Small Press and the Freedom To Be Weird
Haley Jenkins is the owner and founder of Selcouth Station , a small press that publishes essays , poetry , and short fiction . As well as running the press she writes poetry and works a full-time job . Selcouth is a passion project for her , focusing on community , joy , and exploration through art . Sleuth reporter Luca Reale speaks to Jenkins about a venture that is finally starting to break even .
Selcouth Station was born by accident . In the often solitary world of writing , Jenkins wanted to have a platform to bring together her writer friends , to encourage them to contribute and share . “ It ’ d be a place to talk about quirky stuff and to bring laughter and enjoyment and a place of collaboration ,” she recalls . “ Community was always at the heart of what I wanted to do . To have people we can talk to about books , have people we can share each other ’ s work with , people we can support . [ To ] lift others up rather than crush them down .”
The communal aspect is key to her artistic vision as well . She enjoys genre-bending work- visual poetry , collage poetry , works that re-purpose others ’ art and ideas .
“ All poetry to some extent is translation , translation and communication or recommunication . Echoing and reiterating ,” she says . Jenkins takes inspiration from Dick Higgins ’ “ Intermedia ” and David Shields ’ “ Reality Hunger ”, works that eschew the separation and ownership of art in favour of a more blended approach .
Her upcoming work reflects this notion of echoing . Using cutouts of pictures and texts she makes collage poems that not only borrow and repurpose other ’ s work but also cross genre boundaries to be half poem , half illustration .
Notions that there is a wrong and a right way to make art are holding people back from honesty and creativity . Bigger presses , especially , can encourage homogeneity and discourage experimentation , whereas Selcouth aims to champion the right to be weird and different . “ If we stick to one way of doing it then we ’ re going to stop writing . The creativity is just going to implode . It ’ s still very feudalist in some mainstream publishers , especially more long-standing presses . They have an idea of what poetry is and what it isn ’ t .”
Jenkins feels passionately that good art needs to be personal , which cannot be done when one is bending to restrictions of genre or market preference . She recalls on one occasion , reading through piles of love poems that had been submitted and quickly becoming bored by their similarity to each other . “ In love poetry I want to know why it ’ s that person ’ s love , why it can ’ t be someone else ’ s .”
Good art depends more on being intimate than it does on being original . Sharing and expanding on ideas , crossing genre boundaries , these are ways of discovering new ways to communicate and express more fully .
“ It ’ s more personal of a journey through poetry . It ’ s a moment , a space , a feeling that can be more easily interpreted , more easily construed . It ’ s like a song .”
Writing can be seen as a “ dusty ” art form , composed by solitary figures tortured by the burden of their own divine inspiration . Jenkins encourages writers to prioritize their enjoyment when creating . Making art should be more free form , like play : a shared and unpretentious experience . “ Allow yourself to make paper dirty ,” she advises .
Sleuth readers can learn about Jenkins ’ s press at www . selcouthstation . com .
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