pow_schedule

Interview with Dan Wells

1) What are your thoughts about participating as a panelist at the POW! Festival in Cobourg?

I got into publishing after organizing a literary festival in Windsor Ontario for 4 years, so I'm thrilled to be part of another. It'll be the first time that I'm at one of these events as a participant, as opposed to as an organizer or audience member, so should be interesting.

2) Please tell us about you as a publisher and also a little about some of the books you have produced by poets who will Read at POW!

Like most publishers, probably, I got into this accidentally: had I not been invited by another bookseller to a meeting to start a festival in Windsor, a festival I came to run on a voluntary basis for four years, I doubt I would have ever made the leap into publishing. I would have remained behind a bookstore counter selling my second hand and antiquarian wares. There are days now when that seems not an altogether unlovely fate. But I got the bug, i knew some writers who seemed to be having trouble getting published. I took some bookbinding courses, and wanted to make more than empty notebooks. A chapbook publishing program morphed into a trade book program before the first chapbook had been completed: enthusiasm carried me in a headlong rush into something I had no real appreciation for or understanding of, though I perhaps had the arrogance or ignorance to think otherwise. So that now, 4 1/2 years into this, I feel I am only becoming fully aware of the variety of roles I need to play, as well as my own physical and psychological limitations.

Though I cannot imagine doing anything else, and, other than returning behind a bookstore counter, I doubt there's anything else I'd be good at. I imagine that, when and if Biblioasis ceases to exist, I'll end up a Starbucks barista. It's the only other job I might be able to handle.

3) Can you describe (a little) your process in selecting / editing a new book?

I am extremely lucky in that I've been able to work with some incredibly generous, talented and committed individuals, who loosely make up the Biblioasis editorial team: John Metcalf, Eric Ormsby, Stephen Henighan, others. With their help building a solid list has been easy. I do edit, either individually or jointly, between a third to half of our titles, but the contributions these gents make has really helped to define the press.

We look for a freshness of perception, a linguistic sophistication and dexterity, and immediacy to the writing. I think its safe to say each of us look for work which provides us with a variety of pleasure. But this also depends upon what we're talking about, what books we're thinking of publishing. Our reasons for publishing critical books vary and may be, to some extent, different than the reasons why we publish poetry or fiction. Our reasons for publishing certain non-fiction titles are different still.

4) What inspires you when you are pursuing your art in the technical aspects of book production?

Readability: clean an comfortable layout. A striking cover, coming up with something which captures the spirit of the book. Something that the author can feel good about.

5) The POW! Festival is built on the notion that poetry should not be relegated to an existence as "a niche art form" that the average person doesn't care about. How do you respond to that?

I'm not sure I worry about it all that much. The market for poetry, for quality poetry, the kind I hope we publish, is and always has been very small: Keats and Byron, to take only a couple of examples, sold about the same number of copies of their work during their lifetimes as many of our best poets do now. No one reads, thankfully, Rod McKuen any more, though he sold in the millions of copies in the 70s and 80s. To conflate the marketability of an art form, or the size of the audience it reaches, with its overall importance is quite dangerous. Literature is often a form of niche or underground -- more romantic an image, that -- activity, and I'm not sure I'd want to change that. Though selling a few more books, even if they only sit on shelves -- books do furnish a room -- to help keep the proverbial lights on ... well, I'm not against that either.

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