From a ten-year editor, part 4: Occupy the slush pile

“I guess what I was inquiring was if you take solicited submissions from authors outside the slush pile. For all my lit mag publications in the next year prior to my launch, we've done the discussions between me, my agent, and editors. that's [sic] how most authors (new or established) do it.”

“I don’t know you, but I do feel old enough to take the liberty (or, if you prefer, to be so cheeky) of sending you a press release setting out my recent job as a writer. It’s up to you to decide what to do with: asking me an excerpt, a free ebook copy or putting this press release in your ‘archive’ (aka wastepaper basket).”

There’s a tumblr for weird letters to lit mag editors, right?

I recently spoke to two creative writing classes at the University of Amsterdam. We spoke about Versal, submitting to literary journals, the writing process, and editing a mag. I was mostly coherent I think; class started at something like 9am and I was delirious from getting up so early (yeah, ok).

When I have a chance to speak about these things I love, I often find my way towards opinions or conclusions that I’ve long had but never quite directly articulated. Thanks to the sharp questions from the students or my early rise from bed or their professor Jane Lewty’s acute promptings, or all of the above, we had important and insightful discussions in both classes. There were three things we spoke about that stuck out to me, that I’d like to share here. Call them things I’ve learned along the way.

The first is: being a “writer”. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to actually believe that writerly fame is possible. I’ve met too many writers now and read too many works to have a grasp of what that really means anymore. And I told the students that. I boomed something and waved my arms: “There are seven billion people on this planet. No one’s going to be famous anymore. All you've got is inspiration, that little ego inside of you, and god.”

The second: being a woman writer. The “little ego inside of you” is important. Obviously for everyone, that we for-lack-of-a-better-word embrace our drive and talent and look the world square in the eyes. But in all my ten years of editing Versal, only ONE woman has ever contacted me outright and asked me to publish her (cf. first quote at the start of this post). All of the others have been men. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, but they are sure of themselves and they tell me this. I don’t agree with the tactic of course — theirs is an extreme approach. But as I’ve grown into my role as Versal’s editor, as well as into my own poetry, I have cultured an ego enough to steel me through. Through what? Not rejection letters, that's not really a big deal. But standing on stage after the booming voices of men. But taking my place at the microphone during panels. But writing things like this post. But writing at all.

The third: being part of your community. And here is where we are all humbled. I suggested to the students that, given the chance, they should seek out community whether online, among themselves, or in the canal belt of Amsterdam. They didn’t necessarily have to get involved and organize, but they could. They could also just attend events. Become a part. And one day even join a lit mag team. I suggested they not try to start one, unless they really saw a need (in an interview with Roxane Gay not too long ago we spoke about the over-proliferation of lit mags, esp. in the US). But rather bring their talents and energies and passions to a project that is already underway — because funding isn’t great no matter where you go now, and lit mags and lit orgs in general could really use the help.

What I didn’t understand when I started Versal at the green age of 23 is that a literary journal is in and of itself a community — not just a mechanism of that community. What bugs me about the writers who email us and tell us how great they are and ask us to publish them is that 100% of the time they have not bought Versal, attended any Versal events, or even seemed to have perused our website. They are asking to be made part of the community without joining the community. Without building the relationships that are really what drive this. They feel owed, and maybe they are, but I’m not the purseholder. 

As I’ve seen Versal grow these last ten years, and as I’ve grown, I’ve become increasingly thankful of the community it has given me. And in turn, Versal continues to be my contribution back, my way to be a part. And the more that I’ve worked to be a part, the more I’ve enjoyed some of the trappings of being a writer. I’ll never be Ezra-Pound famous, I’ll probably hang out in the slush pile most of my life, but I’ll really enjoy all of this anyway.

