Geist blogger and Editor-In-Chief of Poetry Is Dead,
Daniel Zomparelli, will be organizing an ongoing series of interviews with poets, and
people doing interesting things with poets. If you are a poet doing
interesting things or have a tip off for Daniel, you can email him at
editor@poetryisdead.ca.

Tracy Hurren and Kathleen Fraser have been
starting a new small book press, and they’re doing it using all that is
available to them thanks to crowd sourcing and innovation, while using classic
book printing techniques. Geist.com met up with them to discuss the future of their
small press and their current book author and poet, Cynara Geissler. Their
website is
and you
can help them out with start-up support for Cynara’s book

Daniel Zomparelli: When you decided to go
the route of publishing, what had you jumping into your own project, or rather,
what had you starting up your own publishing firm?

When we were completing the
course requirements for the Master of Publishing program we learned a lot of
stuff, but it was all theory, and when it was more hands on, it was in a
simulated environment. This was great, but we wanted more; we wanted to
continue playing and experimenting with what we had learned in the program. In
order to do this we needed a sandbox—that's where Hur Publishing emerged from.
In its inception Hur was about creating a place for me, and soon after Kathleen,
to "play house." I feel weird telling people I have a publishing
company because it really doesn't feel like that; it still just feels like I'm
playing. You can learn a lot from reading books and attending lectures, but you
can learn even more from getting your hands dirty. This is still very much so
what Hur is about.

When I started the Master
of Publishing program at SFU, I had essentially no publishing experience so the
things we were learning had no real context for me. Hur wasn't my brainchild
but when Tracy started talking about it I was eager to get on board because it
gave me a way to see how all these parts of the industry we were learning
about, and all the external forces at work, interact in the real world. I think
it also makes the challenges clearer. It's easy to sit in a classroom and say,
well, publishers are doing all these things wrong when there are easy
solutions, but when you are actually trying to get a book to the printer, let
alone sell it through, it becomes clear how much indie publishers do by the
skin of their teeth. So Hur, for me, was a big part of my education, and it's
also (as Tracy says) a safe place to experiment with unconventional practices.

DZ: Cynara, what compelled you to work with
their new small press?

I have a small
journal/small press background (I co-edited Juice The University of
Winnipeg's Creative Writing Journal in my undergrad) and I really believe inthe
importance of literary small press and experimental small press publishing.
They are in the position editorially (without the exact same commercial
concerns of some larger presses) to steward culture in unique, provocative and
necessary ways.

After completing my undergrad in 2007 I was
seriously considering embarking on a small press venture of my own. I
come from the prairies, Winnipeg, specifically. Artists, really support
each other there. I have been to a packed-house open-mics when it was 50
degress below zero. I have had the tremendous good fortune of being able to
work with and take courses with really talented writers, whose books I would
love to help put in the world. I really believe that there are not as
many publishers/opportunities as there are talented and book-ready writers. I
moved out to Vancouver for the MPub program hoping to find kindred spirits and
a small press partner to make this happen.

When I saw Tracy's design work—she makes
beautiful hand-bound books that respect and challenge the print book format—I
knew she was somebody I absolutely needed to work with outside the classroom.
Same with Kathleen—we went for coffee early in the program and I was blown
away by her general erudition and thoughtful, thorough editorial insight.
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, writing as Alice
B Toklas, wrote that in her she met few geniuses and "each time a bell
within me rang." Meeting Tracy and Kathleen was a
bell-ringing-genius-alert moment for me. so when they joined forces to form a
press I definitely wanted to get in on the action.

I wasn't really, at first, thinking about
my own work, but what they could bring to the work of my talented friends and
acquaintances. One of my favourite "experimental" poetry books is
this tiny (7.1 x 1.3 x 0.3 cm ) illustrated version of Ron Koetge's
poem "Kryptonite." (I believe it was published by Blue Hen?). The
illustrations by Roy Fox enrich and complicate the text and I have been wanting
to embark on some sort of illustrated poem project ever since. I
mentioned it to Tracy in one of our design classes and that resulted in me
sending her one of my poems, and then she asked for more, and then it evolved
into a larger chapbook project.

DZ: Kathleen and Tracy, what compelled you
towards a poetry book?

Cynara is a colleague we both admire
and respect, and when she said she had unpublished poetry we knew it was going
to be amazing. We saw her writing and loved it, because it's smart and polished
but also very quirky and unexpected, and I'd like to think that's Hur's modus
operandi. I don't have a lot of experience editing poetry, and it's important
to me that Hur keeps me on my toes; this has been a great opportunity to learn
new skills. But also, it's hard out there for a poet. Poetry doesn't sell well,
so a lot of publishers don't take a chance on it. It's important to me that as
a publisher we remember that artists are our allies, and we need to give newer
voices a chance to be heard. Otherwise the cultural landscape becomes stagnant.
I hope that Hur continues to be supportive of emerging voices well into the
future.

DZ: With a lot of presses running towards
the ebook and online publishing, how do you see the press growing over the
years?

Our mandate from the start has been to
be agile above all else (Kathleen can probably talk more about this
concept—she's writing her thesis about it). Hur is an organic force. This is
probably why our list (all two books!) don't seem very cohesive. At this point
we really are still playing, finding our voices, figuring out what we're good
at and where we fit within the industry. We are in not rush to figure these
things out—we are still young and green and growing. Currently ebooks aren't
something we are thinking about—not because we don't think they are important,
but because we aren't as interested in them as we are in print. Not all books
are best suited for print (this is where ebooks come in) but the type of books
we want to publish are best served by print. That being said, I'm sure one of
these days Kathleen or I will decide that we want to learn more about making
ebooks, and we'll look to Hur, our playground, as the save place to experiment
with the medium.

