Three wonderful new interns have joined the Press this fall—remotely, from around the country—and it’s our pleasure to introduce you to each of them here. We’ll share their 60-second Q&As every #MeettheInternMonday in the coming weeks, so check back!
P.S. Interested in an internship with us in Spring 2024? Applications are due November 1. Learn more.
Meet Diya
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
D: Being an intern means working towards a team dedicated to articulating the power of language in our lives. It is invigorating knowing that our press is a necessity, as a community whose mission it is to uplift poetry on an international scale. For example, the Line/Breaks series on Copper Canyon’s Youtube channel is a great example of the role poetry plays as a functioning tool in our society. By interviewing the writers we hold dear, what can we learn about the craft of our everyday lives? I have to admit one of the biggest appeals of being an intern is its proximity to brilliant poetry and a team committed to articulating brilliance. As a first-generation, Queer South Asian I’m excited to show other immigrants that they can follow their passions and make a livelihood out of what they believe is important.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
D: I can’t wait to get my hands on West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal. An elegy from the perspective of railroad workers, in a hybrid text including poems, documents, and multiple literary forms. Rekdal explores how America is a constant receding and advancing force in our perceptions of history, in our translations and understanding of the past. I’m excited to ask alongside her, how does our international history function in the English language?
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
D: I found one of my favorite Copper Canyon books at Paul’s, a local bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. In Pastoral Jazz by Olga Broumas she writes, “My shells, my shy girls/Give me a shadow touch me with light/The dream of my life is to throw myself…I want to eat my life.” The freedom of her images, sonics, and landscape in her poems which all touch the women in her life is a lineage of lesbian writing that I hope to be a part of one day.
Meet Victoria
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
V: The best part of being an intern is that you are surrounded by people who are just as dedicated to poetry as you are. I am surrounded by people who have read things I’ve never heard of, people who challenge the way I think, and people who are always willing to teach me. I am in an environment that encourages community, so I get to experience the intimate community of poetry and the people who keep it alive and thriving.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
V: I am really excited for Diannely Antigua’s Good Monster. Antigua’s understanding of self and the way she juxtaposes the beauty and the ugliness of the female body are riveting. Many of the lines within her poems have rewritten how I view the world, and these poems are intimate and visceral. I am particularly fond of the way Antigua dissects such vulnerable topics, such as who we are when we reach the bottom of the barrel and how we can reconcile with ourselves.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
V: I am obsessed with a myriad of lines from Ocean Vuong’s novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I read this as an undergrad, and it completely changed my worldview on poetry. As a strictly fiction reader up until I read the book, Vuong’s command of language and his ability to pull his readers into the world of growing up as a Vietnamese immigrant captivated me and showed me just how powerful and beautiful language could be. I get choked up just thinking about the line, “When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
Meet Aimee
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
A: I love the energy every person brings to the Press. The enthusiasm is infectious, and it’s great how much of my day gets infused with surprise discussions of poetry. I’m particularly enjoying reading manuscripts–most of which are birthed with such care it would be easy to lose my days in them. Strengthening my muscle of discernment is helping me to think more critically about my own work and deepening my approach to writing.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
A: I’m looking forward to sitting down with The Stuff of Hollywood by Niki Herd. It’s a necessary critique of harm against Black communities by the entertainment industry, and Herd’s poetics are breathtaking and transformative. There’s a movie coming out in a couple weeks about the mass murders of my Osage people in the 1920s, and I’ll be sorting through feelings about that for some time, even if it can be seen as a model for tribal consultation on a film. Herd’s work will give me a lot to think about personally and politically.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
A: Over the past several months I’ve been writing about Southern California past and present, with a focus on the migration of many Osage families here including my own, and my mind keeps returning to a line in Esther Belin’s first book, in the poem Directional Memory, “I always forget L.A. has sacred mountains.” Which, in its admission of forgetting, is a reminder to remember. And I carry that with me as I think about how I’m writing with the land, how that work is complicated as a guest.