{"id":772,"date":"2010-08-09T16:27:23","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T16:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=772"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:04:01","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:04:01","slug":"director-of-if-p-then-q-james-davies-asnswers-10-questions-for-ink-sweat-and-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/director-of-if-p-then-q-james-davies-asnswers-10-questions-for-ink-sweat-and-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"Director of if p then q, James Davies asnswers 10 questions for Ink Sweat and Tears"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the part of the series called Ten Questions in which IS&T talks to small presses.\u00a0 Here, Director of if p then q, James Davies supplies the answers.<\/p>\n

Ten Questions


Name:\u00a0 if p then q<\/a>
\nDOB: April 2008
\nHome town: Manchester



1. Who is if p then q?<\/strong>
\n
if p then q<\/em> is an experimental poetry publisher based in Manchester with an Anglo-American focus. I publish around 4 titles a year of both new and established poets. I\u2019ve been running the press for just over two years now.

2. What are your goals as a publisher?<\/strong>

There are many goals. To bring excellent writers to the attention of as many people as possible is important. Quality is a top priority. My list is very tight so that the press is recognised as well as the authors; making the benefits reciprocal. My approach is to banish the myth that experimental poetry is impossible to read. I think that being able to read experimental poetry is often seen as an elitist or privileged skill. But it\u2019s not always like that: I don\u2019t know how to fix a sink but I could do it if I did the training. It\u2019s often a case of time or patience. I have an aim of presenting it as such, letting people know that. I\u2019ve done a lot of bubblegum things to get people interested: promotional paraphernalia, wacky gifts, goofy blog speech, events. And I\u2019m also in the business of telling people they don\u2019t have to \u2018understand\u2019 a poem for it to be fun. I mean, I don\u2019t understand an ice cream. I personally don\u2019t understand a lot music I listen to but again I could do if I put in the work.<\/p>\n

I have a three tier model\u00a0 for if p then q which can be paraphrased into: fun (no work involved for the reader), fun (the reader decides to work with what\u2019s given), fun (the reader decides to do research).

3. What first brought you to publishing?<\/strong>

Like many people I wanted to see what it was all about. I enjoy the logistics of it and the possibilities. My first dabblings were with Matchbox<\/a>. This was a bi-monthly poetry object, devoted to one poet per issue; mini sequences housed in a genuine matchbox. I ran that for two years before my stamina ran dry with all the cutting and gluing: handmade stuff on a large scale (150 per issue) takes time time time.<\/p>\n

They were wonderful things to make. There was a mix of amazing poetry \u2013 P. Inman, Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Lisa Jarnot, et al \u2013 and the wackiness of the object.<\/p>\n

The coaxing, by using the Matchbox format, got people reading poetry they might never have done and loving it. if p then q continues from there but without all the handmade stuff, though there was a bit of that at the start.

4. What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I certainly have a responsibility to the poets I decide to take on, regardless of whether I approach them or they approach me. I have to give them as much as I possibly can with my limited resources of time and finances. I have an obligation to plug their book for instance and not just leave it dormant after it\u2019s printed: try and create as much of a buzz about it as possible. I do as much as I can to sell it \u2013 through bookshops, libraries, readings, the internet.<\/p>\n

if p then q \u2019s role in the small press is to print books that might not otherwise be published or that might be delayed due to the limited amount of publishers out there. It also has the role of bringing good poetry to a wider audience: I\u2019m dead against bringing \u2018poetry\u2019 per se to a wider audience. So there is an editorial responsibility of not just publishing noise. There is a notion that, for people who don\u2019t enjoy poetry to be encouraged to read, all poets should team up and unite but can you imagine Steve Reich teaming up with the Spice Girls? They have no relationship. The editorial processes must be sound, so that readers haven\u2019t got the responsibility of filtering out the noise. But this has always been the case, especially for small presses who aren\u2019t reliant on financial income.

