Probably the biggest news is our own Stuart Kestenbaum is the new Maine Poet Laureate. His titles continue to be popular. His newest title is How to Start Over.
Other new titles from last year and the previous year are available on the Deerbrook Editions Website
Visit the site and browse using the drop down menu or the index list in the righthand sidebar. More new titles will be updated here as there is lots of news about books that have gotten acclaim. As covers are added, links to title pages and title info will be set, so click on the cover to reach the press Website.
Descent & Other Poems, honorable mention, The Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry
Finalist for poetry in the Maine Literary Awards 2020
A finalist in the Maine Literary Awards for Poetry 2018
Jim’s new book 2019
New titles for this year, here are a few.
Poetry 2014:
Where it Goes by Martina Reisz Newberry. See recent posts for endorsements and a sample of the work.
Read Martina’s reviews on her blog page, and visit our samples page on issuu.com
Where it Goes features a photograph by Eleanor Bennett
The Maine poet spring 2014 is Stuart Kestenbaum, author of two books of poetry published by Deerbrook Editions in previous years. Stuart’s new book is Only Now. Only Now had a poem appear on American Life in Poetry/ Poetry Foundation Websites.
Read the review on The Line Break by Tom Holmes.
The cover features a print collaboration by Susan Webster and Stuart Kestenbaum
From the back cover:
Stuart Kestenbaum’s Only Now is a rare accomplishment: a collection of poems that takes on the fragility of the world and our own mortality, and does so with unflinching directness and, most impressively, with wit and a sincere prayerfulness. Many of these poems are what I would call strangely hopeful warnings, elegies-in-advance. They worry about the world in ways that register the beauty of what is in danger of being diminished. —Stephen Dunn
“. . . even pears in cans, all come from someplace,” Stuart Kestenbaum tells us, tells himself in a rush of wonder as he walks the supermarket’s bright aisles. And we are miraculously, wryly back to seeds, milkweed, hillsides, what beauty the wind delivers, even plastic bags from the trash inflated, distantly afloat. This deeply metaphysical poet is the e-connect between the sacred and the profane (e for ecstatic, e for remember: this moment is eternal). Which is to say, everything’s invited into these meditative poems–worry next to stars “turning themselves on and off,” grief next to joy, a patient, grateful surprise that we keep breathing at all. Relish what he sees, then cherish it. —Marianne Boruch
Available now on the Website. Now also on amazon and the distributor spdbooks.org where individuals, stores, and libraries may order.
Thank you for your support; whether you have bought books, made donations, or written a review—everything you do helps.
And Welcome to this update on titles.
Deerbrook Editions
A small literary press publishing deserving authors in well-designed trade books
Deserving Authors • Good Books
Find books here deerbrookeditions.com
distributed by Small Press Distribution spdbooks.org
Visit our new sample page online to view sample book pages and the beginning of our catalog. All remarkably presented by ISSUU in better than ebook form.
Old News from Deerbrook Editions
2012-2013 Deerbrook Editions brought out six new books:
Learning by Rote, poems by Martina Reisz Newberry
The Thinking Heart: The Life & Loves of Etty Hillesum by Martin Steingesser
Memory Won’t Save Me: a haibun by Mimi White
No Passing Zone, poems by Donna Reis
The Irresistible In-Between, poems by David Sloan
Freeing the Hook, poems by Peter Harris
All books available from the Website deerbrookeditions.com
Available now: Freeing the Hook, poems by Peter Harris.
- White Waves on Sand, Maine by John Marin
Petter Harris is Zacamy Professor in English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he founded a mentoring program. Currently, he chairs the Art Department. He has taught at Colby College since 1974.
He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Arts, Red Cinder House, and the Tyron Guthrie Center in Ireland, and has been awarded a Martin Dibner Writing Fellowship.
He is co-founder of a mentoring program (Colby Cares About Kids) that in 2012-13 matched nearly five hundred College students with primary and elementary students in ten communities.
He holds a BA from Middlebury, a Ph.D. from Indiana University, and a MFA from Warren Wilson.
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David Sloan received the 2012 Betsy Sholl award for the poem Bad Math, and the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Poetry in the Short Works Competition.
The Irresistible In-Between by David Sloan, is available at the Website deerbrookeditions.com.
