Sara Lefsyk : Behind the Scenes at Ethel

 

 

 

 

Hi I’m Sara Lefsyk and I run Ethel Zine & Micro Press (www.ethelzine.com).  Ethel publishes about 24 chapbooks and 2 issues of Ethel, a journal of writing and art, each year.  Oh, and I run the whole press by myself. Actually, sitting down to write this, after telling rob for the past 6 months (at least) that I would, I almost feel like—can I spare the time?  Shouldn’t I be working on Ethel?  What do I even say?  You see, I am an introvert and I hide behind the Ethel persona.  I don’t even really have my own personal social media pages anymore. 

First, a little about Ethel’s beginnings.  Ethel started in May of 2018 when my Poet friend—and Ethel Oracle and Ethel Moral Support Executive and Ethel Reading Host—Joanna Penn Cooper (http://www.joannapenncooper.net) suggested that I start a press and call it Ethel—a nickname she made up for me when we were in grad school together and I would go visit her in NYC.  She knew how I liked to make little handmade books full of my friend’s writing and art, and she knew I was fed-up with working 3 jobs that had nothing to do with my interests.  I was like—ok!—and then I made the first issue of Ethel (https://www.ethelzine.com/volume-1).  After that, I  just kept going, and soon I also started making chapbooks.  The first chapbook I made was one of Joanna’s (https://www.ethelzine.com/when-we-were-fearsome) as a test run, and then when I posted on social media asking if anyone else would want a chapbook from Ethel, I got great response and that aspect of the press also took off.

Now, three years later, I find myself publishing about 24 chapbooks and 2 issues of Ethel each year.  It just sort-of happened.  I usually will start off the year saying, I’m only going to do 12 chaps this year, and then I start reading submissions and end up with double that.  I’m also the type of person that, in order not to sink into an incomprehensible depression, needs to be busy constantly.  I’m always tinkering and making things.  I found that getting to design and hand-make covers using a sewing machine and a variety of paper, fabric, photos, sequins, buttons and whatever else I can attach, was both something fairly original in the world of publishing, and completely enjoyable and fulfilling on my part.  And people really responded to the hand-made feel of Ethel.  I literally make every cover for every book and then bind every book by hand (or with my sewing machine).  Every chapbook I publish I make at least 40 copies of (some I’ve made up to 150 copies of) and every issue of Ethel I publish, I make at least 125-200 copies.  As if this weren’t enough work, as the press slowly grew, the tasks I had to balance grew.  I now find myself not only making books, but maintaining a website and social media, fulfilling orders, reading/responding to submissions, formatting and designing books, planning Ethel Zoom readings and whatever other small tasks come about on a daily basis. The only thing I don’t personally do is print the innards, though I do use a local worker-owned print shop called Collective Copies. All that being said, Ethel is a little bit of a selfish enterprise because it is one of the few things—besides animals and reading/writing—that helps me continue to stay in this world.  I’m like—so-and-so is expecting their chapbook to come out, get out of bed and make those covers, Ethel! 

Oh, and I don’t personally make any money or profit off of Ethel, all the money I make goes back into the press.  This is probably the hardest part about having the press, because Ethel is expensive to run with all of the supplies and printing, contributor copies and mailing, there’s always a chance I won’t have enough money to keep Ethel running.  When I first started Ethel and was working 70 hours a week at various jobs in restaurants, I could easily use my own money to help support the running of Ethel, but now I don’t have the option to personally support Ethel.  This is why supporting small presses is so important.  We don’t get that big pharma money like Poetry Magazine does, or that Koch bothers money like Soft Skull.  The most money I have ever had in Ethel’s bank account is $1500.  The least probably $25, which is when I start to go…oh no!  How will get this next chapbook printed?!  But so far it has work out.  Something sells really well and then I am able to keep going.  Capitalism is a mo-fo.  Speaking-of, I do make each issue of Ethel available to read for free online, I am hoping to also get all of the chapbooks available to read for free on Ethel’s website.  A poet that I will be publishing soon asked if their book could be offered for free in a digital format and I was like—yes, they all should!  Wouldn’t it also be cool if audio of the chapbook could be made available?

