Scenes: an interview with Wave Books

Poetry Bus in Missoula, Montana Copyright Maggie Jackson

Would you briefly describe Wave Books's history?

Wave Books, located in Seattle, was founded in 2005, when it joined forces with Verse Press, an independent poetry publishing house which Brian Henry and Matthew Zapruder started in 1999. Matthew and Joshua Beckman became the editors, and Charlie Wright the publisher. Verse Press began out of a need for emerging writers to find a place to publish their work. As those poets continued to publish and develop, they became "mid-career poets." Wave publishes six or so books a year, mostly poetry by mostly mid-career poets. We have also done several larger events and projects: probably the best known was the Poetry Bus, a fifty city poetry reading tour which involved hundreds of poets from all around the US, Canada, and Europe. Recently, we did an event with the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle: twelve of our authors came to work in the gallery, to explore how poets could take on the considerations of curators, as well as to do poetry readings in the gallery and in the James Turrell Skyspace. So from the beginning, we have been not only a poetry publishing house, but also an organization that tries to engage the larger culture through poetry.

Wave Books Colophon/Logo

How would you characterize the poetry you publish?

Wave Books is focused particularly, though certainly not exclusively, on publishing the work of a generation of poets currently between the ages of 30 and 45, though we also publish the work of more established authors such as Dara Wier, Mary Ruefle, Eileen Myles, John Godfrey, and others. It's interesting and exciting for us as a publishing house to ask ourselves what this generation of poets is doing, and all the different ways we can publish and support these poets in their work. More than to any particular style of poetry, we gravitate towards poets who are writing poetry we feel is necessary. Part of what that means to us is poetry that values and explores poetry itself as an essential experience, and not just as a reflection or recapitulation or distillation of a supposedly more "real" experience in the world. To us the poem itself is the only place where certain essential modes of thinking, understanding, perception, and partial knowledge can occur. That approach towards the poem can occur in any "sort" of poetry, whether it is so-called experimental or traditional, lyric or narrative, rhyming or free verse, and so on.

Wave Books Limited Edition Hardcovers Copyright Kelly Shimoda

Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them?

We believe poetry is not decorative, but a necessary and central experience. We are trying to reach out to people by making books that feel good and right to hold in your hands, and which contain words which, when you read them, will change you.

What is your role in the publishing scene?

Our focus (again not exclusively) on a particular generation of poets hopefully adds to the understanding readers can have of what is going on in poetry today. We also believe very strongly that while the book publishing industry as a whole is understandably and for very good reasons trending towards making cheaper, more disposable, even of course electronic versions of books, there remains a need for books that are made of the highest quality materials, and with the highest standards of design. Wave books are recognizable, in that they use exclusively type-based and non-figurative design elements. We like the fact that the book design moves the reader towards a desire to open the book and read what's inside, without (hopefully) overdetermining the experience (emotional or otherwise).

Wave author Eileen Myles and Wave author/editor Joshua Beckman at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington Copyright Jon Woodward

What's in the future for Wave Books?

In the next several seasons, we are adding to our book publishing activities...