This summer, Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference faculty member, Susan Rich suggested we do an article on Floating Bridge Press, a community-based nonprofit, of which she is a member, that has published 17 books of poetry and almost a decade’s worth of the annual poetry anthology Pontoon. I am pleased this week to run an interview with Floating Bridge Press’s President Kathleen Flenniken and Executive Director Jeff Crandall. Those who founded and sustain Floating Bridge Press have made a great contribution to both poets and poetry lovers; I am sure that their experience will help those of you in other states make similar contributions to creating and sustaining writing and publishing communities. I am also pleased to be running this interview just as the Press is holding its September 7th Great Art Party fund raiser.

Sheila
I am excited to be interviewing both of you. Let’s start with some history: When did you each join the Press and what were your roles with the Press before your current ones as President and Executive Director?

Jeff
I joined the press before there was ever a press to join. Peter Pereira, Linda Greenmun, Margaret Hodge, T. Clear, and I were a poetry critique group meeting twice a month in Peter’s basement.

We had talked for a long time about forming our own press, because of what we thought of as the poor quality of the chapbooks being published at the time. We even had a name: Delphinium Press. Our excitement and ideas kept mounting until we finally each put $50 into a bank account and made it official.

Well, of course, the business name “Delphinium Press” was taken. We were furious — and flummoxed —asking who ARE these people? What books have they published? Where are they? What the heck do we call ourselves now? We bandied about a lot of different names like Random Horse, Copper Cannon, and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Prose! Press.”

Since Peter’s house was right near the I-90 floating bridge, someone threw out “Floating Bridge Press” and we all had the same reaction: Wow! Metaphors flew through our heads as well as cool logo ideas.

In the fall of 1994, we advertised a poetry chapbook contest with a $50 prize and a $10 reading fee. We received about 55 entries and Joannie Kervran (now Joannie Stangeland) won with A Steady Longing for Flight, a beautiful collection, which we published in the spring of 1995, that dealt with the death of her husband.

Each of us was a co-editor, having equal say in all the decisions.

 Sheila
Can you describe the process of selecting the winning manuscript? What do you remember being gratifying, frustrating or worrisome?

Jeff
The process of judging was exhilarating. We had already decided to read all entries “blind” with no knowledge of the poet, which meant that none of us could actually open the envelopes and file the entries. Peter’s partner Dean Allan was kind enough to act as secretary for us and create the binders for us to read. We had many good entries that year, with different editors championing their favorite manuscripts. Because we already had years of workshopping poems together, accepting and giving hard-hitting critique, our discussions were open, passionate and comfortable. We realized from the quality of work that we would have to create finalist awards in addition to the winner; that took some pressure off having to narrow our choices down to one.

Sheila
Wow! There is a lot of sustained energy in your involvement! When each of you came to the press, what were your backgrounds in poetry, literature, publishing and nonprofits?

Jeff
I had graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in English/Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry. I had worked as an Administrative Assistant at AIDS Housing of Washington. I’d gone on to work at Pilchuck Glass School as a Development Coordinator, so I had lots of experience with grant writing and non-profit operations.

I was adamant that we get a 501(c)(3) rating from the IRS as soon as possible. I think Peter was the one who took on that task — an enormous amount of ridiculous paperwork! In the meantime, we asked the Washington Poets Association to be our umbrella organization so we could apply for grants. Our first year we received $500 from Seattle’s Allied Arts. I can’t tell you how much that grant meant for us — and kept us going. One of our editors had an “in” at SAFECO insurance company in Seattle and we were able to get some funds from them as well.

Sheila
Getting a corporate sponsor for a poetry project seems amazing. How did the editor with the “in” manage that?

Jeff
You just ask. You approach them with a fierce belief in your project. The worst that can happen is they say no. Our strategy has always been to ask for a little funding and give a lot in return. I think SAFECO ended up giving a couple hundred dollars — a tiny amount given their capacities, but it was a godsend to us. Later, as we started applying for public funds, Seattle Arts Commission and King County Arts Commission (now called 4Culture) were impressed that we could do so much with the small grants they were awarding us.

Kathleen
I came to poetry through the back door. I started writing in Mike Hickey’s Experimental College poetry workshop at the University of Washington in 1993 as a diversion from my life as a stay-at-home mother. I fell in love with poetry. I had no writing or even English degree (though I’ve just this year finished an MFA from Pacific Lutheran). No experience as an editor or publisher, no experience with nonprofits. But I was a reader and paid attention to the local poetry scene.

