Four fabulous new interns have joined the Press for our first session of 2026—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 becoming a Copper Canyon Press intern? Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort open on March 15th. Learn more about our internship program here.
Meet Ernie
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
E: What has stayed with me most is the people I get to work with at CCP. Their generosity, their seriousness about the work, their collective care for growth, everything! Being in continual contact with poetry, and with the sustained thinking required to bring a book of poems into the world, has definitely reshaped my life, and I deeply welcome that feeling. So far, I’m learning just how powerful a collaborative publishing space can be, especially one grounded in a shared purpose. I am grateful to be working within this system and learning from it as it unfolds.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
E: Well, so many incredible books are coming out in the approaching seasons, but I think everyone should keep an eye out for Erin Belieu’s Cocklebur. The poems in this collection confront grief, power, and survival without softening them; if you love poetry that refuses to be comfortable but remains deeply attentive to intimacy, you’ll love this one. Belieu writes with an unsentimental clarity about what we inherit and what we carry. I’m genuinely excited to sink into this collection; it’s exactly my kind of book.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
E: I keep returning to Mary Ruefle’s brief poem, “Voyager”: “I have become an orchid / washed in on the salt white beach. / Memory, / what can I make of it now / that might please you — / this life, already wasted / and still strewn with / miracles?”
Meet Caroline
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
C: I found a place to speculate earnestly about Ashbery’s influence on Lerner within the same conversation as the word “dudebro” amongst people who understand the semiotic baggage of those nouns. It’s spirited and lively. I get to talk about poetry every day.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
C: I’m waiting patiently for Kazim Ali’s The Man in 119 to unfurl into our world. Kazim Ali is a surrealist. Or he’s a sensualist. He’ll speak plainly and with puncture. He has edited books by queer writers that I have poured over and have poured into me. To be offered into the intimacy of grief, in this new collection, however he chooses to structure, or restructure it, seems like a vibrant gift to me.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
C: I’ve had Charles Bernstein’s “Questionnaire” sonnet on the mind as of late. Two of my all-time favorite things, if you know me at all: sonnets and questions. What’s been ringing in my head is the fourth question: “a) I can understand the world to a sufficient extent. / b) The world is basically baffling.” I’m not sure which I’d choose. But, I’m interested in the word “sufficient” or “basically.”
Meet Francis
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
F: I’ve been enjoying getting to work on various projects! Our trainings have been super detailed and thorough, so starting new projects with various departments isn’t daunting or intimidating. Everyone at Copper Canyon is a phenomenal teacher and super supportive! I also get the sense that staff trusts us. On the projects I have worked on and meetings I have been in, there have been invitations to bring my own knowledge in and offer up new ideas. I’m excited to learn more from the staff and fellow interns at the Press!
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
F: I am really looking forward to Kazim Ali’s, The Man in 119. I had the opportunity to caption a video of Ali reading an excerpt from one of the poems in this collection, and I can’t stop thinking about the way the poem sounds. I love poems that play with homophones, alliteration, and rhyme; Ali does that beautifully.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
F: I can’t stop thinking about a couplet from Agha Shahid Ali’s, “Tonight”, from the collection Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals: “My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all? / This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.”
I read “Tonight” in a university course focused on lyric poetry, and I remember thinking about these two lines so vividly. I recently read the entire collection and constantly find myself thinking of this couplet. It’s a bit self-deprecating, outraged, slightly coy, and scornful all at once. It’s beautifully constructed and also highly amusing; it brings a smile to my face whenever I think about it.
Meet Lili
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
L: The Press glitters with its deep gratitude and respect for its lineage—its poets, its people, its donors, its physical home in Port Townsend, WA, and its pride between the covers of each book it’s published. With admiration and gratitude, this opportunity very much so feels like being invited to a large dinner party and where each guest made to feel as family immediately.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon Press title you’re excited about, and why.
L: With love towards his dream-like poetics of hope and his enduring impact on my own literary lineage, I’m grateful to soon hold Dean Young’s Creature Feature in my own hands. Its beautiful cover art—a collage of Dean Young’s, brightly coloring atop a wild beast—embodies the life of his poems: a tenacity against the enduring minutia and misfortunes of our heaping days by seeing them through kaleidoscope glasses.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
L: d.a.levy’s “Suburban Monastery Death Poem”’s three concluding stanzas: “my wife & i / take an evening walk / around the block / (are we that old) / there is something beautiful / about her something / some dream thing in the cloudless sky // i know my dreams are unreal / but they are my dreams // sometimes / on hot summer nights / we hate each other / & it is beautiful. . . .”