Purpura has a few recent essays in Orion, Agni, Fugue and Drunken Boat. She gave a reading as a Visiting Writer at Elon University in North Carolina during the first week of April. Susan Snively wrote a script and narration for Seeing New Englandly, an hour-long documentary about Emily Dickinson for the Emily Dickinson Museum, produced by Ernest Urvater. She has written reviews for Jerome Charyn’s “The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson” and for Daniela Gioseffi’s “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!” in The Emily Dickinson Journal, fall 2010. Susan is working on a script, “The Most Triumphant Bird: Emily Dickinson and Music,” for the Emily Dickinson Museum. She participated in workshops for the NEA Big Read on Emily Dickinson in April 2011. A showing of Seeing New Englandly was held in Royalston, MA on March 20th, and in Westfield, MA on April 13th. She will be attending the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference in Amherst, MA, July 29th-31st.

Coming Fall 2011 Pier Janine Oshiro Available in September

Hagar Before the Occupation Hagar After the Occupation by Amal al-Jubuori, co-translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Husam Qaisi Available in November

me and Nina Monica A. Hand Available in January

Attention Alices DON’T SEE YOUR NEWS LISTED BUT HAVE SOME YOU WANT TO SHARE?

Be sure you’re included in the Fall 2011 Newsletter by contacting the AJB ofﬁce today. WRITE TO US

ajb@alicejamesbooks.org OR CALL

(207) 778-7071 We want to hear from you!

donors

Foster a Forthcoming Title ...A NEW DONOR PROGRAM FROM ALICE JAMES BOOKS NOVEMBER 2011

SEPTEMBER 2011 Pier • Janine Oshiro

JANUARY 2012

Hagar Before the Occupation, me and Nina • Monica A. Hand Hagar After the Occupation • Amal al-Jubouri

“Through these poems, Amal al-Jubouri connects us to the earliest known poems, and yet the dialectic tension between them is utterly contemporary. Al-Jubouri writes “This is my protest, this is my folly,” yet these poems are neither simple protest nor in any sense folly. These poems are both essential and eternal.” —Nick Flynn

“A s i f t h r o u g h a n e c h o l o c a t i o n o f brilliant and insistent off-rhyme, these poems effect a delicate placement of self into body, body into world, world into word. And at the center of it all is an even more delicate loss. Janine Oshiro’s Pier takes its measure in precise instances that ache with intelligence. A truly masterful ﬁrst book.” —Cole Swensen

“ M o n i c a H a n d ’s m e a n d N i n a i s a beautiful book by a soul survivor. In these poems she sings deep songs of violated intimacy and the hardwork of repair. The poems are unsentimental, blood-red, and positively true, note for note, like the singing of Nina Simone herself. Hand has written a moving, deeply satisfying, and unforgettable book.” —Elizabeth Alexander

GIVE $150 OR MORE TOWARD THE PUBLICATION OF ONE OF THESE TITLES AND BE LISTED IN THE BOOK AS A BOOK BENEFACTOR.

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Yes, I Support AJB Poets and Their new books! The collection I wish to foster is:

Pier, Janine Oshiro Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation, Amal al-Jubouri (co-translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Husam Qaisi) me and Nina, Monica A. Hand

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EXPIRATION DATE: ______________________________

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AJB at AWP 2011 On Thursday, February 3, the first evening of the 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC, AJB poets and our fans gathered at the DC Arts Center for some libations and a taste of wonderful poetry by Frank Giampietro, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Nicole Cooley, Laura McCullough, Daniel Johnson, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Brian Turner, and Lesle Lewis.

MC and AJB poet, Frank Giampietro takes the stage.

The audience grows anxious with anticipation for AJB authors to take the podium.

Nicole Cooley delights the crowd with poems from Milk Dress.

Mihaela Moscaliuc captivates the audience as she reads from Father Dirt.

Dwayne Betts captures the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention with a brand new poem.

AJB at AWP 2011

The AJB crew from left to right: Nicole Cooley, Brian Turner, Carey Salerno, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Kelsey Moore, Julia Bouwsma, Lesle Lewis, Laura McCullough, Frank Giampietro, and Daniel Johnson. Laura McCullough reads from her collection, Panic.

Along with a selection from his newest book, Phantom Noise, Brian Turner shared a poem by snow-stranded AJB author, Chad Sweeney from his collection Parable of Hide and Seek. Lesle Lewis implores everyone to lie down too.

