Transcript
Speaker: You know that thing you love that your friends and family don't want to hear about anymore? Tell it to us, Patty and Charlotte. We want to learn all about your weird and wild obsessions or your perfectly normal hobbies that you've taken just a little too far.
Speaker: We want to dabble in your curious interests. Can we interest you in today's episode?
Speaker: Hey, Charlotte. Hey, Patty. I'm so excited to introduce our guest today is Tyler Harula, who is the senior editor of South Broadway Press. So I'm going to read their very exciting bio. Tyler Harula, she, they, is the pinkest poet in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker: She strives to be the most queer and polyamorous person they can be. You'll likely find her parading around in a tiara with hot pink lipstick going ah to an art walk or discussing the intricacies of the latest horror movie she's watched with anyone who will listen.
Speaker: Author of chapbook Love Me Louder from Querencia Press and Too Pretty for Plain Coffee from Wayfarer Books, they have been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes and were a finalist for the Right Bloody 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest.
Speaker: So thank you so much, Tyler, for being with us. And can't wait to hear about your interest and all of the the writing you've been doing. That is an excellent bio. Welcome.
Speaker: Yeah. Thank you. And we can report the hair is really lovely. Yes. Thank you. Yes. One the first things I commented when you came on, I was like, is that like an ombre of many different colors? Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. There's, is there, here it looks like an orange and then yellow. oh but there's some pink. Yes. Okay. I figured there had to. Yep. It's pink, orange, and yellow. That's very fun.
Speaker: Very nice. My niece was just saying the other day, she's like, well, why did why did the United States choose um the primary colors of blue, red, and yellow oh yeah and i was like oh no no that's just science and she's like well i really do feel like white should be a primary because that's how you get pink like yes that's so funny yes i agree pink should absolutely be a primary color we're on the same wavelength yes my nieces would agree too yeah
Speaker: And I feel like I have just recently been re-embracing pink. Like I think for so long, i not that that's what we're talking about, but I think for so long I was like, oh, I don't like pink because I don't want to be a stereotypical girl and whatever. And then i like suddenly was like, I love pink. I had like a neon pink phone case and pink. Well, I'm wearing A pinkish peach color. I'm in a pink room. Yeah. So I think I'm embracing pink. um But it's kind of fun to be like, oh, no, this is this is just a beautiful color. Like it was assigned a gender stupidly. And that's why I rejected it. But I I love pink. Exactly. Yeah. I think when I was discovering all of my gender fuckery, I was like, why not pink? Pink could be great. And like always more black and stuff in high school. And then i was like, actually, I can be bright. And it doesn't mean I have to be hyper femme. But I've got like a pink light bulb in my lamp here.
Speaker: Ooh, I see. Yeah, and I think that as you go west, it's easier to be wearing brighter colors too. I feel like on the East Coast and in Chicago, it was just maybe everybody was wearing business suits or something. But out here, I feel more like I can be bright, wear brighter things.
Speaker: Go westward. I like that. As you go west, you can go bright. Yeah. just as I get older, because I just got older and then i was like, I can wear what I want. That's right. forgot.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely a part of it too. I don't care what everybody else thinks. So let's check in. How are you doing today, Charlotte?
Speaker: Today, pretty good. Let's see. i am just getting myself together after having a bunch of people in town for my grad school reunion. And so now I'm just getting my life in order again, which is just kind of the story of my life. There was ah a singer who, like, she sang a song that, I guess it was her friend who wrote it, but it was called, like...
Speaker: Basically like something along the lines of everything's going to be better when I get my shit together. you know, that just waiting, just waiting. Yeah. aha I can relate to that. i would I just went to Ikea on Friday with my sister and it's like, when is the last time like just she and i went and like just went to Ikea or like any errand and we had nothing else that we had to do. And so we just like like meandered so slowly. And at the end she was like, I think I, she's like, how do you, um how can you tell that you feel like your life is out of control? you bought nothing but containers from Ikea. Like, it's just like every, like, oh, no, no, no. I just need the right container. And then my life, you know, like, oh, I just need the right shelving system. And then my shit will be together. It's like, oh it doesn't work that way. Yes. That's so funny.
Speaker: um Tyler, how are you doing today? good. I'm good today This week, I got to go see there There's a poet, the Poet Laureate of Colorado, who died last year, Andrea Gibson. They did a film called Andrea Gibson, A Love Letter from the Afterlife, and that premiered the other day at Red Rocks. I got to go see that, and it was beautiful and amazing, and i think I've just been kind of writing that the last couple days.
Speaker: Wow, that's amazing. I had heard of Andrea Gibson, but I didn't realize that um they were the Poet Laureate in Colorado. i don't know how I didn't realize that. That's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, they're incredible. Definitely take a look at their work if you can. And what a great venue for that, you know, to be like, ah, poetry. think it's the first time a poet has sold out Red Rocks.
