Janaka Stucky is a mystic poet, performer, and founding editor of the award-winning press, Black Ocean. He is the author of four poetry collections, is a two-time National Haiku Champion, and has taught or performed in over 60 cities around the world. His new collection, Ascend Ascend, is forthcoming in April, 2019.
KMD: How did you come to editing as a career path?
JS: It’s funny to think of editing as a career for me because Black Ocean is entirely volunteer-run, including myself. While I have been publishing Black Ocean books for 13 years, and various zines before that, I’ve never actually taken income for my work as an editor. In fact, I’ve put a lot of my own money (earned from doing other kinds of work) into Black Ocean over the years … so if anything, you could ask, “How did you come into editing as a form of philanthropy?”
The answer, in any case, is that I started writing and publishing my own work as a teenager. I came up in the New England DIY / punk scene, and through that eventually merged my private practice of poetry and poetry chapbooks with the larger zine-making scene around the country. I started dreaming of starting my own press around the age of 17. As an undergrad at Emerson College, I became involved in the student literary magazine—which I went on to become editor of and do the layout and design for.
I went on to grad school, and when I finished my MFA at the age of 25, I was at a kind of crossroads and didn’t know what to do next. As I saw it, I could either pursue a career in academia (and probably another degree), or start this press I had been dreaming of for the past eight years … I chose the latter. With two grad school friends, Carrie Olivia Adams and Susan McCarty, I started Black Ocean in 2004—using a small business loan I took out in my own name to buy a new desktop computer, a laser printer, and then pay to print our first four books. In 2006 we launched our catalog at AWP in Austin, Texas.
In 2007, our fifth title, The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of the 25 Best Books of that year. Suddenly, there I was at 28-years-old, attending this gala event with editors from the Big 5 and other major houses in Manhattan—celebrating the works of writers like Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Denis Johnson … and our little book of poetry!
We’ve now published over 50 titles, and recently just absorbed the Seattle-based Gramma Press when they lost their funding in January. We also launched a new non-fiction imprint back in December, Black Ocean :: Undercurrents, with the release of Elisa Gabbert’s essay collection, The Word Pretty.
Through that 15-year career as an editor working for free, I instead have earned a living as: an undertaker, a bouncer, a project manager in a variety of industries, a consultant, and occasionally as a workshop teacher.
KMD: What does literary citizenship mean to you and how does it shape your editorial decisions, approach to book publicity, and engagement with the larger community?
JS: As both an author and a publisher, I think about what “literary citizenship” means a fair amount. I used to believe in a larger community, but lately I’ve begun to feel like that’s a kind of fallacy we’ve created to compensate for the relatively small audience that contemporary poetry and independent literature enjoy. I think it’s more accurate to think of these as artistic mediums, with their won subgenres and perhaps communities that dwell within or across some of those subgenres. In some ways, it feels very tribal at times, for better or worse (often both).
That said I still feel like literary citizenship, distinct from any community, is important—just as any kind of public citizenship is important. In that sense, I would define literary citizenship against some sort of social contract theory. Over the years, much of the literary world has collectively consented to be governed by the institutions which it has also built: journals, presses, academic programs, etc. Likewise, we have people who perennially challenge those orders and dissent from the governing bodies—they create new bodies (new publications, new forms of schooling or workshops) or just want to stage a coup to infiltrate and/or tear down the existing bodies. All of the above are valid forms of literary citizenship—as long as, at their core, the intention is that we are raising up others alongside ourselves. Being a good literary citizen is about intention as much as it is about action. Focusing solely on one’s own interests is not citizenship; that is selfishness.
KMD: Please share one story about your press, your authors, or the books you’ve published that demonstrates this.
