Shout Out: Eileen Tabios, Poet-Editor Issue at Otoliths

I've previously featured a number of independent publishers answering my questions: Why did you start your small press/why did you become an independent publisher? What need was not being met by the existing presses?

A quick rundown of who responded:

Post #1: Eileen Tabios of Meritage Press, Francisco Aragón of Momotombo Press, Reb Livingston of No Tell Books, and Rusty Morrison of Omnidawn Press.

Post #2: Johannes Göransson and Joyelle McSweeney of Action Books, Craig Santos Perez and Jennifer Reimer of Achiote Press, and Susan Schultz of Tinfish Press.

Post #3: Brent E. Beltrán and Consuelo Manríquez de Beltrán of Calaca Press, Patrick Durgin of Kenning Editions, and Willie Perdomo of Cypher Books.

My initial reason for putting forth these questions was that I have my own plans for entering the fray of independent publishing. It should come as no surprise that most of these editors are poets themselves, so I believed they'd be able to provide me with not just insight into the work's nitty-gritty details, but also insight into time management. How do editors of small presses or literary journals continue to carve out time and reserve energy for their own poetic work? Is there a tension between editorial and poetic work, or do these two complement each other?

Here's Eileen Tabios, on the latest issue of Mark Young's Otoliths which she guest edited, and which is dedicated to poet-editors:

I'm so happy that an issue devoted to poet-editors is out, and am grateful to Otoliths and the visionary Mark Young for publishing it! I explain more about the issue's rationale in my Editor's Introduction. What I don't mention there is, with hindsight, the most important factor about it: this project reflects my eternally-held "Babaylan Poetics." The Poet-Editor issue is a community-inspired performance act reflecting the Filipino indigenous value of "Kapwa" or "Shared Life" (interconnections). I've been an editor for as long as I've been a poet, and have also worked in such roles as "critic" and "publisher"; as a poet, I've also worked in multi-genre forms. Kapwa means there's no schism between such forms and roles. Kapwa was a generative source for the Poet-Editor issue because Kapwa encourages the search for commonalities among peoples and creatures; in this case, the commonality was of poets who also serve as editors.

And here are the contents:

Eileen R. Tabios: Introduction

Burt Kimmelman: Three Essays
Editing the Words of Poets beyond Their Poems
The William Bronk-Charles Olson Correspondence
“Art As a Way”: Absence and Presence, Aesthetics and Friendship
in the William Bronk – Robert Meyer Correspondence

William Allegrezza | Ivy Alvarez | Anny Ballardini | Joi Barrios | John Bloomberg-Rissman | Ana Božičević | Garrett Caples | Brian Clements | Bruce Covey | Del Ray Cross | Patrick James Dunagan | Elaine Equi | Adam Fieled | Thomas Fink | Luis H. Francia | Geoffrey Gatza | Tim Gaze | Crg Hill | Aileen Ibardaloza | Vincent Katz | Jukka-Pekka Kervinen | Mark Lamoureux | Amanda Laughtland | Timothy Liu | Dana Teen Lomax | Joey Madia | Sandy McIntosh | Didi Menendez | Lars Palm Guillermo Parra | Ernesto Priego | Sam Rasnake | Barbara Jane Reyes | Christopher Rizzo | Patrick Rosal | Sarah Rosenthal | Susan M. Schultz | Logan Ryan Smith | Jill Stengel | Fiona Sze-Lorrain | Jean Vengua | Mark Young