Ursula Vaira founded Leaf Press in 2001 as a poetry
chapbook publisher. Since 2007 she has been publishing trade poetry while
continuing the chapbook tradition and the weekly on-line Monday’s Poem.
"Poetry,
paddling and west-coast wilderness camping are my passions, and they show in my
writing (And See What Happens, Caitlin Press) and in the works
I choose for Leaf's list. This year I am so proud to have published
Poems for Planet Earth,
a round-up of poems from readers at internationally renowned Planet Earth
Poetry in Victoria BC; Surge Narrows by Emilia
Nielsen, in which 'words rush like cold, clean water
over the skin' (Anne Simpson); milk tooth bane bone by Daniela Elza, 'an open armature for wonder' (David Abram); and Dark Matter by Leanne
McIntosh, an invitation to 'listen, listen as though the moon/has just pressed
her face/against ours.'
Publishing is not for the easily frightened. The hours
are long. The money is spare. The
printing bills come due. Invoice payments arrive late. Contracts are signed
long before the granting agencies approve or reject funding
applications. No one lasts long in the biz without a passion for the work.
But the rewards! Money aside. Glory aside. But being
able to work so intimately with these amazing poets, to spend hours and hours
inside their words during the editing and design and typesetting until I know
nearly every word by heart--and then to sit in an audience during the book
launch, watching the effect of the poet's words play on each face ... I don't
know, it just does it for me.