Speaker: So is that movie going to be released? um You said it's a movie? Yes, it's a film of their last ah concert performance or last poetry performance that they did. and it was really neat to get to see that the Colorado Symphony Orchestra there. And they like played over the movie. It was really beautiful.
Speaker: Was this the one that Tig Notaro was involved in or did Tig do something different with a performance of theirs? Yes. Tig Notaro was involved in the documentary they did on Andrea Gibson. So it's a different film, but that one was called Come See Me in the Good Light. It was also very good.
Speaker: Yes. Okay. And this one is Love Letter from the Afterlife. Okay. All right. We'll put links up so people can find those too. yeah yeah How about you, Patty? How have you been doing?
Speaker: ah Doing all right. Tuesdays tend to be my like most anxiety-inducing day. I don't really know why, but they just are. um And I saw a little... Oh, so we my office in my apartment looks out over our backyard And we have tomatoes, which it's just so lovely to just be like, oh, and you know, this one. But today I saw a stupid little shit squirrel, offense to the squirrel, but take a a nearly perfect full beefsteak tomato, not a cherry tomato, and like just take it in its mouth and it like stood up on this little like, you know, fencing thing that we have so that things can climb. sat there and ate it for a little while, then kept it in its mouth while it climbed down. i was like, I'm impressed that you can do that. But I was just like, oh, man, you know, it was like nearly perfect. And my niece will eat six Roma tomatoes a day at least. So i was like, that could have been for Layla. Like, why did you take that? But oh it's nature, right? It's just I'm seeing it outside and
Speaker: the joys and the the heartbreak. So, um but yeah, mostly mostly doing okay. We finally got, I'm sure everyone, right? We finally got that like break from the extreme weather. And so I feel like I'm kind of feeling normal again, like not so post-apocalyptic worrying about how we're going to survive when the world is 110 degrees all the time. yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I think we might still have that weather. do we really? Colorado. Yeah. I haven't actually been outside today, so I can't speak for sure.
Speaker: But Tyler, do you know? Is it still hot out? I don't know. I haven't gotten outside either yet, but yesterday was rough. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. yeah So...
Speaker: Still thinking about where to go for the for the climate apocalypse. I said north. you know i read what the parable of the sower, and they go north, so that's what we do.
Speaker: There are caves not too far from here, like from St. Louis. And so I'm like, oh, that'll be – I mean, of course, everyone's going to go there. And I think you can only be in them for so long before you'll, like, die of carbon monoxide or something. But I'm like, those are always cool. So that's where I'll go. And I think carbon monoxide is, like, a very peaceful way to, like, die. It's like you just kind of feel sleepy and – but also – I went and saw Kenny Loggins, a free concert. What?
Speaker: He played Under the Arch this weekend here in St. Louis. And the weather was going to cancel it. But then, like, there were these crazy storms that came through, which is why we're cooler now. finally after like ah over a week of extreme heat warning and he so they like had to evacuate the whole area but then my friends and I were like oh cool okay it's still gonna go on so we went at 7 30 or whatever when he was gonna go on and it's just like it was so awesome we didn't get to see him but we could hear him and it's like a soundtrack of the every movie of the 80s it was just and this was like after his farewell tour so you know once in a lifetime it was pretty great Amazing.
Speaker: Wow. Yeah. That's how cool. Yeah. A silver lining. Yes. All right. So Tyler, Charlotte, you know, Tyler, well, you guys were introduced through a friend of former guest Mariel, right?
Speaker: So Yeah. Tyler, do you want to tell us about your interest? ah So my interest is South Broadway Press. We're a local poetry press based out of Denver, Colorado. We publish poetry in different forms. So we have anthologies, which is multiple poets submitted poems and we're publishing them all together. We have single author poetry books that we have published. I think we've got six that we're publishing this year. And then we also have an online journal. that folks can submit to and that we have poetry.
Speaker: And we also do different community events. So we have an open mic that we do every month and feature different local poets. We have workshops that we do and teach. We partner with different organizations like Lighthouse Writers Workshop and try to just get poetry in front of more people and get to share that. And that's really fun. I really like it.
Speaker: When did the press start and did you start working with the press at the beginning? Like, can you tell us a little bit about how that came about?
Speaker: Yeah. so the press was actually started by Bryce Miero, who introduced us and he started the press in 2018. I was not around then. i joined about a year ago and have been with the press since then. But I have gone to like the open mics that Bryce has put on for the last few years. So I have known of Bryce and have been around South Broadway and the events that they've done for a while and then wanted to get in on it.
Speaker: And so as soon as Bryce said that they were looking for some editors, I jumped on that opportunity. How excellent. And so you were clearly, you you are a poet yourself. And so how did you get into poetry?
