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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

Follow @rosswhite.com and @bullcitypress.com to discover more of his work. Read more at rosswhite.com. You can also purchase his latest book, Charm Offensive, published by Black Spring Press Group.

Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

“the way you flinch
the way you guide someone's fingers to it
the way you stay still
the way that hand pulls back”

— Ellen C. Bush, from “Also Accidental”

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

Ellen C. Bush is Digital Initiatives and Database Director at UNC Press. Her chapbook Licorice was published by Bull City Press, and her poems have appeared in Four Way Review, The Collagist, Inch, and other outlets.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

Ross White is the director of Bull City Press (@bullcitypress.com), an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He is the author of Charm Offensive, and three chapbooks: How We Came Upon the Colony, The Polite Society, and Valley of Want.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

Suddenly, I was publisher with skin in the game. Nineteen years and eighty-plus books later, I’m so grateful to “Also Accidental” for making us a legitimate press, and to Ellen, for the enormous trust. I don’t think I screwed it up. (8/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

By the time I had finished “Also Accidental”—only the second poem in the collection—I knew that this was a book, one that would need a perfect-bound spine. Suddenly, Bull City Press wasn’t just a handmade-in-the-basement press. (7/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

So I solicited an author whose work I had long adored, Ellen C. Bush. Ellen’s a dear friend, and I told her straight: “I may screw this up.” Miraculously, she still agreed to let me have a look at a chapbook manuscript. (6/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

The idea that I’d graduate to publishing chapbooks seemed like a stretch, and what did I know about designing and distributing chapbooks? Nothing at all. (5/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

back then, it was a single sheet of paper, folded twice, stapled, and cut to form an eight-page magazine. I was doing it in the basement with a long-arm stapler and a $30 paper cutter. (4/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

When I first started Bull City Press (@BullCityPress), the idea was that we’d publish saddle-stapled chapbooks, literary ephemera. I didn’t know a thing about publishing. I’d gotten a couple of issues of Inch to print— (3/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

I feel like I’m the first to learn its secret, and the final line reminds me of the limits of intimacy in poetry.This poem about a scar—a permanent reminder on the body—has become a kind of permanent reminder for me, too. It changed the trajectory of my life. (2/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

From Ross:

Each time I read that thrilling anaphora, I shiver a little. Though the poem starts with the evidence of trauma—the endless stitches, glass sewn into the chin, grinding against bone—it is the move toward tenderness and the poem’s final line that devastates me. (1/8)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 5h

Today’s poem is selected by Ross White (@rosswhite.com) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Also Accidental” appeared in Licorice by Ellen C. Bush, published by Bull City Press, 2006. Purchase the book at https://bullcitypress.com/product/licorice/

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Follow to discover more of her work. Read more at officialshira.com. You can also purchase her latest book, Odes to Lithium, published by Alice James Books.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

“The room was suddenly rich and
the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.”

— Louis MacNeice, from "Snow"

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Louis MacNeice was born on September 12, 1907, in Belfast, Ireland. Modern Poetry was his plea for an “impure” poetry expressive of the poet's immediate interests and his sense of the natural and the social world. His poetry blends humor, familiarity, and contemporary ideas.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Shira Erlichman is a writer, artist & musician, author of poetry collection Odes to Lithium & children's book Be/Hold: A Friendship Book, & the founder of In Surreal Life, a portable creativity school. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

I can feel MacNeice's bodily shock at the proliferating abundance of Life, the "spawning," "bubbling," "collateral" nature of nature! What could have been a lovely, descriptive, pastoral poem becomes a visceral invitation into awe. What else would I come to a poem for? (3/3)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

The poem's premise is as simple as its title: watching snow fall outside from the warm indoors. Through MacNeice's acute & massive attention, the scene reveals (once could say "revelates"—reveal being the root of revelation) ancient human emotions: namely, overwhelm and awe.(2/3)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

From Shira:

I think perhaps there is no more radical an act than being awake to the world. If we are awake—open, observant, receptive—revelation can't help but follow. This is what MacNeice's Snow teaches me, over and over again, in the decade since I first encountered it. (1/)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Today’s poem is selected by Shira Erlichman as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Snow” appeared in The Collected Poems by Louis MacNeice, published by Oxford University Press, 1967. Shared here with deep gratitude.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 2d

Follow Annelyse Gelman to discover more of her work. Read more at annelysegelman.com. You can also purchase her latest book, Vexations, published by University of Chicago Press.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 2d

If they grow up not to love, honour and obey us
either we have brought them up properly
or we have not:
if we have
there must be something the matter with them;
if we have not
there is something the matter with us.

— R. D. Laing

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 2d

R. D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness. Laing also wrote poetry, and his poetry publications include Knots (1970, published by Penguin) and Sonnets (1979, published by Michael Joseph).

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 2d

Annelyse Gelman is the author, most recently, of Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023). She is also the founder and director of Midst (midst.press).

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