Full verse press

From Robert Pinsky to Marge Piercy, Cape Cod calls poets as the tide calls waves, lending inspiration - and sandy beaches - to those who polish plain words into gems.

Those Cape and Islands poets, many of whom you may know from local readings or anthologies, will now have a chance at publishing a full collection of their own by winning a competition organized by a local nonprofit.

The Cultural Center of Cape Cod is launching Bass River Press to support poets by publishing one full-length collection by a Cape or Islands poet each year. The new effort is intended to complement ongoing poetry anthologies and activities, such as the Cape Cod Poetry Review and Calliope.

“Every year, the cultural center does a Mutual Muses event with 50 poets and artists. I realized that while the artists get to sell their work afterward, the poets never do,” says Angela Howes, editor for the new project.

Cultural Center director Lauren Wolk says the idea of starting a press has been a longtime dream. When Howes graduated from Brandeis University in December, she found a job at the Brewster Ladies Library to support herself and then volunteered to help create a publishing house at the nonprofit Cultural Center of Cape Cod.

Howes says, “Basically, when Lauren proposed the idea she said if you are really passionate about this, we’ll make it happen - even though we don’t have any money.”

To raise money, Bass River Press created a Kickstarter page, which must raise $2,000 by Easter day, for the center to receive pledges made by individuals who want to support the project. Wolk hopes to dedicate the $1,000 usually raised by the Cultural Center’s poetry project to the new publication. She is also shopping Bass River Press to past supporters in the hope of raising some seed money. The last piece of the financing puzzle is a $20 submission fee.

“Like all arts organizations on the Cape, we are so cash-strapped that the only way we can do this is with submission fees for people interested in being considered. It’s a blind competition. A judge chooses the winner, who usually gets a stipend, publication and a small number of free copies,” Wolk says. If the inaugural project is successful, she says, the press may expand to publish a fiction and nonfiction book, along with the volume of poetry.

She and Howes spoke with several people already supporting poetry on the Cape and Islands.

“Bass River Press will be an exciting addition to an already thriving poetry culture on Cape Cod,” says Mary Ellen Redmond, award-winning poet and co-founder of the Cape Cod Poet’s Theater, with the late Joe Gouveia. “This is good news.”

In the same written release announcing the project, Gregory Hischak, published poet and associate director of the Edward Gorey House, says, “The Bass River Press would be tremendous physical tangible proof of the wealth of literary talent living on the Cape.”

Hischak, recently awarded a 2015 Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, continues, “The Cultural Center of Cape Cod has the facilities, stamina, know-how and collective patience to nurture, produce and promote such a literary publication.”

For its first publication, Bass River Press will accept only original, unpublished collections of poems between 48 and 64 pages. Poets with previously published collections are eligible to submit, along with first-time poets. Individual poems from the manuscript previously published in chapbooks, magazines, journals or anthologies are eligible, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. This rule applies to self-published collections as well. Once the final collection is selected, editors at Bass River Press will send it out for review and arrange for distribution.

Howes will narrow submissions, sending 15 finalists to inaugural poetry judge Tony Hoagland, who will make the final selection. Hoagland is a much-published and highly-awarded poet who teaches at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA program.

By fall, the selected manuscript will go into production with an expected release of January 2016.

“We will hold a competition for cover art with a small submission fee as well. The artist will receive exposure and retain the rights to his or her work,” Wolk says. “And then we’ll sell the books, 250 copies to start and we’ll reprint as needed.”

Wolk says the collection from a single poet, depending on length, will probably sell for $12 (the price of the recently released anthology, the Cape Cod Poetry Review.)

“Bass River Press is on the cusp of filling something that has been profoundly empty in the literary arts on Cape Cod for some time now,” the Review’s editor, John Bonnani, told organizers.

For more information about how to support Bass River Press or submit a manuscript, visit www.cultural-center.org – or contact editor Angela Howes atahowes@cultural-center.org or 508-394-7100. Supervising editor Lauren Wolk can be reached at lwolk@cultural-center.org.