The Writing Lives Story Project

Although the Wick Poetry Series is named after two brothers, I always have seen the name as metaphor--the press, under the guidance of Maggie Anderson, has provided the essential material coil upon which so many poets have set their words alight.  After sending my manuscript out as a full-length book for a couple years, I decided to try the Wick Chapbook Series with a selection from the book of poems around my time living in Russia--and its selection was an oasis in the general desert of rejections--or, to use a metaphors of Russia, a well-heated izba in the Siberian steppe, a shot of vodka in a winter night.  It turns out Primer for Non-Native Speakers continues to be one of my favorite titles, even if one of my good friends, the poet Matvei Yankelevich, mistook it for a foreign language textbook.  What is a press, but an lent ear, a borrowed mouth? 

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