Anyway, I decided early-on, after the first issue, that I wanted Ethel’s focus to be on publishing marginalized voices. I mean, we’ve heard enough from cis white men, really.  I still publish work from everyone, but my hope and my goal is to publish as wide a range of marginalized voices as possible.  Even with that as my goal, I need to do better at upholding this value.  I, as a white person, can always do better and do more. Would you believe that that majority of submissions that I get are probably from cis white men, even though the website says I want to publish marginalized voices?!  Yah, you would believe it. I also want to publish people who may have never been published before, because the larger poetry world can feel so exclusionary for people who maybe aren’t MFAers or for who maybe writing isn’t their sole focus.  I want Ethel to have more of a community/supportive feel.  I also want to publish more translation and experimental work.  Another goal that has been rising in my mind is to have a member of the BIPOC community put together an issue of Ethel (anyone reading this that is interested, please contact me! ethelzinesubmit@gmail.com).  That would mean putting out a call for submissions, reading and accepting pieces for the issue and possibly formatting/arranging the issue (if that is of interest).  I would pay a fair wage/stipend and offer a year subscription of Ethel in return.

I’d also like to publish 1 or 2 full length books/year.  I would still want them to be in Ethel’s home-made style, and would hope for them to be a bit more experimental in nature.  In general, I hope to get some submissions from people who want to collaborate on a book-as-art project where the text/art submitted melds into the bookmaking and we come up with an art piece—artist book—in itself.  (See Alexandre Ferrer’s chapbook mono / stitches, which I released in 2020:  https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/mono-stitches-lhrfa ).  This, again, is a little selfish, because I don’t yet have time to work on my own projects, so this would allow me to be more creative and playful in the book design, and fulfill my need to experiment with bookmaking.

Finally, once I get caught up from falling behind last year during a huge pit of a depression, I am hoping to be able to take one day off a week from Ethel so that I can begin to work on my own writing and book-making projects. 

Oh!  Also, if you can, support a small/micro press today by purchasing a book or books or a subscription.  Doesn’t have to be Ethel.  Also, if you can’t afford a copy of Ethel, but would like to have one, reach out to me (ethelzinesubmit@gmail.com) and I would be happy to send you one. Poetry should be accessible to everyone. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sara Lefsyk is Head Ethel over at Ethel Zine & Micro Press.  She has a book—We Are Hopelessly Small and Modern Birds (2018, Black Lawrence Press) and some publications here and there.  Besides hand-making books and books in general, she likes hanging out with dogs, following pig sanctuaries on Instagram and sleeping.

Genevieve Kaplan : EDGE, by Barbara Ungar

EDGE, Barbara Ungar
Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2020

 

 

 

 

Barbara Ungar’s EDGE, a handsome chapbook with the image of a deteriorating 6^th century elephant mosaic sewn to its front cover, telegraphs its themes pretty immediately: the fading of Earth’s species, the devastating environmental impacts humans are causing and witnessing. The title points to the EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) list while also highlighting our precarious position. Ungar’s poems take us from “the deepest bellies // of lantern fish” (8) to “a captive breeding program in a trailer” in Hawaii (31) to “the tourist trail” in “Myanmar, still Burma / then” (19), all the while sharing observations and facts about the animals, insects, birds, or fish who live there, or used to.

The opening poem “As If” lays out the problem at the heart of EDGE: “We cannot even count the ants / or name the animals / before we wipe them out” (7). This is a sad and disturbing proclamation, to be sure. In some ways, though, the poems in this chapbook do the work of offsetting this claim; Ungar includes an impressive variety of animals—ants, penguins, seahorses, dragonfish, fruit flies, moths, caterpillars, sharks, turtles, spiders, jaguars, polar bears, hummingbirds, snails, jellyfish, octopuses, among others—in these pages. While Ungar doesn’t count the animals per se, she does often name them, including italicized Latin terms beneath her poems’ titles. The poem “Godzilla Vs. Nomura,” for example, includes the parenthetical “(Nemopilema nomurai)” so interested readers can google and learn more about the particular jellyfish “swarming beaches” and “clogging nuclear reactors” and “wiping out sturgeon” (36). Ungar also conveys factual information about Nemopilema nomurai in her poem, poetically of course: they “grow from a grain of rice to the size / of a washing machine in six months” (36).