Speaker: when did you When did that start? Yeah. So I got into poetry because of Andrea Gibson, we were talking about earlier. When I first started dating my wife, she had me go to an Andrea Gibson show like 13 years ago. and it was just magic. The poetry show was incredible. and I just kept continued to go to Andrea Gibson shows. I didn't actually start writing until the pandemic in 2020. I needed a hobby. And Andrea Gibson posted that their partner, Megan Fowley, was teaching a poetry series called Poems That Don't Suck. How to write poems that don't suck. um And so I joined that class and then I loved it. And so I took it another five times and joined like the communities that they have
Speaker: been able to grow through poems that don't suck and then was able to branch out into like the local Denver scene. And I started going to more open mics. I started getting my poems published. And then through that, Matt Bryce and South Broadway Press.
Speaker: And I have also worked with other another press as well called Beyond the Veil Press. They were local to Denver and then they moved to San Diego, but they're also a great press and they focus on mental health.
Speaker: and wellness. So were you a writer before jumping into poetry or was poetry your first entree? was brand new. I took a creative writing class in high school, you know, 20 years ago, but that was it. And then decided that I wanted to give it a try again. That's incredible.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm amazed that you've been doing it for what, six years and you have published, you are an editor. you just like went full force in, huh?
Speaker: Yes. I just fell in love with it. And like the community around it life-saving, not exaggerating. Like it's just such a great outlet. And then the people that are involved in it and Bryce is incredible. um And has like Bryce has been around the poetry scene forever since like, I think like the early 2000s. And he just cultivated this like really rich community of people. And it's just really cool to see it grow and change and morph into all of these things over the last few years.
Speaker: I do love that about poetry. Like, I don't know a ton about poetry. My dad loves poetry. And so, like, he's given me, like, Billy Collins books and, and you know, like of his poetry and things like that. And um so i I don't know a ton, but I do love that poetry feels like it it lends itself so much to that community of appreciators and writers in that there's the open mic or even just like people reading each other reading to each other or whatever different than people who read ah fiction novel i love to read and I might I do go to like silent book clubs here where we all just kind of go somewhere chit chat and then read
Speaker: silently, whatever we're reading, you know, your own book, but that's a different type of community than it seems like poetry lends itself to. Would you agree? And what do you think, what do you think that is? If so?
Speaker: Yeah, i I do agree. I think it is different. I don't think that I haven't seen very many, like, open mics where people are just reading their fiction books to each other, but maybe we should have more of that. yeah I know there are some other presses that do publish like short stories and stuff. And they've had a couple open mics with people that share those short stories. But I think with poetry, it' different. Like it is a very community thing. One of the poets that goes to the Snap Crackle Poetry open mic that South Broadway puts on wrote a poem called like, if you give a poet a party, about like a party that they went to with a bunch of poets where like one person read a poem and then somebody else was like, oh, that reminds me of this poem that I wrote. And then they read a poem and then another poet was like, oh, that reminds me of this poem. um
Speaker: And it's just such a cool art form. I think it's so different. Like i ah speaking of squirrels, I hate squirrels. I don't like squirrels. there I think they killed my family in a past life or something. We're just like, not cool. But yeah,
Speaker: I wrote a poem recently that's called like, I'm not a nature poet and I'm not a nature poet. I don't, I, I wish that I loved nature and could get in on it and the way that some other people can. and it just is not for me. But Bryce is very much like,
Speaker: I see him as a nature poet and I see like, he sees like the magic and all of like the everyday like wonders. And so it's just fun. Cause I read that poem about not being a nature poet in front of a bunch of like poets that like are nature poets. And it's can be like so different. And the experience that we all have is different. I think like poetry is such a like Megan Fowley said, like poetry is like saying the most and the least amount of words.
Speaker: And she said that in her class. I don't know she originally said that, but And it is, it's like, how much can you fit into this short amount of space? I think it like lends itself to be shared and it lends itself to be easily digestible or at least not, not necessarily easily digestible, but it like like is in a form that is easy to share. Right. Because you can memorize it is really cool your favorite poem or your own poem. Like it's even something that you can recite from memory to your point of like, oh, that reminds me of, that reminds me of. It's like, it's it's quick to share, but to your also to your point, like it's not easily digestible. There's so much packed in, but it is quick to share that then it like has so much to unpack.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And some of it is like easily digestible and some of it is a lot more dense. So like some of them you do have to sit and like really like read and like analyze and like think about. And then some poems are just like fun and like easy. And that's just a different, don't know. I think it's just a fun vehicle to like share things.
Speaker: Yeah, there is such a range. And I think that kind of what you were saying, like, you know, sometimes sometimes I used to think of poetry as the the poems that I couldn't understand or that I wasn't sure, like, is this supposed to make sense and I just don't get it? or i mean, and I was an English major too, so that's, you know, it's especially embarrassing. but um But then I took a ah like a poetry class over the summer at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Patty, you were there at a different –
Speaker: um Actually, yours was like what? It was like flash fiction, which is very poetic. um But I think it was that particular workshop when I realized like poetry is really cool. You don't always have to understand it. Sometimes it's just fun interesting.
