An Interview with Michael Wiegers, Executive Editor of Copper Canyon Press
This interview is from our Fall / Winter 2023 issue, available for purchase here.
Dawn Angelicca Barcelona: What moment sparked your interest in engaging deeply with poetry as both a reader and editor?
Michael Wiegers: I’d say it was a series of influences rather than any single “Eureka!” moment. As a child my mother had given me a plaque with a Langston Hughes poem (“Hold fast to dreams . . .”) and I thought about that a lot growing up—even as a preteen, writing an essay about it for a contest. As a teenager, I enjoyed reading poetry in classes and even wrote some very bad poems along the pathway towards angsty teen interiority. I remember my first poem, written sometime in the late ’70s, about the devastation of a forest near my home and my Sisyphean attempts to stop the bulldozers. I was very influenced by music at the time and was into punk rock, and I remember talking excitedly with my mother about the lyrics of a song. Perhaps in response she gave me a copy of Laurence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind, and the collected e.e. cummings. Their poetry was superficially different than what I was exposed to in my Jesuit schooling: it was plainspoken, wisecracking, playful—its music was unexpected. It was new and exciting to me. Fast forward to college where I started as a biology major with the aspiration of making the world a better place. I had dreams of medicine or studying animals. In order to complete some course credits, I started taking English classes, eventually taking a poetry class. I was hooked. After graduating, I worked at a couple of bookstores where—as the new guy—I was assigned to the poetry section, probably because it was small and there was always a feeling among the well-read staff that poetry was a challenge. I was unintimidated and soon became the “poetry guy.” After taking some classes and volunteering as a type devil at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, I learned how to print letterpress and bind—and some very rudimentary design considerations that encouraged me to look at the page in a different way. I was fortunate enough to land a job at Coffee House Press and my position soon moved from administration to editorial. I loved reading books, making books, playing with ideas, moving words around like material furniture.
I know it was common for zines to be made and traded in the punk rock scene of the ’70s, and folks like Patti Smith were not only musicians, but writers. Did you ever get your hands on a zine from a show? What were some of the bands that influenced you at the time?
I first started listening to British punk in the early ’80s, but my first publishing experience was as an intern at The Friends Journal in Philadelphia. At that time, I was hanging out with a bunch of “musicians” and one of my apartment mates put together a good punk zine which was popular at local shows. I was very much into bands like Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, The Minutemen, 7 Seconds, and other bands of that ilk, that foregrounded political and social awareness in their music.
These days I think people take for granted how easy it is to grab a book off a shelf and read it right away or to order it online and get the book shipped right to their door. How did learning to print letterpress and bind books change the way you looked at pages? How do you think the experience of physically making books shapes the way you now encounter manuscripts in digital form that will eventually make it into print?
I joke that every poet should set their own type—it would help them develop an economy of words. And yes, that work helped me in my work as an editor—how to look at letterforms, how those forms transport information from the writer to the reader, what feeling they deliver. I also would like more writers to understand page design and proportions, if only to respect and understand the work of skilled designers.
What’s a recent poetry book that has inspired you?
Jorie Graham’s To 2040. It’s a brilliant book that everyone should be reading for the lessons it has to teach us, as well as the awe and wonder it provokes. Simply spectacular.
How did Copper Canyon get its start and what inflection point was Copper Canyon in when you joined?
CCP started after a group of poets and printers who knew each other from Santa Barbara secured some letterpress equipment and learned to print. This group evolved and moved from California to Denver and then eventually to Port Townsend, WA. After some further attrition, two of the founders—Tree Swenson and Sam Hamill, who ended up getting married—remained and built the press into its initial nonprofit status and a modicum of stability and planning. After they divorced—about thirty years ago—I was hired to come in and do a little bit of everything, from editing to marketing and publicity and fundraising and even some bookkeeping (heaven help us). Around that time we also started casting our net a little wider and began publishing a more diverse group of voices and aesthetics.
How do you think the landscape has changed for poetry presses during your time at Copper Canyon?
This is a HUGE question. It’s changed significantly. When I started, Copper Canyon had ONE computer—an old school Mac with that six-inch screen. We were still doing our offset design with a light table and wax paste up. Now, anyone can play at being a publisher, and anyone can make a book. There are many more publishers and many more opportunities for poets—and many more poets. When I was getting started there were those who wanted to keep poetry as an art for a select community—there was a resistance to popularization. Now poetry has become increasingly popularized and commercialized.
How do you think that literary organizations (such as The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Foundation, and The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, to name a few) have influenced the field of poetry?
They have helped popularize and decentralize poetry, while also bringing economic resources to help support poets at all levels.
How does Copper Canyon’s team stay true to the mission that “[p]oetry is vital to language and living”?
We always foreground poetry in everything we do. Every meeting starts and ends with a poem—this is just as important as business items on our agenda—and once every six weeks, in lieu of a staff “business” meeting, we take one book to discuss as a group. We always look to the poetry to guide us in our work—there are lessons to learn in poetry when one allows.
What is the relationship between the editor and poet from acquisition to publication?
I hope it’s a good one! As I see it, an editor is the primary advocate for a poet or their book—that’s my primary role: to be one of the first people to represent the public, held within publishing. Early on, I try to engage the poet—according to what their needs are!—with feedback on their manuscript from my subjective point of view. Even more I really hope that they are teaching me about their poems, their book—helping me help them. As I learn their vision I try to adapt my practices, I try to adapt how I speak about a book or present it to the media, the industry, to colleagues, and other poets. I work with the author as we design the book and come up with covers. I try to lend my voice to publicity efforts after the book is published. I solicit foreign publication of the books in an attempt to expand their audience beyond the US. And then I advocate for them with their subsequent books: it doesn’t stop at publication.
Getting a book picked up for poets is often an opaque process. What advice would you give to poets hoping to get their book noticed by Copper Canyon?
Follow our submission guidelines. Too often people think there’s some way to get around and through some side door. Nothing will put me off of a manuscript faster.
What do you look for in query letters during your open call submission period?
An understanding of the aesthetics of our list and an understanding that we are partners with them, not adversaries, a sense that they are engaging a larger community beyond their computer screen.
What trends have you seen lately in poetry that excite you?
I’m not certain I’m one to follow trends, nor be excited by them. I’m more interested in finding that unique voice that stands out from the trends.
How did Copper Canyon celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2022? What are you hoping for Copper Canyon’s next 50 years?
We have a number of events still ongoing—readings featuring our poets across the country—but the main celebrations were two anthologies. As I considered making an anthology to highlight our 50 years, I decided that it would be false to have it all be from my perspective. To the best of my ability, I turned to the CCP community that has developed over those years—staff and board members; interns and poets; designers and booksellers; etc.—and I asked them to submit a couple favorite poems and the reasons why they loved their poems. The response was overwhelming, and we received more than we could use. As I began fashioning A House Called Tomorrow: 50 Years of Poetry from Copper Canyon Press, I realized that all those stories and poems were too great to abandon—though including them would have resulted in a huge tome. So with my colleague Kaci Tavares’s help I created a second anthology that offered more poems, more meaningful stories, and a variety of ephemera pieces that gave some background to the Press, its people, and their stories.
For the next 50 years I hope we can adapt to an ever-shifting publishing landscape. I hope we can be a part of reimagining what poetry can be in the lives and imaginations of future generations. I’d love to see Copper Canyon help shape how we consider poetry and in so doing sustain poetry for another 50 years.
