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Editor Interview: Blackbox Manifold

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Contemporary poetry

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: Jacket magazine.
Cambridge Literary review.
Cortland review.
Tears in the Fence.
Molly Bloom.
3:AM Magazine
How2
Kafeeklatsch
Almost Island
Kenyon Review
Beloit Poetry Journal
Leafe Press
Blackbird
Likestarling
Big Bridge
Litmus
Body
Long Poem Magazine
Bombay Gin
The Manchester Review
Chain
No Tell Motel
Chicago Review
Coconut
Oystercatcher Press
Paratext
Critical Documents Plume
Datableedzine
PN Review
Dusie
Poetry London
Eborakon Poetry Magazine
Prac Crit
Epizootics!
Sentence
eoagh
Shearsman
Exquisite Corpse
Ubuweb
Fascicle
The Volta
Fortnightly Review
Visual Verse
Glasgow Review of Books
The White Review
Golden Handcuffs Review
Great Works
The Wolf
Free Verse
Fulcrum
Stride
Sidebrow
Ron Silliman’s Blog

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: JOSH ALLSOP
FRANCESCA BRATTON
PATRICK COTTER
KRISTIN DIMITROVA,
transl. TOM PHILLIPS
PATRICIA FARRELL
ALEC FINLAY
ADAM FLINT
MICHAEL KINDELLAN
MARK LAWLOR
JACOB KOBINA
AYIAH MENSAH
OTTO & GISEL
DAVID PUNTER
ROBERT SHEPPARD
IAN SEED
MARCUS SLEASE
CATHERINE STREET
IAIN TWIDDY
LYDIA UNSWORTH
G C WALDREP
SELENA WISNOM
ADAM WARNE
HOWARD WRIGHT
ALEX WYLIE
RUTH VALENTINE

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: The scope and range of styles. The persistently high quality of the writing. The intellectual ambition of the reviews and intellectual culture.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: Read a couple of issues, and enjoy the company.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: Language that has been heard and relished. Daring and colour to the writing, its openness and potential for surprising encounter with the reader. In contact with modernist and innovative forms. We welcome work with environmental slant, Blackbox Manifold is an online forum with a slant towards innovative poetry that has prose, narrative, or sequences in its sights. That said, we don’t hold allegiance to any one poetry school or group, and we’re happy to receive submissions from established and emerging poets alike. Our aim is to present new juxtapositions of voice while using the Web’s fluid solidity to cast around for as wide and varied a readership as possible.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: Work submitted cannot have been previously published or be submitted elsewhere at same time.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: We ask for a short bio that gives publishing and creative background.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: We read all submissions all the way through.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: Both co-editors have to agree on a piece of work.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: We read through to ensure initial quality: if OK then the submission is logged and shared with the other co-editor. When we have a sufficient body of submissions to decide upon, we read very thoroughly, make notes, then confer over long meeting where every submission is talked about and views compared.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: We are an online journal so from the outset we are in electronic world: the platform on the web means work can be read internationally - poets in the main relish hybridity of contact with varied readership - and that is what the electronic journal gives them. A journal like ours fits alongside print journals, and is not designed to supercede them.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: Very rarely if there are signs of proof-reading errors. We go through these with poets before publication.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Yes