Speaker: like it kind of just creates, I always thought like from that class on that it seems like the most um kind of like almost true to life form of literature because you can really just kind of like create an image or a moment or an emotion in a way that you can't in other types of literature.
Speaker: think so. And it's so about the words that are chosen because I'm thinking about when I read a novel, yes, it paints a picture or it puts me in a place.
Speaker: And those words are important. But because there are so few of them, it's like, ooh, why did you choose that versus that? You know, and like figuring out, it's like being so particular about every little thing.
Speaker: bit because there's so little of it that it all really has to like carry a lot of weight and even you know what words you don't include I like the idea though of like um poems that don't suck because I do think growing up especially you're exposed to poetry and sometimes it can feel Charlotte like you said like do do I is it just me do I not understand that or boring or whatever, but it's like, so anybody can be, can write poetry in, in the way that it's like, oh, it just rhymes, you know? No. Okay. It doesn't have to, but that to think about poetry in a different way of like, okay, let's, how, how do we use this vehicle to write? Like what is poetry and revisiting that? And then like, how do we not, how do we write some that don't suck?
Speaker: Yeah, I think too, like part of that, the poems that don't suck was like, you have to write a sucky draft. Like everybody writes sucky poems. Everybody does it. And then like, how do you turn it into something that doesn't suck from there? So like being brave enough to write something that sucks so that you can change it. And I think the community aspect of poetry is so interesting too. Like the editing, I don't know. I think a poem, to make a poem really great, like you have to have multiple eyes on it. Like you have to have people read it. You've got to get feedback.
Speaker: And you can't, I think poetry especially is ah a form of writing. you just really can't write in a bubble. So do you still like engage with that particular group or other groups? Like what's your process from that first draft, or I guess even before that first draft for writing a poem?
Speaker: Yeah, I think um i do still talk to a lot of the people from the poems that don't suck. I have my, my, one of my, favorite editors lives in France and took the class. And so we'll send each other poems back and forth and comment on them. um I think, like I said, I think it is brave to like write, to put something on a blank page, knowing it's probably not going to be great when it first comes out, but I do think that's really brave. And I do try to meet with some friends to do like co-writing together and try to like just share at the open mics and get feedback or, or just share and like, see how sometimes that is kind of a litmus test too, is they go to the open mic and you share a poem and then nobody laughs at the line that you thought was really funny. And so then you got to go back, tweak it or say like, I wonder why that didn't work. And, um, just keep like going at it Sometimes it's just a bad crowd that is not funny. That's kind of how I test to see if people are funny. if they laugh at the right spots of my poems. And I do, I tell them that that was the test when they don't, I don't tell them. I go and try. make Exactly. We're not, well, you're not as funny as I am.
Speaker: okay But I think it is just fun like that because you do get real-time feedback when you share. whether it's somebody really snapping or you can tell that they're really enjoying a line or it's quiet when do you think that like it should have been funny or like should have gotten a reaction. So it is really fun. And then there is so like there's a couple different poetry communities. There's the open mics that I go to. And then there's also slam poetry, which is like competitive poetry. So we've got like a Denver slam team and they do like specific slam events.
Speaker: which is really cool and can be really fun to go watch. I am not a slam poet. I have not competed in poetry, but I think it's a fun, a different way to share it also. Because that's like performance, right? Like that's probably just as much, if not like 50-50 with the writing itself.
Speaker: Maybe not 50-50. Yep, you're being judged on your performance of the poem as well as like the content of the poems, like how well you're delivering it. And it's really fun. They just get like audience members to be the judges.
Speaker: They score you in real time. It sounds terrifying to me, but it is really cool. It's really fun to watch. that would be amazing to just to watch, solely to watch. Yeah. yeah That reminds me of like The Moth, storytelling without a script and it's amateurs. But they similarly, like they pick people from the audience to be the judge judging teams and then they give their scores. And I'm always like, they don't want to see the scores. It just makes me... Everybody did so good. That person didn't. And so how do we tell them that without giving them a, you know, two? Right. How do we make them want to come back next time? Right. Because it might be their very first draft of that story.
Speaker: It also reminds me, Charlotte, of that. I don't know if you remember, but Stephanie and Charlie were in town visiting when you were still living in Chicago. And I was too. that's my brother and sister-in-law.
Speaker: And you performed, it was comedy, but it was like something you had written. and I think the topic was periods. Oh, probably. I love to talk about periods. But think the topic of everybody's was period. Oh, oh yes. That is right.
Speaker: that is right That is right. Yeah, because I used to do a lot of, it was like the live storytelling stuff. I mean, i not a lot. I did some of it. And so that was like a series of of people talking about different topics.
