Editor Interview: The Test Site Poetry Series Prize

innovative writing

The American Poetry Review, The Seneca Review, Essay Press, Rain Taxi, New American Writing, Volt.

Alice Notley, Brenda Hillman, Arthur Flowers, Sasha Steensen, Regan Good, Jamal May...All of our covers for the digital and print issue are taken from the art submitted to us. The cover painting on our 2018 issue "Looking Out," by Gretchen Gales is ravishing, reason enough to buy the book! https://www.interimpoetics.org/archive
I also especially like Stephanie Brody-Lederman’s work on the cover of https://www.interimpoetics.org/35-1-contents

We're looking for writing that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. Writing published in Interim will demonstrate an ethos that considers the human condition in inclusive love and sympathy, while offering the same in consideration of the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we'll especially appreciate writing with innovative approaches.

Please go to our website www.interimpoetics.org and look over our online issues before you send. Please also consider ordering copies of our last two annual print copies, which are all dedicated exclusively to women's writing.

An ideal submission will be beautifully written, which means that the piece comes for moral and physical necessity, while still allowing for love, the most important need of all.

It's always important to know the aesthetic and humanist philosophy guiding a magazine.

I'm always glad to know about the person behind the screen! The more sense I get of an individual in the cover letter, the more hopeful I am for the submission. Publication credits are always a part of this, though not the only thing by any means.

I read far enough to see how the piece is setting its terms and what those terms might be. If I don't feel this sense of evolution after a few poems or pages, I stop.

Interim is published 5 times a year. We publish a digital issue in each season, spring, summer, fall and winter. The annual print issue comes out in December of each year. My associate editor Andrew S. Nicholson and I read every piece that comes to Interim. We often agree, though not always, which I think is a good thing. Our magazine is diverse enough to allow for disagreement! Andy does one of the online issues, as does Autumn Widdes, our editor-at-large. The other digital issues are guest edited. Johannes Göransson did an amazing issue devoted to Swedish translations https://www.interimpoetics.org/35-1-contents that was highlighted on Poetry magazine's Harriet blog. This year Autumn's issue is also devoted to translation, which we've defined as one genre "carrying across" to another, often very different, genre, such as dance, or visual art. It is coming together to be a very exciting issue!

"Wake up/fall out of bed/drag a comb/across my head..." No, seriously, let me think. After I drop my daughter off at the bus at 6 a.m., I read something that is not a submission. Today it was Virgil's Eclogues, the fourth Eclogue, which is too beautiful! Then I begin the considerable correspondence that constitutes the life of a writer and an editor. Much of it involves sending out my own work, writing blurbs for books, responding to inquiries about submissions to Interim and The Test Site Poetry Series, our poetry book series which are published by the University of Nevada Press. I try to meet with the staff and other editors at least once a week, though It's sometimes too much, as all of us are either teaching or going to school.

If a piece needs substantive editing, chances are it's not going to be published by us. I do occasionally suggest line edits, but if a piece is full of basic grammar and or spelling etc. mistakes, I reject it immediately. I tell the author that I'll publish the piece if they consider the line edits I suggest. No one has ever refused so far.

Yes, we nominate work for the Pushcart award and Best of the Net, so far. One goal for this fall is to make a list of all the awards we're eligible for, and apply to them.