JS: For the reasons stated above, I’ve eschewed publishing myself, or any of Black Ocean’s staff, through Black Ocean. It’s not that I don’t believe self-publishing is valid—rather that I would want to keep that effort separate from the effort to put the voices of others out into the world. Likewise, we have always sought to engage directly with our readers and think of selling books as a by-product of getting the work of our authors read—rather than profit being the purpose. If people are reading our books it’s because they’re buying them, and that money lets us publish more books. That’s the heart of it. We are mission driven, though we’re not non-profit because non-profits have a way of becoming focused on fundraising as their main operation. I think this focus has served our authors well. The average poetry book in the U.S. sells around 200 copies; Black Ocean’s titles routinely sell 2,000 copies and some have pushed upwards of 8,000 copies in print.
For a time, I also ran a monthly reading series in Boston for three years, called BASH. We would invite three poets every month to read—focusing on debut poets and poets with books from indie publishers. It was a tremendous amount of work to book 36 touring poets every year and to promote the reading every month so that the poets who spent time and money coming to town would have a good audience. The series was pretty successful and, while some were sparsely attended, overall, we drew pretty decent crowds and tended the touring poets tended to sell a lot of books. In the end though, it proved too taxing. I knew that I couldn’t sustain that pace while doing justice to the touring poets and the poets I published through Black Ocean. Running a series is a huge effort and responsibility, and I am grateful to all the people across this country who put in that very necessary work. By the time I ended the series, I had booked and hosted over 100 poets. Many of them I had taken out to dinner or even put up in my home. Perhaps only a handful of them have since offered to help book me a reading or a host me in their town, but the point of that work was not reciprocity—it was enriching the literary landscape of the city I live in, while providing other artists with a platform.
KMD: In what ways has your definition of and commitment to literary citizenship changed in the past few years? What sparked these changes?
JS: I think the longer one does anything, and the more successful one becomes, the more one risks alienating others. It’s interesting to see how Black Ocean has evolved from upstart to gatekeeper in some people’s eyes—even though we’ve essentially stayed the same organization through all those years. We’re not editors in an office somewhere deeming what books are worthy and what books are unworthy; we’re simply poets who take as much time away from our families and day jobs as possible to discover new voices in poetry and publish the writing we find exciting. In that sense, at some point you have to realize that you can’t be all things to all people, and that’s okay. Other people and presses can be the things you’re not—just as you bring your own qualities to the world.
Nonetheless people will get upset with you for not publishing their book, and you have to develop a tough skin about that. I’ve had authors write very friendly queries about possible publication, and then not respond after I send them an equally friendly email back suggesting they wait until our open reading period. I’ve blurbed book jackets without even receiving a copy or thanks from the poet once the book is published. I think every editor I know has received verbal abuse, privately or publicly, from an author whose work they turned down. I can’t say that instances like these don’t wear me a down a bit and tarnish my enthusiasm at times.
At the same time, I recognize that Black Ocean does enjoy a place of authority through all the energy we’ve poured into publishing over the years. With that success comes responsibility. I am always challenging myself and the people I work with to be mindful of that responsibility to others. This may not be a “job” for any of us at Black Ocean, but it is our vocation.
KMD: Tell us about one forthcoming title from your press that you think will change the world for the better.
JS: To answer this, it’s important to understand how I view poetry’s potential and how that guides Black Ocean’s engagement with it. We believe in the fissure that art can create in consciousness when, even if just for a moment, we experience a more vital way of operating in the world—and through that moment then seek out more extreme and enlightened modes of existence. We believe in the freedom we find through enlightened modes of existence, and we are committed to promoting artists we firmly believe in by sharing our enthusiasm for their work with a global audience. In that sense, I hope that every book we publish will change the world for the better in some small way—that is, in fact, my criteria for publishing it.
I am, of course, very excited for the new book, Pulver Maar, by our best-selling author, Zachary Schomburg. This will be Zach’s fifth book with Black Ocean and each title is always an event with him. That said, I am totally buzzing about the debut poetry collection we’re publishing by Kristin George Bagdanov, Fossils in the Making, which offers an incredibly poignant lyric body of work that is both spiritual and environmental. Publishing debut authors has always been a part of what we do, and I think putting a new voice out into the world for the first time always carries with it a great capacity for change.