My upcoming collection, The Artist’s House, is a series of poems engaging with art and artists in other forms. Ekphrastic poetry, it’s called. Each poem gives a nod to another poet, painter, musician, composer, or writer. The manuscript is leaning on me to include images. That will turn it into a more expensive book, but will increase the visual aspect in an appropriate way. I find that the most appealing ekphrastic poems are publishing online, where the image to which the poem speaks can be shared in full color at no cost.
At first I was thinking of this as a traditional print book, easy enough to publish those on Amazon, but then I remembered how many of my poet friends don’t buy poetry books. Sad, but true. And I discovered that my program that creates interior formatting for fiction doesn’t work well for a poetry collection. But thanks, Google, I found downloadable poetry book templates, some inexpensive ones on Etsy, some free from poets online.
But an illustrated poetry book? I only have one in my collection. Snow Effects by Lynne Kight, was published by Small Poetry Press in 2000. It’s this wonderful poet’s response to a traveling art exhibit called Impressionists in Winter. I saw it at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, and so did Lynne. Her ekphrastic collection responds to many specific paintings, and poet David Alpaugh’s Small Poetry Press performed a miracle in putting a reproduction (with permissions) facing each poem.
Could I find a publisher to bring out such a full-color illustrated book of poems? Not a chance!
The solution: I’ll have to self-publish this kind of poetry book. That means I have to promote it. But what poet isn’t faced with that responsibility? To succeed in self-publishing a poetry book, you have to answer the slippery question of what is your personal definition of success. For me, it’s to have my poetry read. There’s no money in poetry book sales. For most poets, there’s no fame, no recognition even. So success is a personal definition. To be read, to be appreciated sometimes. That opens up possibilities for me to self-publish a poetry book.
Other options come to mind: to publish online with full-color images, and even to make short videos of the kind that are popular on Instagram and TikTok. A poem I’d read aloud over moving visuals. Or maybe I can do all three forms of self-publishing! I do like challenges, especially the slightly impossible ones.
Here’s a poem from the collection (with thanks to Tindorbox Journal for first publishing it):
One night a winged neighbor in a tree
loosed fireworks into my window. I held
the small explosions in my throat, drank
its pinwheel colors like the highest notes
sung by the Queen of the Night.
I had been deaf until that bird
peeled away my ear’s veils. Now sounds
tumble through my day
in enameled boxes: food, sex,
predators. Luminous curlicues
arabesque in my head,
reverberant, and feather my ankles,
narrating the instant, looping
into a lariats of noise
that snag a cloud above a tree.
In the pause I can hear pillows
whisper as I sink into their bodies,
ending the day praising
my own narrow perch.