From a ten-year editor, part 2: My offset fetish

Leadership is stunning and weighted and breathlessly vulnerable. In the ten years leading this mag, I have learned many lessons, crossed many lines, risked friendships and futures, and stretched far beyond what I thought was possible. So in the lead-up to Versal's 10-year anniversary and tenth edition, I would like to share some of what it's been like to be Versal's editor, stories that intersect, inevitably, with the larger conversations out there around editing, writing, publishing, women, and inclusion.


Part 2: My offset fetish

Yesterday, Shayna and I traveled up to Velsen-Noord, a village north of Haarlem with a population of about 5000. According to Wikipedia, it was originally founded by the Romans. Today, it's a steel town -- or a post-steel town, depending. It's also where our printer, Pantheon Drukkers, makes its home.


For an offset printer, Versal is a pretty straightforward job, its layout, design and requirements fitting nicely into the offset mindset. Usually we've only had to check a few plot proofs before the machines start running. But as Versal has evolved and particularly the art choices have become more complex, working with the printer has taken on a more collaborative relationship. This is the first time we've made site visits, in fact. Years of working closely with Milly and René at Pantheon have fine-tuned our processes, and this year, with our top-secret cover, it was clear we needed to travel up there and do some tests. We would also look at high-res proofs of the artwork to make sure the color levels were accurate, and test those on the new paper. Every factor can make a difference in what comes out at the end.


Versal 1 was printed, I'll admit, on a digital printer. We didn't have the resources back then to go offset, and we only printed 150 copies anyway. We received a small "starters grant" from a Dutch literary foundation in 2003 -- the only external funding we've ever received -- and took Versal 2 up a notch, gave it a spine, offset and a print run of 500. Those first offset issues, up until Versal 4 I think, were printed somewhere in Prague. I never knew much about the outfit, just that they were artists and printers, and they gave us a good deal. But problems arose quickly. They didn't speak much English or any Dutch; we had to work with them in broken German. And they would ship the copies over via large and rather creepily empty semi-trucks. What a sight to see that black semi parked outside my small Dutch apartment. Then one year, the truck was stopped at the German border (this was before the Czech Republic entered the EU). It was almost turned around. Somehow, the driver made it through the interrogation and we got our Versals. But for months after that, Annerie and I were finagling with Dutch customs agents, even taking trips out to Schiphol Airport where we left our passports as we entered through "Door 14" and basically paid someone a lot of money to get off our backs.


***

I love the smell of printers. My uncle owns a printshop in Nashville where my cousin and I would spend summers working for pennies, and I even manned the design desk at Kinkos one year in college. The combined smell of paper, ink, and those massive machines. I freakin' love it.


And though I also love letterpress and handmade, and all the beautiful books coming out of that right now (including mine! soon!) offset is where my heart lies. I'm a child of the 90s desktop revolution, of Quark and Pagemaker, CMYK and Pantone. I like imagining plates of Versals cracking in a recycling landfill somewhere (are they recyclable?). I like reams of paper, the boxes of envelopes with the sample tucking out. And seeing the cover come off the press yesterday, the plate circulating quickly on its roller, the ink still wet to the touch -- yeah, it's a fetish, it's my love of office supply stores, school supply shopping, pens and the smell of new books.


Will I jinx Versal 10 if I say it's my favorite so far? I fell in love with it all over again yesterday. I really hope you'll love it too.

From a ten-year editor, part 1: You will take the cake

Leadership is stunning and weighted and breathlessly vulnerable. In the ten years leading this mag, I have learned many lessons, crossed many lines, risked friendships and futures, and stretched far beyond what I thought was possible. So in the lead-up to Versal's 10-year anniversary and tenth edition, I would like to share some of what it's been like to be Versal's editor, stories that intersect, inevitably, with the larger conversations out there around editing, writing, publishing, women, and inclusion.

Part 1: You will take the cake

Many years ago, I asked someone to leave Versal’s editorial team.

