Interviewed by Charles Ries

Q: Why do you do it?

A: I publish because it is my way of putting something beautiful into the world … something worthwhile. It’s a labor of love in many ways, I suppose. I hardly make a dime off anything I publish – hell, most times I end up well in the red. But there’s something about giving people a book or a sheet of paper with words on it knowing it might in one way or another lend to the shaping of their world. Publishing these books is to me every bit as fulfilling as writing a good poem. You’re seeing your vision through to the end. And you walk into a bookstore and the book you made, you created, you birthed into the world is resting on the shelves among all the giants … Neruda, Cummings, Whitman, Bukowski … that gives me chills every time. But that’s just my self-centric reason for doing this. I do it also, of course, because I believe strongly in the poetry I put out there. I do it because I want to give these poems a home. The home I give them is Anthills.

Q: Are you more of a publisher, or more of a writer?

A: I would say there’s a stronger urge in me to sit down at my typewriter and rap out a poem or two … or eight. But I’m delighted as hell I don’t have to choose either/or in real life, because my desire to put out Anthills – or a chapbook or broadside for that matter – is so strong, there’s not a time, really, I’m not thinking about my next project. And in many ways, I suppose, the two “vocations,” I’ll call them, are not all too dissimilar. As editor/publisher, I’m deeply involved in each project … and by the time the issue (or chap/broadside) is published, it magically contains so much of me, it’s almost as if it came from the same place my poems come from. Not only that, but every poem I publish through Centennial Press is one I wish I’d written. So, even when the writer in me is taking a backseat to the publisher, he’s busily taking notes on how to better himself. Oddly, though, I feel no great need to see my own poems in print. I did at first, because I suppose I needed a validation of some sort. But I haven’t sent anything out for several months. I probably wrote near 400 poems last year alone, and only three to four people have ever seen them.

Q: Your Anthills series is as much graphic art as it is a premier collection of writers and their work – what are you trying to accomplish with Anthills?

A: Thank you so much. I’m very actively and creatively involved in the pieces I publish. There’s much to be said about magazines like Free Verse (which is utterly fabulous, by the way) or Fuck! (which has its own charm) that simply put poetry down on a page and disseminate it. But that’s not for me. I am incessantly seeking a new format or an inventive way of putting poetry into the world because I’m interested in creating “books as art,” items that can be cherished as much for what they are as for what they say. Then there are the poems themselves, and the selection thereof. The way they all fit together in my mind … they tell a story. There is always a reason for the order in which I arrange the poems, even if it’s not at first glance evident to the reader. But to put it simply, Charles, I want to create something people will love and hold on to for a long time to come.

Q: Who designs your books?

A: My wife, Deborah, designs all the books and broadsides for Centennial Press. She’s brilliant, and I’m damn lucky to have her, both as my small press partner and my wife. I love the interest she puts into each piece, reading it before figuring out how to interpret it visually. Sometimes she’ll draw inspiration directly from the poems we’re publishing. Other times, she’ll have a certain vision that she’ll want to carry through independent of the poem or poems. But the work she does always floors me. Without her, there could be no Centennial Press. Period. So yeah, maybe I’m the one everybody knows because I’m the one in contact with the poets we publish, I’m the one being interviewed (the one with the loud mouth). But she’s the reason our books are so wonderful. She’s the wizard behind the curtain.