Karen Rigby is the author of the poetry chapbooks Festival Bone and Savage Machinery. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Field, Mid-American Review, Black Warrior Review, New England Review, Swink, Phoebe, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Crab Creek Review, and other journals. She is a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship recipient, and the poetry editor for Emprise Review. For more information, visit Karen’s website.




Your new chapbook, Savage Machinery, was published this year by Finishing Line Press. Congrats! How hard is it to publish a book of poetry these days?

In some ways, finding a publisher for a chapbook is easier than for a full-length book. (A full-length book in poetry is usually 48 or more pages.)

I would imagine chapbook publishers are more open to discovering new voices.

That isn’t to say there’s no work or competition involved, though–if you’re opting to have someone else publish the work rather than heading the self-publishing route, you’d still need to research which publishers might be a good “fit” with what you write, and would still need to put your best foot forward.

Chapbooks are usually limited editions with smaller print runs than a book. They come in many varieties–from the hand-sewn letterpress chapbooks that are quite artistic with heavy cardstock covers to the ones that are laser printed with simple black and white covers. Some have spines, more are stapled along the side. Some are published online as .pdf files. There’s a range in terms of what the finished product looks like.

Few chapbooks will make it to the bookshelf at the mainstream brick and mortar store unless you find a local store that is willing to take it on consignment, or some of the specialty or more literary stores. (One small part of the reason being that chapbooks can be quite slim, and when they lack a spine, virtually disappear on the shelf–not very useful from a marketing perspective.)

Whether the publisher you’re interested in has some means of online distribution–be it through their own site, Amazon, SPD Books, etc.–may be a factor to consider too.

So it is a labor of love–I don’t really think anyone would honestly expect to become an Author with a capital A (whatever that may mean)–that isn’t the point.

Once we start talking about full-length book manuscripts, it’s a little different.

The more competitive book publishers (for example, Alfred A. Knopf, W.W. Norton, Ecco, etc.) often have a backlist of authors they regularly work with and very few open slots for new writers each year, let alone first-time writers. Some will not consider unsolicited submissions at all.

There are independent presses, university presses, and the indie, more DIY publishers, and so on–some with open reading periods, some that sponsor “first book” contests, many that require a reading fee–it takes persistence to keep sending the work out, to research which publishers you want to try.

This is very crucial.

It would be expensive and unwise to simply try sending a manuscript everywhere blindly by choosing the names of presses out of a directory–you have to really consider whether or not you’d want to be published by that press, whether you like their work, whether your work seems to fit the aesthetics of the press, and most importantly–and perhaps harder for some writers to admit–whether the manuscript you’re sending around is actually ready to be seen by others, ready to be competitive.

A book requires a high level of cohesion–the poems need to belong together as a book. The order of the poems help create the “story” or experience the reader will ultimately have, themes in the first chapter may echo again in the last, or they may not–there is a definite culling process and many different approaches for how to structure that order.

It isn’t only an assemblage of all the poems one has written to date that happen to “feel” ready–(something like that could in fact be 2 or 3 books). To stand out from the submissions pile, a book has to be–as unhelpful and redundant as it might sound to say this–an actual book.

Chapbooks, too, need cohesion, but working on that smaller scale is sometimes easier in terms of being able to identify the linkages from poem to poem. A miniature book, if you will.

(At the moment I am still in the process of sending out the first full-length book).

Whether it is harder or easier now would likely depend on who you ask. I’m sure some might cite the proliferation of writing programs as one potential source for any increase in the sheer volume of submissions making there way out there, but you could say I’m a practical optimist.

I think the process should be “demystified” (there’s no magic about succeeding or delusion about being suddenly discovered–one has to put in the effort and be willing to persist–as basic as it is, one can’t be in the running for anything without applying)—but I also think time plays a role too. Maybe it won’t happen right away, but I do think good work rises to the surface.

I never realized poetry books have cohesion, structure, a “story.” How would you describe the “story” in your full-length poetry book, “Red Thorn”?

Some poetry books–particularly collected or selected poems–may feature a greater range and many “stories,” since those usually represent the writing over the course of someone’s career.

But there are poetry books that do focus on very particular themes–for example, Nick Flynn’s Blind Huber is based on a beekeeper, and Natasha Tretheway’s Bellocq’s Ophelia is a series of poems inspired by photos by Bellocq. Rita Dove’s Pultizer-winning Thomas and Beulah imagines what the life of her grandparents must have been like.

It’s perhaps a simplification to suggest there aren’t other themes in these books as well, but those are examples of writers that have taken the lens to a subject that intrigued them.