David not only teaches at Maine’s Waldorf school he trains teachers in Waldorf theory.
- The Irresistible In-Between cover features a photo by Chris Darling.
From the back cover:
W.H. Auden said poetry is a clear statement of mixed emotions, and that’s the great gift of David Sloan’s poems. The Irresistible In-Between gives us a series of lenses, each clarifying the rich complexity of contemporary life and relationships. There is an exactitude of eye and ear here, and an unassuming confidence that makes the speaker an indispensable guide through relational thickets, where, as he says, ‘I do what I can to be near the commotion, the danger.’ I would describe all these poems the way the speaker describes his sons’ carpentry skills: ‘the casual exactness of lines/ measured out like music.’ These are indeed beautifully rendered poems.
—Betsy Sholl, author of Rough Cradle
Good books from 2012
News: No Passing Zone gets review in Chronogram.
No Passing Zone is a fine book of poems by Donna Reis who teaches at The Northeast Poetry Center, College of Poetry, in Warwick, New York. More can be seen at donnareis.com.
Donna has a review: reviewed-by-john-bellinger/10152085658697318 which is posted as a note on our Facebook page.
From the Back cover:
Lyrical, wry, biting—Reis uses all the tricks in her deck to show how to survive the pain and healing of the body, the crumbling and restoration of houses, the razing and rebuilding of love. There’s serious word play here, and a sharp eye for detail. Reis explores not only her own experience, but the lives of others—Dorothy Wordsworth ministering to her brother, Mary Lamb, whose “Kitchen rattled / toward me, its knives hissing . . .” Readers will rejoice at the perseverance of this poet, who “stayed because [she had] more stories to tell.”
—Mary Makofske
Learning by Rote was recently accepted into the fold at City Lights Books -yeah!
Martina Reisz Newberry is a California writer now, once again, living in LA. Learning by Rote has gotten some attention and reviews can be read here: Martina’s blog. I have posted a number of descriptions and the like on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/learning.by.rote
- A photo by Brian Newberry
Martin Steingesser is as active as ever with readings and performances of The Thinking Heart. The ensemble has been raising money in performance to make a trip to Europe for Etty’s birthday. You can learn more information here: http://www.pilgrimagetotheheart.org
- “A Red Anemone” , pastel by Katharine Whild
The book is based on the performance and contains the text and an introduction to Etty Hillesum, her writings, and how they touched and inspired Martin.
Read a review in the Press Herald.
“Etty Hillesum’s remarkable voice and The Thinking Heart ensemble’s stirring simplicity… make this an intimate and profoundly moving meditation on how…to love.” —The Portland Phoenix
- Sculpture “Wheel of Time” by Kerryn Forster of Australia
Memory Won’t Save Me by Mimi White is best described by this endorsement:
When the Japanese poet-monk Basho invented the haibun, the alternating haiku and prose in which he documented his travels, he certainly never imagined what a poet could do with the form in twenty-first century American English. Mimi White’s Memory Won’t Save Me is an ingenious, fascinating appropriation, an account of both physical and emotional travel. The geography is the weeks leading up to the death of a father. Shifting easily between direct observation and layers of memory, she turns what might have been a familiar kind of elegy into a work of great depth and power.
—Chase Twichell
Other news is not so new but to perhaps some of you.
(Since most of the time is spent keeping up with blogs, Websites, marketing, mailings, design, editing, etc. I yearn to be able to make more frequent newsletters.)
For the past couple of years Deerbrook Editions has had a Fiscal Sponsorship with Fractured Atlas in NY which allows “Project Deerbrook” to receive tax deductible donations to help us with our mission of making books and helping undiscovered authors reach a wider audience in well designed trade books.
We need your help. The press needs your help because the work we do is important to the authors, and because publishing deserving authors is important to our culture, and because the books are good in the sense that the books are physically beautiful as well as literary, because it requires more time and money to expand beyond break even economics, to compete with the powerful trendy industry.
If you know and like the press books, please show your support by making even a small donation. If 20 people donated 10 dollars (the price of a bottle of wine or a six pack) it becomes 200 dollars; if 20 people donated 25 dollars it becomes 500 dollars. 500 dollars would help launch an authors new book or keep a couple of books on the list in print.
Deerbrook is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of Deerbrook must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
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