The decision to do this was protracted and painful. He wanted Versal to go in one direction, a direction where he was not subject to the decisions of a team. He wanted to be The Editor, the man at the top, praised for his choices by other men-at-the-tops. These men were his heroes. They were the men whose poems he revered. The men who made decisions subject to no one—save their forefathers. The men whose decisions people talked about, wrote books about.

I stood between him and his mythology. I told him it should not work that way. I told him it would not work that way in Versal.

Our schism affected every aspect of Versal’s makings, and there were many arguments. More than that, there was screaming. He fought like me: brutal and unmoving. To protect the others on the team, I took the brunt of his rage and ego, and tried to keep the horizon of Versal in sight. It took me two years to choose Versal over our friendship, and in the end I did.

When I told him that his time with Versal was over, he said, “You will take the cake.”

It is now four years since that day and ten years since I and two other women started Versal in a bar in the Nieuwmarkt of Amsterdam. The story goes that we started it to bring a community together—to connect, even create, a more inclusive, multilingual and further-reaching literary community than the one Amsterdam already had. That story is true. What is also true is that we succeeded. Writers who move here now from some other geography don’t have to look far to find a literary home. Versal is turning ten this year, our tenth edition, and we are doing well. We even just won an award! But more importantly, and more to the point, we’re doing good work to question the models in literary publishing, wherever they come from, and to dare not just ask how things can be different but to try to change them, even if it means we stumble or upset people. Even if it means we sometimes lose friends.

Roxane Gay’s piece on the matter of men and women in publishing pretty much sums it all up for me, and I join her call to get (back) down to work.

So yes. Yes, I will take the cake. In fact, I plan to spend Versal’s entire tenth year eating that cake. And I hope you’ll join me.

More Thoughts on Editing

Next time it's number ten. It’s a big year for our little independent journal.

As it stands, the fiction crew has completed two phone conferences this reading period as part of the selection process for Versal.

To repeat the caveat I’ve specified ad nauseam to every blog post I’ve written on this dear blog, this is my first go as an editor for the journal. Knowing the quality of the fiction selected for inclusion in previous issues, I figured rightly that the curating process would be a vigorous exercise.

What I couldn’t anticipate was the dynamics of the fiction team.

••••••••••••••••

First, let me explain how we choose the pieces that are debated at the roundtable.

Each editor is given a batch of ten stories to read. Editors usually do one of two things: reject the piece outright or send the piece to another editor if they like it, but want another opinion. If the second reader likes the piece they send it back to the original reader suggesting that everyone gets a chance to read the work. The third option, if a story completely blows the wool socks off the first reader, is to escalate the story to the entire fiction team for consideration.

Like the first reads, we work in batches of ten stories for the escalation roundtable. Since we are spread across the United States and Europe, we meet via phone conference on Skype.

The first phone conference for issue ten, and the first I ever participated in, was intimidating. I felt a certain amount of pressure to perform grandly. I wanted to be confident, stick to my guns, and sound intelligent; and all my fears were at odds with the need to be confident.

What I learned quickly was that there is no room at the Versal editing table for a solitary ego.

••••••••••••••••

During the Skype conversation the fiction team carefully combed over each piece discussing meaning, intentions of the author, characters and setting (if necessary). Etc. I was surprised to find that no one was dominating the conversation, nor was anyone particularly harsh about glaring errors in a piece. Weaknesses were even weighed against a piece's strengths, although, every editor desired a certain amount of perfection. There were times where a piece that was put to the roundtable wasn't suitable, even for the editor who sent it to the escalation in the first place. These pieces had merits that we discussed–it wouldn’t have made it to the roundtable if there wasn’t something that worked–but were ultimately dismissed. After three hours of discussing we had chosen, if I remember correctly, one piece for inclusion in the journal and several others we would read again at the next roundtable.

This wasn’t a mark of an indecisive team. We had strong pieces up for consideration and this made the selection process strenuous. The quality of the pieces we are receiving are extremely high. We feel extremely proud to be able to read such compelling work.

