Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3
December 19, 2016 2:17 PM   Subscribe

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3
One of the problems in publishing poetry is that the books are so short. Of course nobody wants to pay $10-12 for a 40-page read, but it's difficult to produce a professional book (with editors, proofreaders, cover artists, book design, printing costs, promotional costs, etc.) for much less than that. We realized that we could steal from the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s, and put together three books from different poets in one volume. Somewhere between an anthology and a single-author collection, the Floodgate Poetry Series was born. Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3 contains:
  • Northern Corn by brothers Anders and Kai Carlson-Wee, which invites us on a trip across an America of dust, trains, poverty, dignity, and dreams;
  • Begotten, by Cave Canem fellows F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis, which unflinchingly explores fatherhood in the era of Black Lives Matter;
  • and Driving through the Animal by Enid Shomer, which witnesses the tiniest details of ecological destruction and still provides some hope for the future, and which is Shomer's first poetry book since Stars At Noon (U Arkansas, 2001).

It’s the third volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century, and are a natural length for a poetry collection. Typically, each Floodgate volume contains a chapbook by a poet at the beginning of their career, one by a poet with a few books under their belt, and one by an experienced poet with some stature in American letters. Floodgate 3 is unusual in having two of the three chapbooks be co-written.

We've made a point of making sure it's carried by independent bookstores (like 57th St, McNally Jackson, and Parnassus), internationally (e.g. from Wordery), and at Amazon.
Role: publisher
posted by joannemerriam (0 comments total)

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