So with the above in mind, I can't claim we
have a road map or a 10-year plan for Hur. But we do plan to continue to
grow—slowly, but steadily. It has always been our goal to turn Hur into a
full-time gig, but I don't think either Kathleen or I are in any rush to make
this happen. Ultimately, taking things slow now will be a benefit in the long
run for the company; we aren't as wobbly as we were a year ago, but we still
aren't ready to run.

Tracy mentioned the Agile publishing
model, which grew out of the Agile Manifesto for software development drafted
about 10 years ago. It's a very short document with a lot of implications, but
mostly what it means for us is that we "fail faster." We know the
publishing industry is kind of broken right now, for a lot of reasons, one of
them being these massive, inertial top-down companies and business models.
Agile publishing is about starting projects from scratch, trying new,
unexpected methods, and setting yourself up to fail over and over, in different
ways, until all of a sudden you don't fail because you've hit on something that
works. That means iterative development, low up-front investment costs, and
thinking in terms of people, individuals, rather than in terms of money or
scale. I know this sounds jargon-y, but it really comes from the basic
philosophies that simple is better, and innovation is important.

So I see the press aiming for
trial-and-error development rather than a traditional growth model. In terms of
online publishing, I think it's a great way to reach audiences and give authors
more exposure, and it's really important to us that we are web-savvy. But so
far we've done projects that we think really belong in print. I don't think
everything does—a lot of great writing happens online, and a lot of genres of
books probably work better as ebooks. So I think we as an industry need to start
thinking critically about what books will be augmented by being in print, and
what it is about their form that adds to their content. Luckily Tracy is an
incredible designer and has a sort of reverence for printed books that shows
through in her work.

DZ: Has Cynara's book started going through
the editorial process? How is the process of a more involved author working
out?

The book is in editorial, and the
author is very patiently waiting for my latest suggestions. It helps a lot that
Cynara is a friend, so we've been able to sit down over coffee and talk about
what she's trying to say in her work, what's working well, what might work
better. She has spent years working on these poems, with the help of some
fantastic poets, so when she gave me the manuscript there weren't really any
lines she hadn't already thought very carefully about. Although obviously the
poems need to speak for themselves (and they do, quite ably), I felt it was
important to respect that writing and workshopping process by letting Cynara
explain the decisions she'd made. I've really been enjoying working with her,
and I'm honoured that she has entrusted her amazing work to me for editing.

The poems in this chapbook are the
result of several years of workshopping and revising with a dedicated writing
group of fierce women (shoutout to Gloria, Louella, and Ahniko!). Maybe it's
because I've been on both sides of the page so to speak, but I really love
receiving and deeply value editorial feedback. Was it Swift who talked about
style as "proper words, proper places?" That's what I want to
achieve with my poetry. I want to be lucid, honest, accessible, and precise.
Kathleen's thoughtful questions and line edits are helping me to further polish
the work.

DZ: As a poet in the digital age it becomes
a strange idea of the book. A lot of poets find their work published online and
through blogs, and I wonder about how this affects the poets process. Cynara,
when working on this manuscript, did you have a book/concept in mind, or was
this a process of collecting poems? Or had you even envisioned your poems in a
book format?

I consider myself a digital native. I've
been keeping online diaries since I was a pre-teen so I've actually have never
viewed the internet platform as lesser, or a compromise, it has been a part of
my life for much of the time I've been writing. I view it as another
platform, not separate from "the outernet" or print but capable of
doing different things than the printed page. I do think digital
conventions (shorter lines, colloquial or "blogging" or
"chat" style) tend to find their way into my work.

My idea of what makes a good chapbook or
even defines a book has evolved and expanded since I started the MPub and spent
more time studying how the book has evolved throughout history and will
continue to evolve. The tightly thematic poetry book is but one iteration
of "collection." I had been chastising myself for not
writing poems that were more obviously connected with an eye to a very specific
chapbook. I felt like a lot of my work was promising and kept wanting to submit
work to chapbook competitions and then second-guessing myself because it wasn't
all about trilby hats, or lasers or being a beekeeper. Then I read one of
Stuart Ross's Hunkamooga columns (in subTerrain) where he confessed
that many of his favourite poetry books were often loose collections of
people's best poems. I thought, I've really worked at these poems and they
deserve a chance, and sent what I thought were my best poems to Kathleen and
Tracy at Hur. And I'm so glad I did. Working in publishing I know how many
manuscripts ache for eyes. I am really happy that my stuff spoke to them,
and that my work is in such capable hands. It is a very lucky thing to
have a press believe in you and your work.

DZ: Are there any future books in mind for
Hur Publishing, and dream authors you are after?

What a boring answer, but, no. I think
we will probably take a little break—one book a year seems to be all we
have in us. We are both working full-time jobs (Kathleen at Caitlin, me at
Drawn & Quarterly) so our focus will shift to this for the time being, to
learning as much as we can from our time with these publishers.

I hope we can continue to work with
Chris Carrier and Cynara, who have both been dream authors. One book a year is
going pretty well so far, so maybe expect us to announce our third book in a
year or so. But I hope that someday I have the time and resources to turn my
full attention to Hur. It won't be anytime soon; I love working at Caitlin, and
I also have a whole bunch of student loans, and running a start-up indie
publisher isn't really a steady source of income.

DZ: I think crowd-sourcing pre-sales is a
wonderful way to get a book off the ground, as a poet your largest
supporters can be those closest to you. Is the current project finding any
hindrances, or are you finding a lot of support for this?

So far the support has been great. We
haven't done too much to promote the book yet, but still donations have been
coming in steadily. Hopefully articles like this will help with that, and maybe
generous Christmas spirits will work to our advantage.

I'm really grateful for the generosity
we've seen already. People started backing the project almost immediately with
very little promotion on our part, so I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to
raise enough funds to do this book justice.