Speaker: I think it was different topics each time, and that time it happened to be periods. Yeah, so I've done other other of that kind of ah stuff. And it's interesting because it has reading aloud overlap with But it's ah maybe a little bit more like, do you have a good story to tell versus like how you've written it? At least that was my impression of it.
Speaker: Yeah, but still with that, like, if you phrase this in a certain way, it'll sound much funnier or interesting than exactly if you just said it that other way. just feels kind of like the the tweaking or or figuring out for a live audience, how are they going to react versus somebody who's...
Speaker: who's reading because Charlotte's also a novelist and so it's interesting to think about that too of like it it reminds me of sorry all over the place but so I used to do marathons and so we were really slow runners my group that we ran with obviously we were all slow because we were all together so we were slow runners and one of our friends was really fast and he was like no I mean you guys I can't even imagine running for as long as you do like That's, that's really endurance. You know, they're both hard in their own ways is all I'm saying. And that it's like, how do you flesh this out and tell it and and then with poetry. So I don't know. I don't know that there's anything in there. It's just the thoughts that were coming through my head.
Speaker: Novels is an endurance sport. poet Poetry is a... A sprint. Yeah. But sometimes an endurance sport. Yeah. No, just doing that endurance sport fast. I don't know. It's both. yeah Tyler, make make some sense of it for us.
Speaker: I think sometimes I'll have like 12 drafts of a poem and it is kind of an endurance sport or like I'll start writing a poem and I'll be like, this is the poem I need to write. And I just can't get anywhere with it. And then two years later, I'll pull it up and be like, oh,
Speaker: I think this is where I need to go with it. Or like, there's just something that like unlocks the time or like having a different person look at it or just giving it space. So I have some poems from a couple years ago that like, maybe I'll touch and maybe we'll become some of my favorite poems. And like, maybe I'll just never look at again or we'll write a different version of it later.
Speaker: and then, yeah, the editing process, like I think it's rare when like a poem comes out like fully done. in one in the first go. Sometimes it happens. And then I feel like the most powerful human who exists. But most of the time, doesn't happen.
Speaker: but That type of thing has happened to me like once, but it when it happens or and it maybe just like once where then i actually got some like it published and all that but but then you start thinking like oh this is easy and then you keep going you're like no this is not easy that was just a fluke or that was just you just got to keep going in order to have that happen like more than once and you feel like oh my gosh I'm so gifted like no why did I think this was ever hard yeah and then you're like oh my god so hard
Speaker: but fun. So Tyler, you mentioned the editing process and you are an editor. So do you edit people's poetry books? And how how do you find that process to be editing someone else's work?
Speaker: I love editing for other people. i just love seeing like what people are doing and their voice and like how to help them do it better or like how to help them push them in that direction more like you're doing this thing like how can we really hone in on what you're doing and blow it up and make it just the best it can be so separate from like South Broadway Press I do offer like editing services for like people can give me poems to edit or like a manuscript to edit and it's so fun it's really fun because I get to see people with different voices than me or people that are nature poets that were like that have different stories or like different styles. And it's so fun. I think like for me, one of the most fun parts of writing my own poetry and also like engaging in editing, either having people edit my stuff or editing other people's stuff, is defending all of your choices. To your point earlier, what word am I using? Is this the best word? Is this the best description? Is this the best metaphor? Yeah. Is this like the right line break? Or like, if I do a line break here instead, does it alter the meaning? Does it like add more tension? And I love asking people like, what, what why did you do that? Or why this word? And like, what if it was ah this other word? Or like, how would that change the meaning of this? Or how would this like push what you're trying to say more or different?
Speaker: And one of the things I love too about like reading poetry, like page poetry is everything matters. So the way it is laid out on the page matters, like where your line breaks are matters. The title matters. Like all of those things are so important in communicating what you're trying to communicate. So the way the poem is on the page should reflect like the content of the poem. So if I'm writing, i have a poem called a Girl Walks Into the Closet or something. I don't remember. But anyway, so it's a poem about coming out. and being queer. And so the poem is like very rigid. It is like justified. So it like fits, like it looks like a closet. And so like, that's pushing what I'm trying to say because like the writing itself is constrained. And I'm talking about but like being constrained in this, trying to come out and like not being able to, or like somebody might write a poem that jumps all over the place. And they're like talking about ADHD something. And so the words could be in different places and it might be a little bit harder to follow, but it shows, it kind of like shows what they're talking about. So like the way something is laid out on a page matters just as much as what you're talking about. And I love unlocking that and playing with it and seeing like what that looks like.
Speaker: And that's really fun. And then with like editing for the press, a lot of the editing is like choosing what we publish and So right now we actually have submissions open for our online journal. So people are submitting their poems and then all of the editors are going through and reading the submissions and deciding what is going to be the best fit for us.