Other books may be more eclectic, but could be “cohesive” in terms of the voice, the imagery, the style of the writing, repetition of a motif, etc.

The book manuscript I’m currently circulating doesn’t have one overriding theme that is immediately identifiable or reductive (i.e. This is a book of poems on love, or…).

Instead, the connections are made through repetitions–for example, the second and third chapters each have a relatively longer poem based on women in films, the first and third chapter each mention Pittsburgh, the first and second chapters each have a poem on Da Vinci, etc.

One might think of the effect as being like a tapestry–something woven in the beginning may carry all the way through, or come up again in the weave later.

Writers often consider which poem will “open” the book and “close” the book–everyone seems to have their own preference–some may choose to open the book with a flashy, idiosyncratic, free-wheeling poem to immediately grab the reader by the collar and tell them, look, this is the ride you’re in for–others may opt for a “quieter” poem to ease the reader into the book more slowly, to kind of get them used to the voice first before bringing out the headier, more involved or even “heavier” poems.

Sometimes a book may deliberately end on an up-tick, a hopeful note, if that happens to be the trajectory of that particular poet’s work–maybe the book was about some struggle, and at the end, you know it turned out all right. It really depends.

If I had to try and characterize what kind of “story” this first book manuscript tells, it might be about discovering the visual world.

How are your chapbooks assembled, in terms of cohesion?

Festival Bone included poems I’d written as an undergraduate and as a graduate student–for that reason I often view that chapbook as containing “early work” (especially since the oldest poem in it, “Sunflower”, was written when I was 21, and now I’m just a few months short of turning 30!).

That chapbook had a looser structure–it came before I had read as much or considered the many ways a manuscript might be assembled. What binds the poems together, apart from whatever serendipities happened simply by virtue of being written around the same period, are the images. The chapbook included three flower poems, one on a garden, and one on a tree (of all things, in retrospect–it must have been my “botanical” phase).

Part of the arrangement was suggested by the publisher. It’s often nicer when a two-page poem appears on facing pages, so that a reader won’t have to turn the page to continue–this explains the placement of “Corset” and the final poem.

At first glance, Savage Machinery is connected by themes–art and food poems.

I’ll quote a reviewer (Carrie Meadows, on the Corduroy Books site), who wrote that the poems are “…inhabited by shape shifters, illusive characters ready to challenge our understanding of who and what they are.”

That’s always the fascinating part about reviews–so often someone else will see something in the work that hadn’t ever occurred to me at the time of writing it. I’m thinking part of the “cohesion” that comes with putting a manuscript together happens on a subconscious level, too, that when you’re writing, you keep mining a certain terrain or turning the same stone over and over, looking at things from different angles, and somehow recognize that all these poems “belong” to that terrain.

Is poetry your sole focus, or do you write in other creative forms?

Poetry is my main focus. I find that it is less linear–I don’t write narrative poems–most of the connections I make are through metaphors or associative imagery. So the very few times I’ve tried to sit down and write a short story, for instance, I find myself at a loss. I know some stories are wonderfully experimental but even those stories have a certain identifiable path–I can think of scenery or descriptions but literally getting a character from A to B –I can’t seem to do that.

Lynn Emanuel has a prose poem in her collection The Dig and Hotel Fiesta (University of Illinois Press). It’s called “The Politics of Narrative–Why I Am a Poet”.

I feel exactly like that sometimes.

And yet, if you were to ask what I enjoy reading, I’d respond with “novels”– even before poetry. This probably comes from childhood, since I read fiction first. I admire that ability others have to create a world–the macrocosm of the novel instead if the microcosm of the poem.

On rare occasions I dabble in creative nonfiction / memoir, though I haven’t sent any of that out. Sometimes this can be closer to poetry for me in terms of using more fragmentation or in terms of the style being more reflective–there’s urgency in the writing, but not necessarily that tension of making the “plot” move along.

What’s your all-time favorite novel?

I’ve had many favorites, and they seem to change. Books have a way of “speaking” to you at particular times in your life. When I was younger I used to answer this with Harriet the Spy. I wanted to be a writer, too, but was a far more cautious child than Harriet, who seemed reckless in a way I knew I’d never be. Then Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, but I think I might find it ponderous to re-read if I were to go back now. I went through a period of liking Carson McCullers. I don’t know that I could claim it is an all-time favorite, but in more recent years I’ve enjoyed H.E. Bates’ The Pop Larkin Chronicles. It’s idyllic, British, a little campy, maybe sentimental, but ultimately fun in mildly scandalous ways.(The TV series was fun, too.) And that seems to be the primary reason I turn to novels these days: pure escapism.