As often as Ungar reminds us that “Owls are all but gone from Arizona” (20) or how “Half Earth’s creatures / have vanished in the last half century” (28), she avoids offering a lecture, or making readers feel condescended to. Instead, the poet tends to point out peculiarities, inconsistencies, oddities, and entertaining facts about animals. While we may be helpless to stop the environmental failures already occurred, Ungar’s poems invite us to know more about what is happening now, and to learn about the species being affected. When the Minute Leaf Chameleon (Brookesia Minima) is in danger, it’ll “drop to leaf / litter and play dead / twig” (10). Blue whale “[c]alves guzzle 1000 gallons / of milk, gain 200 pounds a day” (15). The Bumblebee Bat has “thumbs with claws / & uropatagium, webbed hind legs” (18). And “jaguars / can bite through skulls” (22).

The knowledge Ungar offers is not merely about the animals in question; some poems helpfully trace background information to inform readers why these species are threatened or threatening. “China’s runoff causes blooms / of giant pink Nomura’s jellyfish,” (36), she points out in “Godzilla vs. Nomura.” Ungar reveals that the “Madagascan Moon Moth” is a victim of multiple types of capitalism. It’s been “[e]ndangered by slash and burn,” and “[y]ou can buy / their eggs online (ten for twenty pounds) / their exquisite corpses, framed” (12). Knowing the causes of habitat or species loss might encourage us to find our own ways, however small, to help stop future damage. By reading these poems, we accumulate pieces of knowledge and understanding that allow us some agency in the face of climate grief.

The twenty-four poems collected here are not all sadness and inditement. The creatures in Ungar’s poems are often described by subtle ironies, even in the face of extinction. In “Lonesomest George,” a poem that considers the last of the Achatinella apexfulva, George the snail “ended his days / alone” in a breeding lab called “the love shack” (31). A similar dry wit pervades “Average Monkey,” a poem focusing more on humans than animals. Ungar writes,

When my father began to hallucinate,
          he saw heads in the dishwasher and the cupboards

I know they aren’t real he said
          but sometimes I wonder what they like to eat   

Like the other species mentioned in EDGE, the human in the poem (“my father”) is deteriorating; also surprising is how the imagined humans (“heads in the dishwasher”) in the poem aren’t passive; even they are consumers who “like to eat.”

The poet’s attention to language continually keeps readers engaged. Ungar’s taut line breaks may describe “the ever / shrinking ever // green rain / forest” (11), but as her short lines narrow they also create sonic pleasure: habitat is “shrinking,” but the end words that emphasize “ever” “ever” “forest” create an almost-hopeful optimism that rings in our ears after we’ve turned the page. In “Rhinochimaera,” the poet lists varieties like “spearnose / paddlenose       straightnose      knifenose” (33) to describe varieties of cartilaginous fish, allowing readers to linger in the pleasure and strangeness of language and image; she further describes these “marine monsters” as looking “like // the lovechild of Dumbo and a shark” (33). Some of my favorite moments are when the poet brings the self into the poem; through Ungar’s first person narrator readers experience moments of emotional connection. “I was in a torpor too” (19), the speaker acknowledges, or “I felt the cat / I shit you not / hunkered in her fur” (29). EDGE is a compelling read all around. This short collection is particularly notable for its crucial subject matter, its even-handed approach, and its grounding in science and contemporary culture. But it’s Ungar’s masterful wielding of material that makes EDGE so pleasurable. We want to read these poems, and—importantly—we then want to return to this chapbook and to read these poems again.

 

 

 

 

 

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020), In the ice house (Red Hen, 2011), and four chapbooks, most recently I exit the hallway and turn right (above/ground 2020). Her poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Bennington Review, Posit, TinFish, and The Second Factory. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose. More at https://genevievekaplan.com/

Michael Sikkema : An interview with Juliet Cook

Small Press Intravues:

Occasional Interviews with writers working and publishing in the small press ecosystem

Interview #3: Juliet Cook has a new poetry chapbook called The Rabbits With Red Eyes available through Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, and is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com

How did you get started in writing?