Speaker: And then once we have that narrowed down, we'll take a look at the poems and kind of edit a little bit just to make sure it's all right when we put it up on the on the website.
Speaker: But when people submit, like it should be ready to go. Like they should have already gone through the editing process. They should be more or less like ready to get published. How often do you publish that online journal?
Speaker: It depends this year We're only doing it once because we are publishing. We're releasing five or six books this year. So we've got kind of a lot we're doing with that. But usually we try to do like two or three times a year to get the online journal. up so that we've got more poems circulating.
Speaker: I was looking at your, the mission statement for South Broadway Press. So I imagine that comes into play when you're choosing what to put in either the journal or what to publish. Like, does it align?
Speaker: Is that something that matters a lot to you? yeah it does matter. We do want to publish poems that like align with our mission and we want to publish poems that align with, like sometimes we'll have a specific theme for our call or for submissions. So we are looking to see like, are they in the theme? Like, are they publishing or are they submitting what we're asking them to?
Speaker: would say in general, we like to say we publish weird, gorgeous and revolutionary poems. And that's kind of what we're looking for. And I love that people can kind of interpret that as they want to. And, It's really cool to see what we get. Now, does it have to be all three of those things? Weird, gorgeous, and revolutionary?
Speaker: I think it can be like any of those things, any combination of those things. I feel like there's a lot of overlaps of things that are revolutionary probably beautiful and probably weird and, you know,
Speaker: it goes They go together very well. So I want to read anything described that way. Yeah. And then for the books that you publish, so you said five or six this this year, which sounds like it's more than what you guys generally do in a year. How do you determine how many you're going publish and which ones you're going to publish.
Speaker: If there's a set number, I'm sure that people kind of submit manuscript or do you guys request from certain authors? Yeah. So we request submissions for the manuscript. So last year we had a contest for manuscripts. It was right before I joined and through the submission process, we read through them, Bryce read through them and kind of like picked ones that we felt would be a good fit for our press and then or editing them and publishing them. We also have a contest right now, Crown De Rosa book prize contest through South Broadway Press. And that is for BIPOC poets to submit to. So we had our first round of submissions, all of the editors kind of read through. we had people submit just like 20 pages of their manuscript instead of the whole thing to go through initially. We read through it and decided who's going to move on to the next rounds. And ultimately, we have a guest editor, Asia Fox, who is the Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado. And she's going to be picking the top poet book that we're going to end up publishing for this prize.
Speaker: Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. her Do you, like, since, you know, it's, I think that if the press has been around, what, now, seven years?
Speaker: Is that right? think 2019. So have you? 2016. 2016? Okay. twenty eighteen so around eight years. So a good amount of time now. Have you found that people have really been, you know, kind of finding out about you, getting excited, submitting more, engaging with your events? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: i think like with a the open mic that we do, we see a lot of the same people, like there is like a core group of folks that come to every single one. and then we do get new folks almost every single time. which is really cool. And a lot of them do come back more than once, which is really neat.
Speaker: Our submissions are, i think people are seeing them more. We are getting more and more submissions with every open call we have, which is really cool. It is really fun to see. I think looking through submissions, there are a lot of local Denver folks that do submit because they are seeing us, they're going to our events, they're in our friend groups, all of that good stuff. But then We are seeing a ton of people that I don't recognize their names, which is so cool.
Speaker: I don't know what they're doing. We've got ah a newsletter that we send out. We've got a fairly good following on like Instagram and socials. We're always trying to expand that so that we can publish more and do more with the press.
Speaker: We just opened submissions for our online journal just over a week ago. And I think we already have like 120 submissions so far when I looked this morning, which is wow really cool. But I think it's a lot more than we've ever gotten this fast. So I'm really excited to see like where we grow and and what poets we get to meet. And the books that we're publishing this year, there's a few folks that are from Denver, but then we've got somebody in Washington state that we just published and some other folks around the country, which is really cool.
Speaker: Would you say that poetry is, don't know, maybe especially since the pandemic, because that's kind of what got you into writing it, but is it having like a, I don't want to say like a resurgence in popularity. Poetry's been around like a really, really long time. Yeah.
Speaker: So it's kind of weird to be like, ah oh, it's popular now, but it's it's quite old. It's always been popular. But yeah, any like trends you're seeing with that?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's become more accessible over the last like 25-ish years based on button poetry. If you've heard of them, they do a lot of like videos of poetry. So they do a lot of like There's so many like YouTube videos from Button Poetry of Poets and they've been doing that, I think since like the early two thousand where they, I don't know for sure, but I think like that having videos online um and having people like see poetry in a different way than maybe they saw in school, reading like Walt Whitman or E.E. Cummings or whatever, it's it's different to see like contemporary artists talking about contemporary events and like
Speaker: political things happening right now. And like, I think that doing it in video format with poets that are really good at performing is just such a cool way for like anybody to be able to like engage in this art form or to like see it in a way that feels more accessible than maybe having to read something forced on you in high school, which I think is a lot of people's first and only engagement in poetry. So it's really cool to see it.
