Three wonderful new interns have joined the Press this winter—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 Summer 2024? Applications are due February 15th. Learn more.
Meet Jane
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
J: So far, I’ve loved meeting everyone at the press and learning about what they do, and finding ways that I can jump in and help out. Everyone at the press has been so gracious and eager to work with the interns, and I’m already so grateful for the work environment, here. In all, I’m over the moon to work with a troupe of people equally as obsessed and dedicated to poetry as myself. Poetry is “vital to language and living,” that’s a given at Copper Canyon, and it’s a given in my own life. To intern somewhere that aligns so closely with an essential theme of my life, is, I know, an irreplaceable experience.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
J: I am very excited about Javier Peñalosa M.’s What Comes Back (trans. Robin Myers). In the last year, I’ve taken a deep interest in how we experience geography, how we relate to land and environment within ourselves and through others, especially as we become increasingly aware of how the human race has affected the land and the earth. What Comes Back moves through the land, its creation and changes through time, and particularly through rivers and water (or water no longer there). The language feels both mythic and mortal, thoughtful and physically grounded.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
J: From the end of Chessy Normile’s “Ever”:
“I have loved you
quietly
from across the wall.”
I won’t say to much on this, just that living can feel so dynamically a system of separations, and the longing that closes Normile’s poem resonates through my artistic impulses, my life, the distances we all are trying to close between ourselves and others. I always come back to Normile when I feel I’ve run dry.
Meet Kelsie
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
K: I’d been craving hands-on work with poetry, and Copper Canyon Press has proved the perfect place to learn. So rarely do I get to be a part of a community that wholly believes in the power of poetry. This work has reaffirmed my belief in the value of literature, something I work to nourish within myself, while teaching me the skills I need to contribute to the process of bringing poems into the world. There is a humbling joy in loving a poem or collection and then helping it to find the next people who will feel the same way. I feel this sentiment echoed throughout the press, as Copper Canyon’s staff operates on a baseline of support and gratitude; I immediately felt welcome to ask questions, take on new projects, and explore different aspects of the publishing process.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
K: I’m so excited for I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken. I’ve greatly enjoyed his departure into prose poetry; he achieves a frankness in the form that really burns inside me. Whenever a poet experiments with something new, I look forward to it.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
K: From “The Shortest Song” in Alberto Ríos‘ Every Sound is Not a Wolf: “Pick up the glass, sweep it up, report it, think about / Fixing it. We move so quickly forward that we do not // Whistle the song of the glass, or sing it to someone else.” It struck me as a reminder to pay attention to the value in everything. I want to listen to more small moments, especially when life is at its busiest, and sing them to someone else.