I liked writing poetry even when I was a little kid.  It started off as silly cliched rhyming verse about dogs or snapping the heads off gingerbread men. Then it became over the top verse that contorted into dark fairy tales and otherwise created characters that exceeded my real life experience. Then it became a more personal poetic form of self expression that incorpoated my real life experiences and brain waves into my own kind of art.

Why poetry instead of some other form?

Because poetry is my favorite form of creative expression, whether others relate to it or not.  Even though poetry is my favorite, I also enjoy some in-depth personal comunications with others. And I also enjoy visual art, such as semi-abstract painting/collage art hybric creatures. And I also enjoy artsy music and movies.

What other form do you see your work influenced by or continuous with? Music? Magic? Science? Journalism? Gardening?

Sometimes abstract visual art. Sometimes overly personal note books.  Sometimes line breaked journal entries. Sometimes dream scenes. Sometimes mental/emotional baggage or mental hauntings.

What infinitives best sum up your writing practice? To explore, to investigate, to express, to interrogate, to perform, to reveal, to layer, to obfuscate, to connect? Please choose as many as you wish and explain.

To express rather than repress. To explore my own thoughts and feelings. To extract some of the negativity out of my system. To release parts of my own repetitive streaks. To blow up my own self-created mental balloon animals. To reveal parts of the real me.  To possibly connect my thoughts and feelings with others who might relate.

I love to explore and express myself, but the performance part makes me increasingly uncomfortable. Parts of me like to share, but not by putting on a bunch of public displays and certainly not by forcing my poetry upon others.  Parts of me strongly desire to be up-front and honest, but I also want to be open to interpretation.

What ecosystems do you see your work fitting into? That is, who are the other artists and makers and writers that your work is in relationship with?

Human bodies and other animal bodies, sea creatures, insects, dolls, ghosts.

All different kinds of other poets and artists whose work focuses in different ways on bodies,  minds, emotions,  personal experiences and permutations.

What are your current projects? What are you working on? If you’re not writing, are you busy with something else?

I'm currently compiling a new collaborative full-length poetry manuscript by j/j hastain and myself to begin submitting.  I'm always on & off working on writing poetry, communicating in other ways, small projects associated with my tiny indie press, Blood Pudding Press, reading submissions for my blog style lit mag, Thirteen Myna Birds, reading other poetry, writing new poetry, and trying to maintain my own pace and keep myself borderline sane.

As I imagine is the case with most of us recently, the Coronavirus pandemic is taking a bit of an on & off mental/emotional toll on me and somewhat interrupting my own creative process.

What stuff do you have out in the world, and how can people get their hands on it? Books, chapbooks, individual poems, essays, other interviews, songs, anything else?

I very recently had a new poetry chapbook published - The Rabbits With Red Eyes,  available through Ethel Zine & Micro-Press here - https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/the-rabbits-with-red-eyes-by-juliet-cook.

Other poetry books and chapbooks by me and by quite a few other poets can be acquired through my Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress.

I try to regularly update my website with my most recent publications and more here - https://julietcook.weebly.com/.

What would you tell people who are just starting to get involved with writing and publishing?

I don't like to tell other people what to do.  

But I will say that in my opinion, anyone who is going to freak out and/or five up on their own writing because they got 10 or 30 or 50 or 100 or more rejections from other people/other presses should probably just stop submitting their work, because it seems to me that anyone who has been working on their writing for years and regularly submitting it is going to get lots of rejections and then hopefully start receiving lots of acceptances too.

Ultimately,  I think the most important part of poetry is the writing process, what you're personally aiming for, and how you personally feel about your results.

Michael Sikkema is a poet, visual poet, and aspiring drummer. He has a book out recently from Trembling Pillow Press, called You've Got a Pretty Hellmouth, and also has chapbooks out recently from above/ground press, and Where is the River Press, titled Heron on Huron, and Welcome to the Last Earth Show, respectively. He enjoys correspondence at michael.sikkema@gmail.com.