Speaker: kind of be more widespread now. I have a question about that. So it made me think about Amanda Gorman and her reading of her own poetry at the inauguration. And is that like, it did we always have poets at the inaugurations? Or is that kind of like, ah oh, hey, you get to choose who you want to have.
Speaker: do you guys know, like historically? Because I'm like, that's kind of cool to be like, not only are we going to have a poet, It's also going to be like a young person of color that really puts it kind of front and center of poetry as important and also something so different than, again, like you were saying, the kind of older stuffier poetry, which great too, but that that people associate with poetry.
Speaker: I don't know. I just did a quick Google because I was curious and it said that No, having a poet is not a longstanding tradition. There's only been six poets to ever recite work at presidential inaugurations beginning in 1961. So.
Speaker: okay Okay. Interesting. It did feel new and right, new and fresh and interesting. So I guess that makes sense if it's not common. Oh, Maya Angelou at Bill Clinton's. Oh, all right.
Speaker: That's cool. Sorry. And then Robert Frost would at JFK's. That's kind of cool. Yeah. But Clinton had one at each of his inaugurations. so Oh, so did so did Obama. Interesting.
Speaker: Okay. That's very cool. yeah That is really cool. I also, so i like a year ago started because i'm a therapist, I started this poetry therapy training program to it's basically like how to use poetry in therapy. And it's funny that I started doing that because I don't write poetry and don't fully understand it. But part of it was I wanted to get to know poetry more. And it is just a very different way of using
Speaker: poems because there's a lot of poems you couldn't use in poetry therapy because they would be like not comforting or might just not be therapeutic. And then there are plenty that that are.
Speaker: So kind of like putting that out there too as something like, have you ever, i don't know, had that, I don't know if like anybody who does poetry therapy who,
Speaker: comes to your events or who you know, or like kind of like using poems in sort of like a different, almost like modality or a way of using the poems?
Speaker: Yeah. So one of our other editors at South Broadway Press, Deborah Keene, is actually a therapist and writes a lot about therapy and like being a therapist and has put together a manuscript that will hopefully get published later.
Speaker: at some point, but just about like her experiences as a therapist and her poems are incredible. But I think there is a lot of things we can use poetry for. i used to be, i used to work in mental health and I worked at a hospital diversion program for kids and teenagers. So kids and teenagers that were suicidal. in this locked facility and I would run groups and I shared before I even was a poet, before I had write written my own poetry, i would share Andrea Gibson poetry and like do a a workshop around it and have them write their own poems. And it was so cool. And just like seeing like the creative freedom around getting to share your story or i mean even just personally, like my first book, Love Me Louder,
Speaker: was like about growing up in a not great situation, but just getting to like tell my story the way I wanted to tell it and the way that like I wanted to reclaim it was just really cool. And I love that poetry lets people do that.
Speaker: is something that people can use to like reclaim their own stories and share. what they want to share, how they want to share it. Yeah, you can, like even in the diversion kind of setting where it's like a group and maybe there's just a very limited amount of time, limited amount of energy that somebody can even put towards something that it's, like you can make it as short or as long as you want. You can put, do what you want with the form like you were saying too it could like reflect what you're feeling inside yeah it's it's pretty cool yeah that's that's awesome i can't wait to i hope that you do publish um deborah keen's book too so i'd be interested in that and in checking out your book
Speaker: Because Charlotte, is it that for poetry therapy, that is it both reading an existing poem and kind of like d dissecting – not dissecting it – or – and also being able to write poetry about their situation? or yeah You basically bring in a poem and then you have prompts based on the poem. So it could be like, this poem is about – this topic, like use this prompt to explore your own relationship with the topic or journal if you don't want to write a poem, just somehow like kind of
Speaker: put that down. And what I've found so far is that it just brings up a lot of things that the person was not expecting even. So where that I'm, you know, there's people who I see for therapy who then do the group and they're maybe talking about things that they, they wouldn't normally talk about even in a one-on-one setting.
Speaker: So it's pretty fascinating the kinds of things that can come up. Right. The emotion that it elicits. Yeah. It's much, it's like music in that way. Like, you know, you're like, oh yeah, I like this song. And then when you like sit with it, it's like, oh, wow.
Speaker: I like this song. And these are all the feelings that come along with it that I'm not even conscious of. Sometimes I'll sit down to write a poem and I'll think it's about one thing. and then when I'm done, I'm like, oh, that was not about that thing I thought it was. And it just like opens up whatever my brain needed to focus on.