Many thanks to Frank Giampietro for donating so much of his time and talent to AJB and for organizing this event. This event was made possible by the DC Arts Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a huge thank you to their staff.

Daniel Johnson carefully explains the intricacies of catching a falling knife.

the celia gilbert fellowship

Alice James Books would like to congratulate Kelsey E. Moore on being AJB’s inaugural recipient of the Celia Gilbert Fellowship, which was founded in honor of Alice, Miriam Goodman, who contributed greatly to the press during her time with us. This fellowship enables an exceptional UMF student to travel with the press to the AWP Conference as a press assistant! AJB: In February, you traveled to Washington, DC where you helped set up and oversee the Alice James Books booth at the AWP book fair. What were your initial impressions of the conference? Kelsey: It was overwhelming, but in the best possible way. I’ve never seen so many fascinating people and books in one room before. AJB: What was it like to meet some of the AJB authors whose work you had become familiar with as an AJB intern?

Alice James Books: Kelsey, would you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your interests? Kelsey: I’m a second-year Creative Writing major at the University of Maine at Farmington, though I’m from Connecticut. I’m very dedicated to reading and writing, both in and out of my academic life, but I also enjoy baking, gardening, and swimming. AJB: What drew you to pursue an internship with Alice James Books? Kelsey: Last fall, I applied for AJB’s standard internship—not only is an internship required for my major, but I felt that it would be a perfect opportunity to experience a slice of the publishing world and feel out whether or not it might be a good fit for me. It was such a rich experience that I then applied to intern as the Assistant Editor/Editor of the Sandy River Review, which allows me to both work at AJB and become involved with an on-campus publication. AJB: What’s been the most valuable aspect of your experience at AJB? Kelsey: I think that I came out of the experience with an entire skill set, actually. I believe that students, for all their hard work, often lack simple office skills that are absolutely required in the world outside of the classroom. Even things as simple as fielding emails, printing a label for an envelope or how to properly answer a phone are all important.

Kelsey: I began to get nervous every time I was introduced to an AJB author, because it was the first time I had ever met someone whose book was sitting on my shelf at home! All of the AJB authors were exceptionally friendly and enthusiastic, though, and meeting them was a highlight of the whole experience. AJB: What was your most memorable experience from the 2011 AWP Conference? Kelsey: Actually, the AJB offsite event at the DC Arts Center was possibly my favorite part of the entire conference. It gave me an opportunity to not only hear work that I love read by AJB authors, but also to spend some extra time with them. It was definitely a room full of character and made for a memorable evening. AJB: Do you have any advice for future Fellowship recipients? Kelsey: I would strongly encourage future Fellowship recipients to absorb everything that they can, meet as many people as possible, and to bring an extra bag in your suitcase, because they will want to buy books and won’t have a place to put them. AJB: What are your aspirations for the future? Kelsey: My immediate future involves finishing my BFA at the University of Maine at Farmington and then continuing on to pursue my MFA. After that, I hope that a career in writing or publishing or teaching will open up for me—I’m still not entirely sure which. I am confident that my future will be with books.

the alice fund

stay alive. “ Just That’s all I ask. ”

About The Alice Fund The Alice Fund’s mission is to ensure the long-term financial stability and realization of the strategic goals of Alice James Books. The press is wholly committed to investing the vast majority of any “profits” or “gains” from a given fiscal year directly into The Alice Fund. Though many donors choose to give to both, funds raised for The Alice Fund and our Annual Fundraising Appeal remain separate from each other.

Fund Management Policy

Each year up to 5% of the fund may be distributed to our cash reserve/contingency portion of The Alice Fund to Alice James Books as income for ordinary operations or for special projects.

Fund Investment Policy

Our investment policy is decidedly conservative. AJB currently distributes funds evenly between cash (for contingency/quasi-endowment use), CDs, and moderate growth mutual funds.

