Redactions Interview
Challenges and Satisfactions
by Liz Robbins
An Interview with Mike Dockins of “Redactions ” and “Terminus ”
Mike Dockins is Mike Dockins was born in 1972 and grew up in New York. He holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught writing, worked at The Massachusetts Review, and received honorable mention for an Academy of American Poets prize. His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Cream City Review, Washington Square, Paragraph, 5 AM, The Seattle Review, and many other journals. A Pushcart prize nominee, Mike currently lives in Atlanta, where he is Poetry Editor of Terminus . He is also co-founder and co-editor of Redactions , a new journal of poetry and poetics.
LR: How did you come about founding Redactions ? How did you come to be poetry editor of Terminus ?
MD: Well, I co-founded Redactions with Tom Holmes and Michelle Bonczek. I’ve known Tom and Michelle since 1996, when we were all living in Brockport NY — all of us students of poetry at one time or another. The three of us have been writing, reading and talking poetry for years, and in the spring of 2002, on a deck in Binghamton NY, we hashed out the details for a new poetry journal. Tom is the head honcho. Many of the original ideas for layout and design came from him, and he chose the title. He remains the driving force, without any doubt. But we’re equals when it comes to editorial aesthetic and financial input. Our goal is to keep this thing alive forever…. Anyway, I remember many nights in the local small-town saloon, all three of us debating the allusions in Pound and Eliot, and also trying to compose collaborative poems. It’s great that Tom and Michelle and I have such a long history. But as for Redactions , once we got the ball rolling, it wasn’t too difficult to solicit poems and such.
My role in Terminus is different. Only a month or so after beginning the PhD program at Georgia State University (in the fall of 2002), Travis Denton and Chad Prevost — founding editors of Terminus — asked me to join their staff. I hesitated at first because Redactions was just getting off the ground, and meantime I was adjusting to the culture shock of being in a new city and stuff. But I liked Terminus (even got a rejection from them once!) so I signed on as “poetry editor” although that is a loose title because it’s not like I have autonomy. As with Redactions , all editorial decisions at Terminus are made by the whole team, which now includes Jamie Iredell, our fiction editor, and Katie Chaple, our managing editor. From what I’ve heard, Travis and Chad jumped through many hoops to get Terminus off the ground, and I wasn’t around to see those hoops. All I know is that I’m glad to be a part of the team, and that goes for Redactions as well.
LR: For Redactions , why did you want to include poetics as well as poetry?
MD: One of our original goals was to print not just poems but prose on poetry, reviews, essays on the craft of poetry, and what-not. So we thought we’d expand the sub-title of the journal in that regard. In our forthcoming double issue we’re featuring an aesthetic question: “Can a poet successfully use the word ‘soul’ in a poem?” We got several excellent responses, so the next issue will feature many poets side by side with their various answers. So there’s an example of “poetics” as opposed to just poetry. I’ll take a risk and speak for Tom and Michelle in that I think that a good poetry journal should necessarily involve some kind of “poetics” discussion to put the actual poems in a context. So for every issue, we aim to involve poetics along with poetry.
LR: Both journals have websites: can you talk about the effect of the Internet on your journals?
MD: It’s funny — it seems that every five minutes I’m griping about the Internet, and technology in general. I haven’t owned a television since 1999, and I didn’t get a cell phone until 2004, and that was only because the phone jacks in my apartment were busted. Nevertheless, I think that the Internet has an enormous impact on the “little magazine.” Now, a journal like Poetry magazine probably doesn’t rely on a website to keep itself going. But considering their recent fortune, that’s a terrible example. What I mean to say is that an up-and-coming journal, like Terminus or Redactions — or any journal not funded by a university or by a billionaire — needs to consider the web as a primary source for getting its name out there. Both the Terminus and Redactions websites (see links below) include submission guidelines and all that, but they also include sample poems. This is crucial for potential contributors. We still get tons of work that is not right for each magazine, respectively, but I suppose that will always happen. But anyway, I know that both of my journals rely on the Internet in numerous ways. (Terminus magazine: www.terminusmagazine.com and Redactions: www.redactions.com)
LR: You are a poet with poems published in fine magazines such as The Indiana Review, Crazyhorse, and Jubilat. How would you characterize your style of writing? Does your personal aesthetic affect what you choose to accept for publication?