••••••••••••••••

In regards to the selections I was for or against, I usually had a rather strong opinion that I brought to the table, but on occasion, I was swayed during the discussion. If the piece was well argued, I sometimes found myself agreeing with the opposite camp, no matter how much it hurt my pride.

Again, pride and ego have no place in Versal.

Robert mentioned during our meeting something that I found incredibly compelling; no editor's opinion was completely ignored. At least one story that an editor chose for inclusion in the magazine was selected. So, whether or not the story I really wanted was selected for the journal (one in particular, which I felt I was defending alone, did not) at least one story I said yes to would be fit to see print.

The democratic selection process creates a sort of tension within the team which prevents us from getting comfortable. We have to be on our toes, ready to defend our position, and be equally ready to let some of the fights go if. If we were to all get along and become comfortable, we might also find ourselves getting lazy. This would most likely result in us producing a boring, unpalatable journal.


Knowing that I could influence the position by being myself was a satisfying and welcoming release.

Impressionist

In earlier posts I made one, simple statement: I am not, in any way, an experienced editor.

And being a novice, I worried; what can I expect from the Versal submission and reading process?

I waited–as one waits for a message to appear from the looking glass of a magic eight-ball–for the submission manager to show me a sign.

Finally, it did, and when it did, it was sudden. The submissions poured into my inbox in a flood. It all came as a bit of a surprise, in fact. I was excited, of course, and opened the first story sitting patiently at the top of the reading list, and dove in with considerable aplomb (and a large cup of coffee).

Maybe it was the cavalier attitude I was employing–I don’t know–but halfway through reading the first story, the gravity of the whole ordeal stuck me. Here it was in my document editor: a piece of work someone sweated over. A piece of work that is, in a way, pleading for acceptance. A story that, maybe, deserves the drop of an ax. Work, in any case, that deserves all of my attention.

I sat back from my computer and stopped reading. It wasn’t that I hadn’t considered these notions: but it was reading the work that made all these what-if scenarios into a paralyzing reality.

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In my own way, I am a lot like the writers who submit to our journal. We, the writers, trust an editor with our work. We submit, and we hope for the best. We rewrite when the rejections become too monumental to ignore.

This feeling of camaraderie I felt towards my fellow writer seemed to be the origin of the first problem I faced as an editor; I simply felt guilty sitting in front of my computer judging someone else’s writing.

How can I choose what is acceptable work to pass on to my fellow editors? What makes me an expert? How can I be a judge when I so often receive rejection after rejection? What if I made a mistake? What if the stories I rejected were the right ones?

–––––––––––––––––––

I read the 10 stories waiting in my inbox in one long sitting on the back porch of my friends house in Auburn NY.
Coffee was replaced by beer.
Lunch was replaced with dinner.

After the first reading, I was not able to reject a story. Not even one. I couldn’t convince myself that was the right thing to do.

In the beginning, I felt most comfortable reading; nothing more.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Editing for Versal isn’t about polishing a story. It is about curating.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I took the easy way out by rejecting the weakest stories up front–the ones needing hours of work, or when it was obvious that the author had not read the journal, and submitted work that was completely inappropriate. Soon I would have to make real decisions.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Yet, there are a lot of stories that seem, at first to fit with the journals aesthetic. The work seems challenging, uses language in a new way. But maybe it doesn’t fit. That is where choosing gets difficult: a gray area, where something in a story brings something new to the editors table and throws a monkey wrench into the works.

At some point in time, no matter what has happened with the journal historically, the pieces I will help choose are the future. There is a choice: a decision relying on taste.

The question, having confronted my initial reluctance to reject or accept, had evolved: What do I want to bring to the editors table?

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I read the stories again. Twice. Three times.

Versal, being the journal that it is, receives some challenging work.

I understood the stories in a way. But not all of them.

And this was a bit of a struggle. I was frustrated that some of the stories seemed too difficult for me.