Speaker: Yeah. It's like so some other part of you had an agenda item that was like, wait, let me get in there. Thank you for sitting down to write. I'm ready. That has happened where I've written something and then maybe not even right after, but much later, I'm like, oh, oh, that's what I was writing about.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah, it's Tyler was, like as you were mentioning, I started this two years ago, but I wasn't ready to finish it or I didn't know where I needed to go with it until that time later. It's it's cool how our brain is just constantly like working things out and even without us knowing it.
Speaker: um But speaking of working, what homework assignment do you have for us so that we can engage with your interest? Yeah, so I pulled up on the South Broadway website all of our 2026 Pushcart Prize nominations. So as the press, we get to submit our nominations to like Pushcart Prize or Best of the Net, which we think are like some of the the best poems that we've published. And I think there's like six of them. So going to send you the link to that website and then you can take a look at the poems that we have nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Speaker: yay thank you that's so good i'm excited to to read some poetry and i'm about to be with my dad for a week so i'm excited too because i'll i'll share it with him because i know i mean he just he loves poetry and i love it's so fun like there are certain things like that you can tell he just loves so so much like music certain songs and certain like books or whatever like as he's talking about it he like closes his eyes. So because you could just like tell that he's like fully immersed in like the feelings of it. And it's always like, I'm like, Oh, this is gonna be good. Whatever's coming out. He's got big feelings on it. So I'll share these with him. I think there's poetry for everyone. Like I think that like, some people don't feel like they're good at poetry or like understand poetry. But I think there's poetry for everybody. There is like dense poems that
Speaker: can be hard to get into. There's also poetry, like Andrea Gibson is really good at like in their documentary, they even joke about only knowing like 50 words or something like their poetry is really accessible because they don't always use like fancy words or like try to outsmart their readers or whatever. Like a lot of those poems, I think there is a poetry for everybody that wants it. And like, you can get that like really, and I think all of it can be really impactful and powerful and emotional. whether it is very dense or whether it is like written out in more plain language. Like I think that there is something for everybody and it is just as useful, powerful, empowering, no matter what what format comes in.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Which is such a beautiful part of clearly the mission or I don't know. I didn't read the mission statement, so I don't know that it's officially, but South Broadway press is like wanting to bring more poetry, different types of poetry and to more people. So it's like, yeah, that's, that's incredible.
Speaker: Make it accessible, make people or help people find the poetry that is their poetry. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And for anybody who's listening, i would say check out the mission. i do I did really enjoy it. And and you also reference John Lewis and getting in good trouble with in the mission. So think that aligns with.
Speaker: a lot of, you know, what Patty and I have talked about before with this podcast too, is we want people to be able to indulge in their interests, not necessarily be like just efficient machines, but kind of get creative, get weird. And hopefully that's revolutionary or And stay gorgeous while doing it. Yeah. And weird. Yes. um I am curious.
Speaker: Just one last question for you, Tyler and Charlotte. I don't know if you have any others. You mentioned or it was mentioned in your bio something about coffee. Like you're too pretty for. pretty for plain coffee. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So what is your favorite? If you were to, what, what would you, what's your favorite coffee drink? Oh, good question. i i don't My body doesn't love coffee anymore, so I don't always drink coffee, but I love like any of the like seasonal flavors. I always love doing whatever seasonal flavors coffee shops have, and matcha is my new go-to. So yeah, and yeah, Too Pretty for Plain Coffee is the title of my book, and I got it because my friend I was visiting my friend And I was getting ready. I was getting ready. I was doing my hair and I was getting really frustrated that I was taking so long to get ready because I really wanted to go get coffee. and was like, I can just make coffee. And I said, no, I'm too pretty for playing coffee. um That's kind of the vibe of the book. Oh, I love that.
Speaker: This should not only be seen by Mr. Coffee make and Mr. Pot. Exactly. Oh. um I recently had an ube like espresso and partially just because I saw something that was like purple and I was like, what's that? And so it was like an ube foam topper. um And then I thought I didn't like matcha and I still might not, but I was at a friend's house over the weekend and they had made some Filipino desserts and one of them was matcha like sticky rice things.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, I mean, it was like just the right amount of matcha. It was so good. And it was so green. I was like, oh, this is really pretty and fun to eat. Any others for you, Charlotte?
Speaker: o Nothing as good as that. i think that ah that's the important, important question, because to me, coffee is like the most important thing. So that title of your book really gives a vibe that says, i got to read this. hey ever Awesome. Well, Tyler, thank you so much for your time and for all of the beautiful work that you're putting out into the world.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me on here. It so good to meet both of you. too. So good to meet you. Really excited to read all these poems. Thank you so much for the great assignment.
Speaker: You're welcome. Anytime. And stay interesting. And stay interested. by
Speaker: Thanks for listening to today's episode. Please subscribe, comment, and like the podcast. Follow us on Blue Sky Social at CanWeInterestYouIn. Send us an email at CanWeInterestYouIn at gmail.com.
Speaker: And join us next time.