MD: That’s a great question. I know for a fact that there are poetry editors out there who do not necessarily write and publish their own work. That’s fine by me, but at the same time, I don’t understand what they use as a litmus test, so to speak. My friend and Terminus colleague Travis Denton has described my poetry as a shaken-up snow-globe. I love that metaphor. I suppose I border on Surrealism, but I’d really rather not write in a cage, you know? I like hyperbole, and I like humor, and I like things to happen in poems that couldn’t necessarily happen in the “real world.” If that’s Surrealism, fine. Now, one might think that as an editor I’m always/only looking for poems that are like mine. That is baloney. If one looks through issues of Redactions and Terminus , one will find many, many poems that don’t have a Mike Dockins mojo — if there even is such a thing! Nevertheless, there are certain things I do look for when I’m in editor-mode — but these are things I hope any good editor is looking for: clarity of image, fresh metaphors, a sense of form (even in free verse), and of course voice…. I’m glad to have had some luck in publishing, and to feel like I’m slowly gaining a wider audience; but I don’t look for little carbon-copy Mike Dockinses when I’m editing.
LR: What separates Redactions and Terminus from the other literary journals?
MD: That I’m an editor for them! No, I’d say that’s a tough question, too. There are so many excellent journals out there. I personally admire Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, West Branch, Pleiades…. too many to name. These journals publish poems that I love to read, and even sometimes use in a classroom. The point being that both magazines I work for aspire to such a level of quality. I think any poetry editor has to be incredibly tough on the work that comes across the transom. I like to think that each poem accepted for Redactions or Terminus really earned its place there. But how are we different? I feel like I’ll bungle this question! We like to think of Terminus as a “cutting-edge” magazine. Without spending too much time defining terms, that means that we’re always looking for poetry, fiction, and art that pushes contemporary boundaries — work that you’d have to search hard in order to find. Because I also think that there are too many “cookie-cutter” magazines out there — you read the work and feel like you’re in a creative writing workshop — all the poems, for example, sound relatively the same and have this elusive quality to them, like the poems are not fully realized, and that makes me sad. So I’d say that Terminus and Redactions do everything possible to avoid that phenomenon. And as for Redactions , I think we’re getting more unique all the time. Our book reviews exist only to promote and support poets, not attack them. I mean, how hard is it to “make it” in the po-biz? It’s sad. So why would we print (or write) a review that just shredded a book of poems? We’ll leave that to other folks. Furthermore, and finally, we plan to include in every issue an aesthetic dialog of sorts, where the various poets have no idea how the others have responded to the particular question. I think that’s neat, and haven’t seen it much anywhere else.
LR: What is the difference (work-wise) between being a poetry editor and a founding editor? What challenges and satisfactions come from each?
MD: Editing the actual poems is gravy. It’s what we enjoy most — having the aesthetic discussions, looking for fresh new voices in the clamor of voices out there, debating what to include…. But editing is so much more than that, and anyone out there who is looking to start a new journal needs to remember that. It’s difficult to manage the day-to-day, or week-to-week stuff like soliciting work, finding printers, haggling with printers, finding artwork that will be an appropriate match for the literary works, layout and design, finding time to have productive meetings, and of course, FUNDING. And these are just a handful of things. So I’d say that being a “poetry editor” is much simpler and more aesthetically rewarding than all the other stuff. I am indeed a founding editor of Redactions but, like I said, Tom Holmes really carries things forward in all the “managing editor” ways, just as Travis Denton and Katie Chaple handle the bulk of these things at Terminus .
LR: Do you solicit poems for either magazine? If so, how and why?