Is there a style of poetry you enjoy writing more than the others?

I used to write a lot of conceits–everything metaphorical, tightly structured, and brief. Lately I’ve found myself gravitating more towards poems in numbered sections or towards a more fragmented line. But generally free verse, and lyric, if I had to choose a style.

You’re the poetry editor for Emprise Review. How long have you held this position? What challenges do you encounter as an editor?

Emprise Review is a relatively new journal–the first issue was published just last August, so it’s only been a few months. Since we’re currently a volunteer staff, we are, as you might imagine, each fulfilling multiple roles, from reading and acknowledging submissions to generating editorial content to the more behind-the-scenes details of proofreading or preparing the issues to go “live” on the site.

The editors-in-chief are currently working through the legalities of turning the journal into a non-profit, so there’s the more practical, business-like side, too, to make sure the journal will be sustainable.

The challenge lies in making sure there is quality content–not compromising on that even if it means publishing fewer pieces at a time than many other journals– while simultaneously growing the journal at a manageable pace and getting the word out. We have a current call for contributors/staff on our page:http://muttsbane.com/info.aspx

You were born in the Republic of Panama, and lived there until 1997. Why did you come to the United States? How was the transition?

I moved when I graduated from high school to attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The transition wasn’t as unusual as one might expect. Since my parents worked for the Panama Canal (at the time those were U.S. government jobs), I went to the same Department of Defense schools as the military kids did– essentially, I attended English-speaking schools all my life.

I also had family in the U.S. and had visited several times. Pittsburgh was a newer city to me, but the U.S. itself wasn’t. I’m also 1/4 American (the rest is 1/4 Panamanian, 1/2 Chinese)–the culture wasn’t a surprise. I’d grown up reading many of the same authors (Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Lois Lowry, etc.) and seeing many of the same TV shows.

The biggest change was likely the normal one any college freshman experiences–that of suddenly having a new, less structured schedule, and more difficult coursework.

Do you write about Panama?

I’ve tried to write about Panama once in a while, especially when I took a memoir course in graduate school and needed a subject, but in reality I find it difficult to pin down –it’s such a huge topic, how would one approach it? I think most people that aren’t from there immediately picture the Panama Canal, or think about Noriega, but that’s about it, as though these are the two symbols. And yet, there’s more to the place. I haven’t been back since I left, so the landscape has changed a great deal in terms of development.

In poetry I never write about Panama. Probably because I seldom write autobiographically. It does seem to be a topic best suited for non-fiction–one day I’d like to write more about it, but it might be one of those things you need a few decades to grow into, to have enough distance to then be able to look back and examine one’s life.

Granted you don’t write autobiographically, but how has your writing changed over the last decade? Have you noticed new themes emerging? A different voice? In a previous answer, you mentioned your first chapbook contained botanical images, and your second chapbook is based around art and food. How else has your work changed, and where do you see it going from here?

After those two chapbooks, I wrote a few poems based on female characters in movies–but that quickly wore itself out. I’m still figuring out where I’ll head next.

A decade ago I would have been a college freshman. If I pulled those poems out, they would show some of the problems common to newer writers: being too obscure or cryptic, not always having the best ending or opening for a poem, too safe in the structure (almost everything was written in orderly stanzas back then)–but these are all things that tend to iron themselves out through revision, practice, time and more importantly, reading and living–the subjects of those very early poems were, as you might imagine, often imitative, or based on classroom writing exercises or they weren’t, in retrospect, that interesting. Still, I quickly acquired a sense for line breaks and the music of a line, the way things sounded to that “inner ear,” and those were some of the basics that probably helped.

I hope my writing in the future matures into something memorable (I think all writers probably desire that!) but also more complex. Right now, I find it hard to use time in a poem, for instance–take a poet like Li-Young Lee in his first book, Rose, and you can see how sometimes a poem begins in the present moment, detours into a memory of the past, returns–it seems to happen so effortlessly and seamlessly–I can’t yet do something like that. Larry Levis does that, too.

To be able to combine narrative techniques (whether it be the flashback or foreshadowing or chronology) with all the lyrical beauty of a poem–that’s quite something. I don’t know that I will become a writer of that kind of poem, but then, ten years ago, I couldn’t have foreseen the way I write now, either.

Contact Karen: viamrguto51 AT yahoo DOT com

Read:

“The Lover”
published in Line Break

“Flyover Country”
published by la fovea

Purchase Anthologies that contain Karen’s work