—Jane Kenyon on AJB in 1994

About Our Strategic Goals

All nonprofits plan for growth and aspire toward greatness. Here’s what the Alice James Cooperative Board is committed to: • Hiring full-time marketing, publicity, and development personnel • Publishing up to 8 titles per year, including the AJB anthology, books from our new annual publication prize for an Asian American poet, and the AJB Translation Series • Continuing to publish emerging and established poets • Accelerating the growth of The Alice Fund

THE ALICE FUND

...preserving the legacy of

AJB’s deepest thanks for the gifts made to The Alice Fund by the following founding contributors

Alice

• Anonymous • David and Margarete Harvey • Rita Waldor

Henry

• Financial Beneﬁts Research Group

William

• Brown & Brown Metro Insurance • Anne Marie Macari • Valley National Bank • Peter Waldor

Robertson

• Consortium Book Sales and Distribution • Katherine and Joseph Macari • Anonymous • Privett Special Risk Services • United States Fire Insurance Company

Wilky

• Bernstein Global Wealth Management • Lee Briccetti • Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno and David Bonanno • Chubb Group • Carmela Ciurarru • Beverly Davis • Christina Davis • Anonymous • Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company • Franklin Savings Bank, Farmington Branch • Peter Gelwarg • Joan Joﬀe Hall • Jan Heller • Philip Kahn • Ann Killough • Nancy Lagomarsino • Ruth Lepson • Lesle Lewis • Diane Macari • Anonymous • Idra Novey • April Ossmann • Jean-Paul Pecqueur • Bill Rasmovicz • Lawrence Rosenberg • Carey Salerno • Thomson-Shore, Inc • Jeneva & Roger Stone • Lisa Sherman & Martin Stone • Marla Vogel

Your gift to The Alice Fund

A lice J ames B ooks

What’s your legacy level? Alice $10,000 or more Henry up to $10,000

William up to $5,000

Robertson up to $1,000 Wilky up to $500

Make a Lasting Impression:

Call us to discuss this opportunity to give the gift of preservation.

may come in many forms. You may give a one-time gift, set up annual contributions, make a gift on a loved one’s or friend’s behalf, or write a plan for Alice James Books right into your estate. Gifts may even be made in stocks or bonds, or you may also wish to consider individual or corporate sponsorship and matching opportunities. However you choose to give, poetry salutes and appreciates your conscientious efforts to preserve this great art, and Alice James becomes your life-long friend.

our interns S�� C�� is a sophomore Creative Writing major at UMF whose favorite genres to read and/or write are poetry and nonfiction. Shawn also enjoys playing and writing music in his spare time. Among his other interests (and in no particular order) are reading, cooking, driving, conversing, walking, eating, the outdoors, and, evidently, breaking parallel construction. Shawn is from Kennebunk, Maine.

B�� G�� Some time ago, the energies that make up Ben Gray coalesced and not much changed in the world. Today, this person can be found growing on the underside of various movie theater seats contemplating large amounts of sand and the city bus schedule of Boston, MA. The future is always in flux, but deranged cultists say that in the haze of the fog between worlds you can occasionally see glimpses of a time where Ben Gray will have an apartment somewhere, perhaps if you wish hard enough, somewhere near you. Ben has also been documented as a senior at UMF.

M�� J� L�P�� is one of the interns currently working at AJB. She is from the small town of Greenville, Maine and is currently a junior at the University of Maine at Farmington. She is working on getting her degree in English with a minor in Religion and hopes to one day become a book editor. Books have always been a refuge to her and it is her dream to one day be part of creating the next generation’s classics. She has also played the trumpet since the fourth grade, as well as some french horn and baratone in high school. She is currently learning how to play the piano and loves the mysteries of learning a new instrument.

our interns

K�� E. M�� is a second year Creative Writing major at UMF from Avon, Connecticut. When she is not at AJB, she is generally dabbling with water colors, drinking her signature raspberry tea, and trying to bake a perfect tart. After graduation, she intends to travel and attend grad school to work on her MFA. Someday she hopes to open her own book store or tea house, grow a prizewinning pumpkin and learn to do cartwheels.

A�� N�� is in a constant state of motion, participating in both basketball and lacrosse here at UMF, which takes up all but two months of the school year. When she isn’t daydreaming, singing Lady Gaga, or admiring blue skies, she attempts to put her focus on homework and on things that actually pertain to her future. Being a junior Creative Writing major, she realizes she’s one year closer to being thrown head-first into the real world, which of course brings about a subtle, internal panic. But there’s only one thing to say to that: Hakuna Matata.

M�� S�� is a senior at UMF and is majoring in Creative Writing. When not interning at AJB, she is busy writing about various subjects and reading Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which she cites as the biggest inspiration for most of her work. She intends to stay in Maine and continue writing her poetry to submit for publication after graduation. She enjoys meditating, Japanese food, listening to music, and actually waiting for Godot.

