Talking with Gaye Gambell-Peterson: Wine from Creative Juices

Poet/artist Gaye Gambell-Peterson answered my questions about her new book, MYnd mAp, from Agog Press ($15). It's a very unusual collection: 14 poems paired with full-color collages.

Catherine: Is this a collection of individual poems or was it conceived as a book? When did you know you had a book?

Gaye: MYnd mAp, the book of collage + poetry, was just that, from the very moment the seed got planted. Years and years ago I had clipped out the title words when stockpiling snippets for collage-making. I lost that scrap, but the book idea stayed in a corner of my mind. I let it just be. It ripened.

Catherine: This book includes 14 full-color collages. Which came first, the poems or collages? Were the poems inspired by the collages? For example, in "otHYR waters" the "baby raspberry" appears in the collage as well as the poem.

Gaye: When it was time to harvest, I listed geographic terms as poem.art titles. After that, I piled graphic bits to fit those categories. Then I wrote poems, with the appropriate collage collection spread before me. As each poem became infused with new layers of word images, I would fortify the art with more visuals. When the words written were taste-perfect, I glued down the amassed paper elements. So, you see, the process for each poetry + art set was a back-and-forth one.

Look for many repetitive components within each set. I let seven sets age for quite a while, and then quickly doubled the book as I approached my self-imposed "get real" deadline.

Catherine: In this book you make inventive use of white space, and invented variant spellings for individual words, such as "eddge," and combine them sometimes with "eccentric" capitalization such as in the poem titled "rivYr". You even use some red type along with the usual black type in "TerrORtory", my favorite poem in the book.

Gaye: One of my goals was to create a book that was unique. I am ALWAYS driven to be outside-the-box. How many ways could I do that? Spelling, space, color - one idea leads to another: wine made from my creative juices. It poured freely.

Catherine: Tell about putting this book together and printing it.

I knew I had to publish the book myself - illustrations in color would double the cost. Who, but me, would be that brave/foolhardy? Making MYnd mAp real was, and is, a complex satisfaction - beyond profit considerations.

My first poetry & art book, pale leaf floating, was so easy with editor Rebecca Ellis to guide me. Her Cherry Pie Press used Hobblebush Books to make real a lovely (if I may say so myself) volume. I queried Hobblebush and found Sid quite willing to produce this 2nd book. He was amenable about all aspects, and creative in his own right. He always found a way to do what I envisioned, and even allowed me to change my mind a couple of times. We did it all by email.

Catherine: Anything you want to add?

Gaye: Of course. Three things.

1. As a poet I often make my writings universal in their spin, but MYnd mAp is completely autobiographical. Images are very specific to my story. I make no apology for that.

2. In 2008, my mom died of a sudden illness; she was almost 99. Her death was also just weeks before Cherry Pie Press invited me to be ninth in its Midwest Women Poets Series. Since Mom ALWAYS believed I'd author a book someday, I was impelled to do two things. I dedicated my 1st book, pale leaf floating, to her. I named my publishing imprint for this 2nd book in
honor of her. Agog Press. A Grand Ole Girl she was.

3. Marketing is a whole 'nother thing - pushes me outside my comfort zone more than making a book does. For instance, it was a push (ultimately rewarded) for me to ask admired poets to write blurbs for either book.

~I will be reading from MYnd mAp at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 (with Rebecca Ellis as co-reader). Please, do be there - 7 p.m.

~During January 2010 I will exhibit the original collages used in both books - in the Gallery of the University City Public Library. Tentative date for opening reception: Friday, January 8th, 6 p.m. Check www.gayegambellpeterson.com for updates.

Catherine: Want to order Gaye's book? Here's where to write.

The Hopelessness of Copyright

Just returned from a panel discussion with law professor, university counsel, expert on Internet, and technical-research librarian: In short, for writers, copyright is hopeless. Because writers aren't organized like musicians, and won't be soon, the Internet (and Google's book-scanning, and office photocopying, and Amazon.com's cut of the take on your e-book, and so on) has made a morass of the laws surrounding published material and dimmed the rewards you may have expected as a writer. There are laws but few feel bound by them.

So, for best results: Write your book. Publish it yourself and own all rights. If you like, release portions of it electronically and LICENSE the material -- meaning anybody can read it or listen to it, but nobody is allowed make money from it -- with a creativecommons.org license. Take your payment in good will and prestige. Then use those to make money not from your writing but from readings, or leading classes, or becoming a small-press publisher, or serving on discussion panels, or editing, or advising, or -- get a day job.

After the panel I thought, "This sounds so hopeless," but it suddenly occured to me that this is exactly what has happened to me, and what I do.

"Worry" Also Means...

"To worry" is also to shred a thing into unrecognizable pieces. Poets know they can revise a poem to death. So I told myself, no, don't tear open that sealed envelope addressed to the literary journal, already stamped and packed with poems and the SASE. Do not worry them to pieces! What's done is done, and for pete's sake, let the thingies go! Yesterday finished a poem that had been unsatisfactory for two and a half years, with a good beginning and an undeveloped middle. A "continuation" of that poem existing only in draft form (or "drat form," as a misstrike told me) finally got woven into it. So many temptations to add more! add less! break the line differently! change that word!