I joined Floating Bridge in 2002. The editors had just moved the office from Peter’s basement into Hugo House, Seattle’s Literary Center, and taken a break from the chapbook competition for a year after seven years.

They were eager for some new energy and the chance to spread the work around a little. I’d been a real admirer of Floating Bridge and particularly Pontoon, the yearly poetry anthology they published using individual poems selected from the submitted manuscripts that hadn’t won the chapbook contest, and I had also had a poem accepted the year before.

Joining marked my first editorial experience, and it couldn’t have found a more congenial group. I took on whatever work they needed me to do–at that time, it was mostly around the chapbook competition. I took on the role of President the following year, with the understanding that as President, I brought wine to all our board meetings. I thought I could handle that.

Sheila
This part of your story reminds me of how I began studying poetry seriously in the late seventies–with an Experimental College class taught by Michael Magee, a recent University of Washington graduate of the Creative Writing Program. He taught me a lot about poetry as well as a lot about the poetry scene in Seattle and the fine poets who were teaching at the University of Washington. Community courses offered by colleges and universities were really valuable to so many of us who wanted to study with poets and find peers who love writing poetry. Now that you’ve told us about your MFA from Pacific Lutheran, can you tell us a bit more about how you benefited from the program and how your work with the press is an offshoot of some of what you learned?

Kathleen
So you started taking poetry seriously at the Experimental College, too, Sheila! This is what I mean when I say writers begin as hobbyists. Poets do not spring fully developed from the forehead of some university professor. I remember in the early 1990s following the work of my teacher Michael Hickey, local poets (Crysta Casey, Bethany Reid, and Derek Sheffield, to name a few) and the big names who lived in the Northwest—David Wagoner, Heather McHugh, William Stafford. By the time I joined Floating Bridge Press, I was already a devoted reader of many Pontoon poets.

My MFA studies gave me the opportunity to go back and read some of the canon that I was never exposed to in my engineering education. I concentrated on reading the American moderns and post moderns, and my studies made me a better reader of contemporary poetry. I’m more generous reading poets who take chances with form and voice.

It was so interesting to read W.C. Williams’s letters, and Marianne Moore’s, and Wallace Stevens’s, and some of Harriet Monroe’s correspondence (as founding editor of Poetry), and to see the essential role that small poetry magazines and presses played in these giants’ writing careers. I take pride in being part of that tradition. Even the fact we pay our writers—though it is a token amount—pays respect to our new poets in an old-fashioned way.

Sheila
What is the mission of Floating Bridge Press? How does its structure support achieving this mission? I am very impressed by the list of those participating in some way, from Board members and officers to advisors. How do these literary figures help guide the press?

Jeff
O gods! Let’s see if I can get this right. Our mission is to support and affirm poetry as a written and spoken art, enhancing the lives of poets and audiences in the local and broader communities. That sounds about right. I’ve written it so many times on grant forms that it’s become a mantra. The founding editors specifically made the mission statement broad so that the press could grow and evolve through time, beyond what our beginning conceptions of the press were.

Floating Bridge Press is a labor of love. We are competent, dedicated people volunteering our time to read, review, choose, and publish poetry. We all come to the press with a deep commitment toward furthering poetry in the world and in people’s lives. Having such a close relationship to the art, we also understand its trappings and difficulties. I am consistently stunned at the general public’s reaction to poetry: fear, incomprehension, unwillingness to engage. People feel like they’re going to look stupid if they don’t get a poem. Yet they have no problem looking at a statue or a painting and saying, “It’s ugly. I hate it.” I hate most poetry — and I’m not afraid to admit it. But the poetry I like — I LOVE. It takes me to a place beyond the physical, an indescribable, spine-tingling transcendence that achieves a state of grace like nothing I can compare it to. THAT is why I work with Floating Bridge.

Our Board of Directors has grown and evolved over time. We are deeply appreciative of all the members who have served. Initially, we brought on a lot of people who we thought we would need: lawyers, designers, fund raisers. But we managed to move forward successfully on our own, with no crises, so a lot of our original board has moved on

Kathleen
We have great people involved because the original editors conceived of a generous-minded press that would build a local poetry community. Many poets are attracted to that philosophy, and have wanted to give back.

Jeff
Initially we just asked our friends and acquaintances to come aboard. We promised them only one meeting a year and that they wouldn’t have to give any money. How could they say no? We didn’t really “utilize” our board much — a phone call for advice now and then, hearing their perspective and ideas at the annual meetings. The editors were basically charging forward on their own. Most boards are responsible for a large part of fund raising, and we were able to do that on our own. Having an all-volunteer organization makes for very low overhead! But it’s precisely because they weren’t being “used” that much of our original non-editorial board members left the board. That’s when we began to build up our “Advisory Board” — a recognized body of community members who believe in what we’re doing and lend their name in support of our organization, but are specifically not involved in the operations.