We have a second reader for this very reason, but due to reasons of pride, I hesitated sending the hardest stories on.

Robert, the head fiction editor for Versal, told me early on that, to be a good editor, I would have to to use my gut reaction, and embrace my lack of understanding sometimes. Send the story onto another editor if there were still lagging doubts–he said. In essence, swallow pride for the greater good of the journal.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Good work is in the details.

And many of the stories submitted to Versal are good.

When a final decision needs to be made, however, the piece with the most work put into it, where every piece falls into place, that’s the the story I’m going to choose.

In the first 20 odd submission I’ve read, I’ve found myself faltering over a twitchy piece of dialogue, a cliche or a poorly written sentence. That is when the decision is easy.

These little mistakes, more often than not, are enough to reject a piece.

A writer submitting to Versal, or any journal–and I include myself in this–needs to consider whether the story they’ve created has had enough work put into it, is a precious stone that should be put on display.

There are too many great writers who do put in the extra time and work. They proof read. They read the journal before submitting.

If we, as writers, are not doing this, are not taking this extra time when competing with the thousands of others out there submitting everyday, we’re competing with ourselves.

Faking it.

I expressed last week during a dinner party that -although excited about editing for the first time- I was extremely nervous I would be faking it all the way through. 


Megan, Versal head honcho, smiled at me and said that 'we all did' at some point. She assured me that I would feel better once I got a chance to speak with Robert, the head fiction editor. 


I had spoken to Robert once before through Skype about the editing process. During that chat we set a date to talk about 'literature' (quotes my own) some weeks ahead. That was meant to be about a month ago. The follow up meeting was postponed several times, Robert being in the midst of PhD exams and my needing to postpone our chat due to work overload. 


Although I knew we'd get to it at some point, this did little to change the overwhelming feeling that I felt stuck in some strange limbo: I knew I was to be an editor, but I did not know what was expected of me or how I would accomplish the job. So, this anxiety led me to mention my potential fake-ness to Megan. 


Robert got in touch on Monday, once his exams were complete. Since Robert did not know my experience or analytical 'skills' (again, those quotes are my own) he chose two pieces from Versal 9 to look over: A Year and Demonstrum.


I have to admit, I was a bit nervous. 


We chatted a bit about my current travels in the states before moving on to business. 


Robert asked several provacative and open ended questions to determine how I approached a piece. If you haven't read A Year or Demonstrum, the pieces do a good job of negating anything that is put forward. They leave the reader unhinged, caught in the grips of vertigo. Some times I felt I knew the answer, or a good enough interpretation and answered quickly. Sometimes I was left without an answer. Either way I felt excited, like I might be doing OK.


Then Robert asked me whether I would choose the two pieces for a second read. With confidence I said yes. He asked why. I said meekly, I don't know. 


I was caught. There it was. A fake. A FAKE! 


But Robert smiled (we had video chat on). He went on to explain that –sometimes–a certain amount of ambiguity exists in the choosing process. And that's OK. Sometimes the fiction we appreciate most around here at Versal are the ambiguous fictions, the ones that tranverse borders. The mysterious ones that use tropes as tools, that negate our notions of what fiction should be, that shoots all we know about writing out of a cannon into a million different pieces and puts it together with a TA-DA. The ones that you get a gut feeling about. 


At the moment I'm reading a book called complications by Atul Gawande, given to me by a friend. You might know it: one of those New York Times Bestseller works that end up on the coffee table as a talking point. But this one is different. It is a short book about the trials and tribulations of being a modern surgean; essentially about the complications arising from being a human performing duties in a profession where robot like precision and miracles are expected. 


A large portion of the book talks about learning on the job. That surgeons who go through years and years of training are eventually untethered and have to learn a great deal about cutting into live human beings. A scary thought. 


Surgeons faking on the job. Learning as they go. Cutting up things that were never meant to be cut. 

Going Dutch

So it seems that the capitalist system is failing small press publishing in America.