I remember Langston Hughes quoting his teacher: "Always finish." For this one I required a deadline, August 31, to force me both to finish it and let it go.

What Are You Worth Per Hour?

Maybe you can’t make a living wage from your fiction or poems or essays. But you CAN make money using the array of skills you employ when you do creative writing. Here are some of your skills. Not everyone can say they have them! How good are you at each of these, and how experienced? Do you know what they are worth? Can you set a price on them? That’s the first step toward getting paid.

-copyediting $_____ per hour

-evaluation of manuscripts/critical feedback $____per hour

-teaching or leading a workshop $____ per hour

-writing queries, proposals, or synopses $____per hour

-researching potential publication venues $____per hour

-navigating and gathering information from websites helpful to writers, such as litmags.org or duotrope.com, and preparing to impart this information to those who want it $____per hour

-generating “content”: writing articles for publication or the web $____per hour

Those are just some of the skills you are probably undervaluing! More later, plus actual figures you SHOULD be charging.

Thanks to Becky Ellis of the blog cherrypiepress.blogspot.com for finding litmags.org.

If You Want to Be Famous. . .

By the time you read this, Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, will be at the publisher's, in production. Curious writer friends now ask why I didn't interview THEM for the book (since it's a book of interviews with St. Louis writers). The men ask jokingly but directly. Miffed women give me reproachful looks and won't congratulate me on publishing the book.

Look, writers: If you want press, if you want to be interviewed, you will have to:

1) write something and make it available.
2) alert the media. They won't come looking for you. I know you think they should. But they're media. They have to hear buzz.
3) do some publicity on your own, such as scheduling a book launch, sending postcards, press kits or other. That may be beneath you, but it is rather like going to the bathroom -- you can't deceive yourself that you're above all that. Get a publicist if you can pay for one. College students majoring in marketing are a good option.

My interviewing-writers days are over, but remember the above, because somebody else someday is going to be seeking out and interviewing writers about their processes and secrets.

Midweek Delight

Two outstanding poets I know and admire, Pam Garvey and Tim Leach, will be reading at The Pointe on Sutton Ave. in Maplewood, Mo., Tuesday Jan. 27, 7:00 p.m. Tim's public appearances are very rare. Don't miss him. He's the best unrecognized poet in St. Louis.

Last night after work instead of TV I drove to the Chesterfield Arts Center to hear poetry from Niki Nymark, and Steve Schreiner. I'm a fan of both. I bought Niki's new chapbook, I'm a Stranger Here Myself (Cherry Pie Press) and had her sign it. Steve's book is Too Soon to Leave (Ridgeway Press, 1997) and I wish he'd publish another. So does he. He said publishers don't like the title he gave his new manuscript. Poets' books should be what the poet wants.

It was a very intimate reading in an art gallery rather like a living room. The poets made us laugh, sigh, blush. Both Niki and Steve write good love poems. (Something I can't do.) What a delightful place to have spent a Wednesday night. St. Louis has many great poets. Give up "the media" one weeknight and hear them for yourself.

Chapbook Renascence

Not so long ago -- about 15 years -- a "real" or "serious" poet wouldn't be caught DEAD issuing a chapbook. Only losers would try to preserve their work in little stapled, spineless booklets! Because desktop publishing as we know it did not exist, the booklets were either hand-set or photocopied. That was the extent of alternative publishing -- the only way for poets to take publishing into their own hands. A book reviewer back then, I swatted chapbooks away like flies. I saw them knee-deep at secondhand bookstores. Well, things have changed and chapbooks are important now.

Cherry Pie Press since 2005 has published a series of poetry chapbooks by Midwestern women. They are beautifully produced and the poetry is hot and it keeps coming: Three new books this year. A friend of mine, Pamela Garvey, won a chapbook contest last year; her chapbook is titled Fear (Finishing Line Press), and each copy is threaded through with a satin rattail ribbon, different colors: mine is wine-red. Poets with traditional publishers will issue chapbooks if they've got some work that's too edgy for the suits. Ted Hughes issued 110 copies (that's all!) of a chapbook titled Howls & Whispers (1998), 11 poems from the Birthday Letters series that he, or somebody, thought were too edgy to publish in the regular book. In a rare-book room I read copy #75. Online I found a deluxe edition for sale that costs USD $27,500. Mostly, though, chapbooks are a heck of a lot more affordable than normal books of poetry, and they're mostly meat, very little gristle. A book of 20 or 30 poems that are ALL good is positively intoxicating.

I'm even urging chapbook publication on poets who have lots of good poems but not enough for a full-length manuscript, or who have full-length manuscripts they can't publish. Chapbooks can be handsomely made, even at home, and circulated and sold, mainly at poetry readings, but also through flyers, local bookstores, and the Internet.

And as far as I can see, no poet today is ever sorry that he or she issued a chapbook. Poets, consider it. And maybe it's time for some fiction or nonfiction writers to do it too.