Kathleen
We put feelers out to people we think understand our mission. People (who are not always poets, by the way) who care less about putting this on a resume and more about getting poetry out into the world. One of us drops a line, invites someone out to coffee, pulls a prospective editor aside after a reading, say. It’s never been hard for us to find new editors or board members. And we hope, as we say goodbye to the last of our founding editors, that these transitions are merely a sign of the health of our press.

Sheila
What are your roles and responsibilities in your current positions?

Jeff
Oh boy! As the last founding editor on the Board, I was pretty tired of the routine. When you first start out, it’s very exciting to find a gem of a poem in an otherwise dull manuscript and include it in the anthology, or to choose a winning manuscript and award a major prize to a poet — changing their lives often in large ways. But after 12 years, the thrill was gone for me. I needed to leave the Board, but as one of the major grant writers for the press, it felt like I was sending my adolescent child into the desert saying “Okay! Now go survive on your own!” Which I just couldn’t do. I needed to re-think my role in the press. Having a strong background in fundraising, I wanted to leave Floating Bridge with a solid foundation to continue on. We have a ridiculously small annual budget — $8,000 to $10,000, which is shocking to other non-profits. An endowment fund of $100,000 would pretty much cover our expenses.

Sheila
You mean the interest from such a fund?

Jeff
Absolutely. An endowment fund maintains a permanent balance and generates interest for your income. The Seattle Foundation operates many, many individual and group funds with a 10-year average return of about 10%. Last year, I made a proposal to the board that I become their first volunteer staff person “Executive Director” — sounds great doesn’t it?–and work exclusively on creating the Endowment Fund. The board said, “Go for it!” Now we have a five-year plan to raise the funds. My role lately has been to create and produce The Great Art Party— our first fund raising event. We’ll have 100 artworks from 100 artists. We’re selling 100 tickets for $100 and when people arrive, we’ll start drawing numbers. Each person then goes up and just takes the piece they want. Is that fun or what?

Kathleen
I bring the wine, remember? Otherwise, I share duties related to the chapbook competition, correspondence/communication, mailings, I set up readings, and try to pitch in where I can.

Sheila
You may be too humble, Kathleen. I have a sense that the President has some leadership responsibilities–how do you inspire the group of overworked volunteers, most of whom must be holding down full-time jobs, caring for families, studying and writing, as well?

Kathleen
Leadership responsibilities? I was never told…

I can tell you without any coyness that when I took the job as President in 2003, it was mostly a figurehead position. As we lose our old editors and gain new ones, we have had to reappraise our tasks, our mission, our ambitions for Floating Bridge’s future. We had our first retreat last fall to share some of our ideas. There are some leaky spots for sure—we’re still figuring out how to fill those great big holes left by our FB forebears. But we also have some exciting new ideas, many of them from our exciting new editors.

Sheila
What is the most exciting thing to you about today’s Floating Bridge Press and its projects?

Jeff
The Great Art Party! And the Floating Bridge Press Endowment Fund, of course!

Kathleen
I think I am most proud of our annual anthology, Pontoon. Pick up any issue and you will see the work of 30, 40, even 60 poets. It’s like a local directory, a who’s who, and yet it is open to beginners as well as well-established Washington poets. We arrange poetry readings around the state as part of our mission, and that, too, is a way of bringing local poets together.

We have lots of editors, each with his or her own tastes, and that broadens the contents of Pontoon. We publish the academics along with the “hobbyists” and everything between. I put hobbyists in quotes because I’ve heard the term used disparagingly, but, again, it certainly describes me when I began writing. Here’s to an anthology that brings them together in one book, and the chance they might connect.

Sheila
In addition to its continuing fine work and the Great Art Party, I know the Press is celebrating a ten-year anniversary in some other ways. Tell us about them.

Jeff
We had the 10th anniversary of the press itself in 2005, celebrated with a community party and lots of champagne at one of the editor’s homes.

This year we are celebrating the 10th anniversary issue of Pontoon. After our first two chapbook awards back in ’95 and ’96, we all agreed that we were finding too many amazing poems in the non-winning manuscripts and that something had to be done. We decided to create an anthology that would recognize this incredible work and Pontoon was born. The name seemed obvious to us — pontoons are what keep the floating bridge up! This year we are producing a double issue — some great poems from the past as well as the best of what we’ve received from this year’s chapbook award. This issue will also be the first time we’ve published ads in Pontoon. The funds from the ads will go to support the Endowment Fund.