Though I'm no economist, the economics of this look pretty straightforward to me. The literary economy is saturated with presses and journals. The consumers in this economy are consuming what they reasonably can. But the revenue is spread so thin that, in general, no press or journal can survive without external cash injections from grants or credit cards.

In the wake of BlazeVOX-gate, lots is coming out about small press publishing. For the first day or so I think I really did read almost every comment, because I'm really interested in what good can come out of this discussion, for writers and publishers alike. I've admittedly fallen behind on my reading but have a bazillion tabs open in Firefox.

The following list is a generalized distillation of some of what's rising to the surface (at least of what I've seen so far):

• A general consensus that we (writers and publishers) value transparency where (at least) money is involved (and I think we may be starting to admit that money is always involved, even if it's in an "intangible" form like doing one's own book promotion)
• Professionalism is a pretty good default to stand by
• A general consensus that there are not enough consumers for the number of presses and journals (or that the level of consumption itself is too low)
• There are people who believe that the right of publication should be free, and people who believe in shared economic models (for lack of a better term)
• There are people who believe art and money cannot or should not coexist, and people who believe that they can (or at least have to)
• Many publishers are experimenting with new business models, or considering them
• We all at least seem to agree that we wish things were different, or easier, or both

A few months ago I asked on this very blog how we, writers, could improve our participation in the literary economy. I am a writer and an editor, so I include myself in this question. I have thought about this a lot over the past few months; the BlazeVOX discussion has, if anything, helped my vocabulary along so I can grapple with it better.

In a nutshell, answering this question starts with me just being me. In other words, what do I do and what more can I do? (Now I feel like Johannes and the hippie.)

I asked myself what my consumption is in the literary economy (what I take out of it, so to speak. I'll leave out what I put in to the economy for now). In brief, it is, in no particular order:
- Supporting KickStarter campaigns of presses and journals I like
- Subscribing to my favorite literary mags
- Subscribing to one or two "seasons" of presses I love
- Buying a literary journal I haven't seen before but want to submit to
- Buying extra copies of journals in which my work is published
- Registering for AWP
- Buying about a suitcase full of small press books at AWP
- Purchasing gifts for friends and family from small presses and online bookstores like Powell's
- Writing checks for contest fees (which isn't easy, because I really do forget how to write a check)

So let's say all of us are doing roundabout the above. But that's clearly not enough to sustain all those presses and journals out there that we love. What else can we do?

When I saw that 1913 a journal of forms was actually open for submissions, I rushed over to its website. I freakin' love 1913. I saw it has a small reading fee. I didn't hesitate. If anything, I thought, hell, there's no chance my poetry is going to be accepted by 1913 but I'll throw this journal $3 so other people will be and can be and so that 1913 can be a journal.

And that's when it hit me.

I'M A SOCIALIST.

Blame it on Holland. Blame it on my hippie parents or my Montessori preschool. Blame it on my feminism or big Catholic family or the fact that I'm short. Or gay.

I believe in the basic tenants of socialism because I believe in sharing. And I'm starting to see the literary economy like I see my healthcare coverage in Holland:

I pay €135 a month for premium healthcare coverage. On top of that I pay (highish) taxes for healthcare based on my income each year, and a max €175 co-pay (for the whole year). I don't see additional bills once I've hit the yearly co-pay max. And here's the kickers: I have a chronic illness. I take medication daily and see doctors and have blood tests regularly. I also go to a physical therapist once a month for preventative care so that I don't injure myself climbing. Massages are covered. Dentist trips are covered. Hell, until recently, vitamins were covered. Oh yeah, EVERYONE IN HOLLAND IS COVERED.

It ain't perfect, but I don't pay out of pocket for an emergency ambulance ride either.

Imagine we all took a socialist attitude towards publishing, but one of course that didn't rely on "outside" government support. What if we said to ourselves, sure, I'll pay this $3 reading fee or this $20 contest fee or I'll share the costs of my book's publication so that not only I can continue to enjoy the privilege of print but others can as well.

