Scenes: Futurepoem: An Interview Dan Machlin

Could you briefly describe Futurepoem’s history?

Futurepoem began in 2002 as a decision to collaborate with graphic designer Anthony Monahan on a book publishing project. The name “Futurepoem” was born out an impulse that we were trying to create a new kind of publishing space, one that was open-ended and exploratory. Anthony and I both brought diverse influences to the table: I brought an awareness of significant avant-garde literary publishers past and present like Black Sparrow, Roof Books, O Books, and The Figures, and Anthony brought a great love of print design and non-literary design references like the unique visual identity that Vaughn Oliver created for the British Indie record label 4AD, and even the eccentric book projects of actor Crispin Glover.

At first, we simply approached authors whose work we really admired and invited them to publish a book with us. But soon, we decided to pursue a more communal model. We held free open reading periods each fall and invited distinguished writers and artists to help us select our books. This more open approach and the quality of the books that we were putting out seemed to resonate, and this personal project eventually grew into a successful not-for-profit organization.

Cover, Anarch.

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

One thing I’ve learned as a publisher is not to make assumptions about who the readers for a particular book are or could be. One thing we’ve recently tried to do is to try to facilitate a larger conversation around the work that we publish. Chris Martin, one of our editors, curates Futurepost, our response blog, which invites other writers to respond to individual poems or excerpts from our recent books. And Ted Dodson curates our Futurepoem Presents event series, which invites artists from other genres like dance, film and music to create original work in response to particular books. And we’re about to launch a special Tumblr blog which will feature a series of online film/ video responses by poets and filmmakers to Frances Richard’s Anarch.

Futurepoem’s editors (from left to right): Dan Machlin, Executive Editor; Jennifer Tamayo, Managing Editor (photo by Sean Cain); Ted Dodson, Books Editor & Futurepost Curator; and Chris Martin, Editor and Futurepoem Presents Curator

How would you characterize the work that you publish?

Futurepoem publishes innovative writing, work that challenges our perceptions of what a book of poetry and work of literature looks like, how it functions and how it impacts us as readers. We try to champion powerful work that might not be championed elsewhere. We’ve always avoided any sort of hard mission statement and rather let the series itself and the curatorial interests of our guest editors define and continue to redefine us. This has led to some amazing discoveries, from truly remarkable first books like Shanxing Wang’s Mad Science in Imperial City, which received the Asian-American Literature Award for Poetry, to exciting departure works by noted authors like Laura Mullen (Murmur) and Noah Eli Gordon (The Source). I think the non-categorical nature of some of our books also presents some interesting challenges as a publisher. Recently, we published Rachel Levitsky’s The Story of My Accident is Ours, which is presented as a novella, though it might just as easily be presented as a series of prose poems or even a series of philosophical fragments. Then you’ve got works like Frances Richard’s Anarch. that Fanny Howe notes “has the spirit of anthropology and philosophy” and fearlessly tackles totally new terrain linguistically, while at the same time has this unflinching specificity and clarity.

What is your role in the publishing scene?

Ten years ago, Futurepoem was a new press looking to an older generation of avant-garde publishers for inspiration and guidance. Now, there are many other exciting new publishers emerging every day and we try to support them and collaborate with them every chance that we can through our involvement in CLMP (Council of Literary Magazines and Presses...