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Poem 5-7-5 He read his own palm Daniel Johnson’s dropped utensil ___of Hide and Seek What Bonanno slams open ___ pentameter AJB place of birth ____ verse Line ____ The Beatrice ___ Award Author of Phantom Noise and Here, Bullet Pecqueur builds a legal argument against Fashionable AJB merchandise Number of authors for Personal Effects

1. 3. 4. 5. 7. 10. 11. 12. 15. 16. 19.

Flavor of Revell’s Withy Author of Heart First into the Forest Jocelyn Emerson’s ocean portal Annual prize for Asian American Poetry What author got lost close to home? What Ruth Lepson dreams in UMF’s summer program for young writers What Doug Anderson’s moon reflects UK Here, Bullet publishers Who Alice asks this time Mihaela Mosaliuc’s Father

alice asks... Lesle Lewis Alice James Books: What is your favorite time of the year and why?

AJB: If you could meet up with a deceased poet, who would you choose and what would you do? LL: I guess it would be interesting to throw a dinner party for Mallarme, Dickinson, Keats, and Stevens. I’d like to listen to them talk with each other. I’d hope Emily would feel comfortable enough to speak. I’d hope Stephane would listen to her. I’d hope John would say what he really felt. I’d hope Wallace would think such conversation useful and interesting. Of course I wouldn’t know what to cook or how to assign seats, and I wouldn’t be able to say a word myself. Actually this party would make me way too anxious and shy. AJB: Did you always want to be a writer or was there another dream in your childhood? LL: I really wanted to be a cowgirl, mostly so I could ride horses all day. I also kind of liked wearing toy holsters and guns. And I especially loved cowboy boots. Actually I think I wanted to be a cowboy. When I outgrew that, I wanted to be a painter. I still do. AJB: If you could have any super-human power, what would it be and why? LL: I frequently dream about flying. I like the perspective from airplanes and how it helps sort priorities. I sometimes think it is in our power to lift off the earth at least a few inches. AJB: You write a lot of poems in second person: how do you know so much about me? LL: I know so much about you because I am inside your head. I sleep under your bed. I follow you when you go to school. I put your headphones on and I read your journals. I eat your leftovers. I wear your hand-me-downs. I talk to people who know you. Your piles of paper are my piles. Your hair is my hair. Your dolls are my dolls. Your coffee is my coffee. Your children are mine; your shoes are mine; your jokes are mine, your gloves, your blankets, your CD’s, your money. I think of you often. Actually, I think of you constantly. I want to cook for you, weep for you, sweep for you. I want to drive your car. I want to do your dishes. I want to learn to sing for you. Who are you?

AJB: If AJB looked in the trunk of your car, what would they find?

Hannah Lewis

LESLE LEWIS: There’s no doubt that spring is my favorite season, but it’s especially easy to feel this way now when it’s early March in New Hampshire. Spring around here is not quiet and sweet. It’s loud and messy. I love how it all explodes in the wetlands.

Where are you now? Did you get my last text? You didn’t respond.

LL: Old maps, binoculars, a telescope, a microscope, a flask, a thermos, a small boat, my boots, skis, snowshoes, a few books, my ipod, a shovel, an axe, my pillow and a few blankets, also a camera, a fire-extinguisher, a few street corners, a few miniature families, a few small bodies of water, a big pile of questions. AJB: What’s the most unexpected inspiration you ever had? LL: Yesterday was one unexpected inspiration after the next. I woke up! I drank coffee! There was still snow on the ground! I stretched! I listened to music in my car driving to school! I saw that the river was very high! I worked all morning in my office which has a window! I taught a poetry class! A student drew Keats’ Grecian Urn on the board! Another student asked if the truth/beauty quote contradicted the notion of negative capability! I drove home and there was still snow on the ground! I ate dinner! I looked at art books! I went to bed! I dreamed lovely dreams! One dream had owls in it! I woke up yet again! I drank coffee! It was snowing! I stretched! I listened to music in my car driving to school! I saw that the river was very high! AJB: Tell us a story best left untold. LL: Once upon a time there lived a sweet little secret. She had a childhood full of adventures. She grew up quickly, and gave birth to many hardy children. Then the children grew up, and they had many hardy children too. AJB: Do you have any new poems you’d like to share with us? LL:

Off You Go into Space I knew you had that kind of power and despair in you and that’s why I loved you and you became my girlfriend boyfriend.