Sheila
Kathleen, anything to add here?

Kathleen
The 10th anniversary issue of Pontoon is also the last in its current form. Next year, we have exciting plans to release a journal that contains Pontoon but also incorporates new features. It will be larger, more ambitious, and will stretch beyond the Washington border. We are tentatively calling it Floating Bridge Review.

Sheila
What would you most like to tell those writing poetry and wishing to one day publish a book about the editorial process and the book making process?

Jeff
Don’t think you can get away with sloughing. Your work — every single poem! — has to be sharp, right on, dynamic and worthy of you. You know when you’ve got good work, so don’t kid yourself. Keep pushing to create a manuscript that reflects on every page the talent you possess. This is terribly hard. But those who persevere get published — every time.

Kathleen
I’d add that the chapbook (a short book, in our case 24 pages of poetry or fewer) is a challenging project. The most compelling manuscripts we see tend to be united by a theme, a voice, or most often, both. The book needs to be larger than the sum of its parts, better than the best poem in the collection–it can only be achieved with some kind of larger vision. It’s hard for newer poets to think beyond the scope of a single poem, but organizing a book will eventually help them take their work to the next level.

Sheila
Before we close, I’d love to hear more about what it means to you to have helped create and to be sustaining Floating Bridge Press.

Jeff
When I left the Board in late 2006, Floating Bridge Press went through a milestone that I don’t think anybody really recognized. Every one of the founding editors had gone, but the press — its mission, goals, projects and publications — carried on. I am amazed and delighted to be a part of something greater than myself. The comments and feedback we get from poets we publish continues to astound me. We set out with a commitment to quality — not only in the writing published but also the printing and design of our publications — and that mission has been recognized, appreciated, supported by the community from individual poets all the way to state-level funding. I guess “pride” sums it all up.

Kathleen
I hang on to the idea that we help accomplished poets find each other, and that we get their poems out into the world where they can be discovered by (I know they’re out there) readers. I’m proud to be associated with my fellow editors and the emeritus editors who have been spectacularly generous with each other and me and the poetry community. Floating Bridge Press produces beautiful books. It has a fine reputation. I am delighted to be associated with it.

Sheila
I’d also like to give you the opportunity to discuss your own poetry. As you foster others, I hope your own writing has flourished and found homes. Please let us know about your poetry.

Jeff
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have landed right out of college into a group of such talented, dedicated and motivated poets. We all started getting published at the same time, then we started winning awards and getting chapbooks and books published. I think Peter was the first to put his poems into manuscript form, and then all of us quickly followed suit. The first year I ever sent my manuscript out, I ended up being a finalist in the National Poetry Series. Yow! Each poet’s success was like a win for all of us.

After taking a hiatus from getting my own work published, I finally did the big push last year to submit work to journals across the country. My goal was to keep 100 poems submitted at all times, playing the numbers game. I got a rush of acceptances, many from places I’d never submitted to before, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal. Since Kathleen and editors Ron Starr and Susan Rich all had books come out in the last year, they’ve inspired me to put together my next manuscript, Pagan Epiphanies. I’ll be sending it out to the national contests in the fall. Last June, I sent query letters out for my first novel — a children’s fiction titled Anna Claus and the Line of Midnight — to the slush piles of five publishers. And what should arrive in the mail today? A letter from Scholastic Press (of Harry Potter fame) saying they would like to see the full manuscript. It’s hard to type when your fingers are crossed!

Kathleen
The editors make a point of keeping our own work OUT of Floating Bridge. But several of the current editors have books and/or actively publish poetry in magazines, including Jeff, me, Susan Rich, Ron Starr, and Tatyana Mishel. My first book came out from University of Nebraska Press in 2006, called Famous, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. I’m currently working on a manuscript of poems about the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington, where I grew up.

Jeff
And with one exception. You will find some of our work in the Poetry On Wheels anthology, which we published in collaboration with 4Culture. Since those poems were already judged by King County/Metro’s jury process, we didn’t recuse ourselves from the second round of judging.

Sheila
I am in admiration of your commitment to poetry through writing and through sustaining a press dedicated to encouraging the publication of new voices mingled with established voices. The mission to foster this in the state of Washington means, to me, that you gain strength through the focus. I hope this interview helps Writing It Real readers realize that, with dedication and community building, even starting with their own writing group, they can create publishing projects that make a difference in their communities. Thank you both for this interview. Though I will be out of town during the Great Art Party, I’ve sent in my check and am sending a proxy to select a piece of art for me!