I don't mean to demean the seriousness of our human right to healthcare, but it serves as a good example of where my head's going. It's going away from the economic model I was taught growing up (me! me! me!) to the one I've learned to love in my adopted home (all! all! all!). Johannes Goransson brought up the problematized "Author" in his post and I'd like to take that a step further and complicate the MY WORK IS GREAT AND YOU ARE PRIVILEGED IF YOU GET TO PUBLISH IT idea as being the major contribution any of us make to the world of literature.

Clearly I'm simplifying things. But I hope I'm at least making my point. If we all agree we're committed to seeing writing in print, esp. non-mainstream writing that is not part of the normal capitalist Amazon economy, then does it not follow that we all join in the economics to make that happen? And thus change our minds a bit on what that looks like? The world has changed drastically since I was taught to detest submission fees and vanity presses. Can we not change as well?

I also just want to point out one more thing. In my final post about the help Versal got from some €3000/day strategy consultants, I mentioned that one of the first ideas the consultants had was to charge a fee for submissions. Keep in mind these guys have no idea what's going on over there in the American literary world. They purposefully didn't come into the meeting with much background because we all wanted to see what would come out of the brainstorm if we had a blank page. And the idea came up almost immediately, because they felt that the fee would be a good "channel" to increase writers' participation in the literary economics.

How very socialist of them.

An Introduction

Faithful Versal readers,

I’m the new fiction editor for the journal.

I am also new to editing.

So, the trust put into me by the welcoming editorial personnel of Versal is immense.

I'm learning as I go. Faking it till I'm making it.

And maybe that is what you are doing.

I assume, as a reader of a fine literary journal such as ours, you may be a writer or an editor, chugging along, learning the tricks and mechanisms behind the world of publishing as you go.

This can be hard. Lonely. There seems to be a mystical aura surrounding publishing and the -rather cliquey- literary journal landscape; impenetrable without some sort of incantation or relic. It doesn't have to be that way. If only there were a way to make the publishing of a journal more transparent.

Well, I’ve been asked to write a series of posts that introduce to you devoted who read this very small patch of cyber space how it works behind the scenes of Versal. From here you will follow the step-by-step process; gearing up for the submission avalanche, the nail biting decisions, the putting together of the actual pages of the journal -all of it.

I find myself intimidated, but it makes sense.

Who better to narrate one year of the journal’s life cycle than an outsider suddenly allowed access?

So here I am. Editing this little introduction to death. Grinding my heels into the ground with the hope that the longer I wait, the less daunting the task will seem.


So let's get on with it.

There will be regular updates here outlining the work we’re doing on the journal, my feelings on the process and some of the work out there that inspires me.

In the spirit of collaboaration, feel free to comment or ask me questions through Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/versaljournal

Or on our Facebook Page:

http://www.facebook.com/versaljournal

My next post will be a bit about my history and how I’ve stumbled upon being a Versal fiction editor.

Sincerely,
Daniel Cecil

Versus make for other

Recent posts here, there and elsewhere have returned me to an old question. So many of us (you know, poets and whatnot) seem to assume that poetry's evolution is driven (solely) by reactionary forces. I think this is a sad (and it could be argued violent, misogynistic, etc. etc.) way of looking at things. But why is it so hard to explore the evolution of poetics as one pushed by generative forces? Albeit sometimes these forces are reactionary, but they are also active, intertextual, engagements in dialogue, etc. etc.

My concern is the tendency to place things in opposition to each other. So I'm blogging out these thoughts before I catch the metro home. It seemed too long for a status update.

Also, I'm wondering what you out there might have to say. And what texts you've read which engage this question.

Also, CPR has a nice piece up about "standards" in poetry, which touches on the work of an editor, which nicely parallels some of what I was blabbing about a few posts ago.