MD: I solicit work for both magazines, and that was really tough and confusing at first, but it has gotten easier. It was confusing because I might think “Let me get Bob Hicok for Terminus .” But then I’d criticize myself for not thinking of Bob Hicok for Redactions . Very troublesome. So I just got over it. As I said before, I look for what I consider excellent work, and I love both magazines, so now I don’t try to make distinctions of that sort. And if you look, you’ll see that many poets have been in both journals — folks like Denise Duhamel, Robyn Art, Nina Ellen Riggs, and William J. Neumire. And a few times I’ve even taken poems rejected by one journal, and sent them to my co-editors at the other journal. Because as everyone should understand, editing is still a very subjective business; just because a poem is rejected doesn’t mean it’s a bad poem — it just didn’t fit a certain group of editors at a certain time. Anyway, solicitation is an enormous aspect of being a poetry editor, especially for Redactions , which is a newer and less widely distributed journal than Terminus , which receives so much good unsolicited work.
LR: How do you and the other editors go about promoting your magazines?
MD: It’s pretty much the same for both, generally speaking. All of us do our best with word-of-mouth. There’s also the websites. We also mention the journals to our creative writing students and to our colleagues. Terminus is lucky to have decent distribution, and Redactions won’t be far behind within a couple years. While we don’t have a ton of money at Terminus , we nevertheless are much more liquid than Redactions . Tom, Michelle, and I struggle every year to come up with enough funds to keep producing issues. We have been lucky to have benefactors here and there, but we come up with most of the money ourselves, which is tough when you’re all starving-artist graduate-student types! Someday we hope to simply break even — that we have just enough money coming in from donations and subscriptions and sales to pay for the next issue. It’s living on the razor’s edge, but it can work, and be relatively simple.
LR: How has poetry changed–formally or aesthetically–in the last ten years (from your perspective?) Where do you see it going?
MD: This is like practice for my PhD comps! Ten years ago, I was barely getting into poetry, so I don’t have a true sense of the trends at that time. I think things change rapidly. I mean, you will always have narrative poets, lyric poets, avant-garde poets… to be terribly reductive. And I admit that I’m not personally interested too much in poetic “trends” to begin with. Poetic “Schools” have always made me itchy. For example, John Ashbery is almost 100% identified with the New York school, but James Tate once pointed out to our class that John Ashbery spent much time in France, illustrating the ridiculousness of such terms. And how do I take it personally? Is Mike Dockins a “snow-globe” poet? Will I be bunched in with the Surrealists? That’s so awfully reductive and it puts the poet as an individual artist in a cage. Nevertheless, I do see and know that I have to deal with how the general academic public needs to create and sustain such cages. Sad, but what can one do about it? Simply put, I sincerely hope that young poets out there continue to read and read and read and to better themselves, and to write the best work they can. I also hope that the veteran poets don’t slack off. I’d like to see a thriving community of poets who may have widely distinct styles but who all aim to create stunning art through language.
LR: What is the future for Redactions and Terminus ?
MD: Everyone reading this will send a check to Redactions and Terminus ! But really, that is the future of both magazines: money. That is to say, money will keep us afloat. Assuming we’re afloat, then I see the futures of the magazines as hopeful. We’ll always aim to publish the best work we can find, and aim to inspire writers and other editors with our examples. It’s hard to name a particular direction we might go — it’s entirely speculative. But we’ll never get it a rut, I hope, a rut where someone could pick up an issue in 2004 and 2009 and not see any growth. That would be sad.
LR: Advice for young poets?
MD: Please please please know when you’re ready to start publishing. Like ALL journals, we get far too many manuscripts that are simply not ready for publication. Publication can move a poet forward in many ways, but it should not serve only to be a pat on that poet’s back. So you got a poem published in the Frogspawn Review — so what? Out of every 20 manuscripts we look at, maybe one is debatable for publishing. And we rarely are just blown away to the point where we want to call the poet and accept the work right there on the spot. I wish that would happen more often, but instead we have to skim through “unready” work for hours first. I guess this will never change, but I send out the plea nonetheless. Finally, once your poems are readied for publication in a national journal, please please please make sure you’re sending your work to a journal that might “dig your stuff,” as Bukowski might have put it…. Editors work hard, and so should writers.
About the Interviewer:
Liz Robbins has a Ph.D in creative writing from Georgia State University, and her poems have been published in Calyx, RHINO, The South Carolina Review, and The National Poetry Review, and can be found in the current issues of Kalliope, The American Poetry Journal, and The William and Mary Review. She teaches writing at Flagler College and the University of North Florida.
