Small Press Points

by
Staff
From the January/February 2014 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine

Founded in 2011 by poet and essayist KMA Sullivan, YesYes Books (www.yesyesbooks.com) is paving the way for new forms of multimedia poetry publishing. In addition to publishing traditional chapbooks and full-length collections, submissions of which are accepted on an alternating basis each January, the press also takes on an experimental project each year. “In our first full year, it was Poetry Shots,” Sullivan says, “a series of chapbook-length collections from poets Dorothea Lasky, Dana Guthrie Martin, Ben Mirov, Metta Sáma, and Angela Veronica Wong paired with a range of visual artists.” The resulting illustrated chapbooks are available online as webBooks—“like e-books but better”—which can be read on most web browsers or downloaded for the iPad and Kindle Fire. For the press’s second experimental project, an anthology of poetry and music titled Frequencies, Volume One, the editors paired chapbooks by poets Molly Gaudry, Bob Hicok, and Phillip B. Williams with tracks by musicians Sharon Van Etten, Here We Go Magic, and Outlands, which readers can download as mp3s to accompany the text. The editors also plan to release The Bones of Us, the press’s first full-length illustrated poetry collection, featuring poems by J. Bradley and original artwork by Adam Scott Mazer, in late February. Submissions for YesYes’s biennial chapbook contest will open this month, while submissions of full-length poetry collections will open in January 2015. Poets can also submit work to Vinyl Poetry, the press’s online journal, which Sullivan says is “a great way to get the attention of our editors for the purposes of future solicitation.” Submissions for both the chapbook contest and the journal are accepted from January 1 through February 15. Visit www.pw.org for a slideshow of images from some recent and upcoming projects of YesYes Books.