5. What do you see your press doing that no one else is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Umm. Not that no one else is doing but perhaps that only a few are doing and that\u2019s publishing book length collections of experimental poetry in the UK. None of the authors I\u2019ve published so far have been published by anyone else in the UK so I am bringing these people to light and this is important; especially P. Inman, my favourite poet alive or dead, and certainly one of the most important poets of last 20th\/21st century.<\/p>\n

6. What do you see as the most effective way to get new publications out into the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For certain, in the small press poetry scene, this has to be the e-book. It\u2019s free (which has to be a good thing) and easily accessible. Since poetry collections sell so little per year poets are not really reliant on the little revenue they make. What poets need is an audience.<\/p>\n

So you might ask why then if p then q titles are printed as books? Well many people, myself included, still like the object, the physicality and the practicality. So if p then q titles are made for that market.

I don\u2019t think people are ever going to pay for e-books now that Spotify has bucked that trend in music. They may pay for the odd book on the Kindle for a while, although this is very doubtful since it\u2019s not a material object \u2013 a Spotify of the bookworld seems more likely – but for the small presses who don\u2019t intend to make money the e-book an excellent outcome for all concerned. The big editorial question for e-books in the small press remains how good is the editor in choosing books that matter and I wonder at this. How much are editors thinking about this when it\u2019s so easy to \u2018push the button\u2019? But regardless, the e-book is one of the most highly exciting developments in publishing of recent years for small presses and presses in general.<\/p>\n

A great example of good editorial policy is Openned who are very selective in their e-publishing and make limited amount of joyous things which I would have previously given up my hard earned pennies for or would have never been able to read. And then there\u2019s Eclipse and Ubu, two name but a few, who are producing a mass of outstanding free books for readers.

7. Do you take submissions? If so, what are you looking for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes all year round. Only full length manuscripts of experimental poetry. The if p then q list is indicative of what I\u2019m looking for, as with all presses. I can take up to three months to get back to people and I only have the ability to produce a small amount of books each year.

8. How hands-on are you as editor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quite hands-on. I might suggest leaving a poem out but I don\u2019t usually suggest changes in an individual poem. The reason I suppose is that in conventional poetry one might be trying to describe something (an object or idea), and a better word for an image can be found. But often in experimental poetry representation isn\u2019t the issue, certainly not mimesis, so the word is the (right) word, stands for itself. I am confident in the poet\u2019s ability to choose these words if I\u2019ve invited them to publish. In the submissions I choose to take I am also 100% satisfied in the choice of words and form. I obviously proof the work too.

9. Tell us what you have published this year, and what you are going to publish.<\/strong>

I\u2019ve published Geof Huth\u2019s ntst which is a huge batch of luscious one word poems playing with language. 775 to be precise. They really show off the three tier model of if p then q \u2019s maxim and two reviewers of the book have picked up on that. Then just last month Tom Jenks\u2019 *, his second collection, which sees him weave disparate parts of language using a sequence rather than writing individual poems as he did in A Priori. The star symbol can stand for whatever you want it to. It\u2019s highly democratic in that way and generous. Last year I also published Lucy Harvest Clarke\u2019s collection Silveronda which is one to look out for.<\/p>\n

Later in the year will be a short collection by Matthew Welton. I\u2019ve read one of the poems for the as yet unnamed book already and that\u2019s super-cool Matthew Welton stuff. Also Tony Trehy is in the process of writing something. Tim Atkins and Derek Henderson have submitted work which is scheduled for next year. I\u2019ll keep these under wraps but I\u2019m very very excited by them. And at the tail end of 2011 is Volume 1 of The Collected Works of P. Inman which will show his incredible body of work; making you feel sublime and fizzy.<\/p>\n

10. How do you see the press evolving?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The list will become stronger and stronger. More exciting and more exciting. Each title will continue to wow me and others. Things will never be nice, always fantastic; things to stand a test of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the part of the series called Ten Questions in which IS&T talks to small presses.\u00a0 Here, Director of if p then q, James Davies supplies the answers. Ten QuestionsName:\u00a0 if p then q DOB: April 2008 Home town: Manchester1. Who is if p then q? if p then q is an experimental poetry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23685,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/23685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}