an interview with Lori Cayer

CV2: As Stealing Mercury is your first book-length collection, did you find the experience of writing, developing, and seeking publication of your manuscript to be true to your expectations?

Lori Cayer: I did but I feel I have had a bit of an advantage over many first-time authors in the sense that my other experiences in the writing world have brought me up close to the reality of publishing. It’s been a decades-long cautionary tale for the new writer: when they say it’s not necessarily you or your writing, it’s true. I’ve volunteered variously as a poetry editor with a literary journal and a chapbook press, and served as a juror for a variety of competitions so I have a sense of what goes on at both ends of the dialogue. Now, I can send out my work with as much hope, desperation, and bravado as the next unknown poet, but when it comes back to my mailbox in my own envelope, I can see the whole range of responsibilities and concerns in front of the hapless editor who had a four-foot stack of material to read and the option to choose only three submissions from it.

I also have a number of friends and acquaintances in various aspects of small publishing. My husband is a publisher. So again, I’ve gleaned a lot of information about how to approach the part-time job of attempting to get published without wasting a lot of time making unnecessary mistakes. Does anyone want a perfect nugget of advice? Find out the submission guidelines in general and then for each publishing house or journal—they are as different as cats. Then follow the guidelines.

CV2: What were your thoughts on the actual editing process?

LC: As to the editing process, I had a fantastic editor in Catherine Hunter, whose diligence with my work has made me much more conscientious about the impact of the tiny detail, despite my conviction on entering the process that I was already pretty good at that. The aspect of the editing experience I was not expecting and found to be an awe-inspiring surprise was how she finessed yet one more level of revision out of the poems, sometimes just a line break or word choice, that helped put a spit-polish on the book. Then there were the poems that were finished, had even been recognized publicly in some way, that she agitated gently until I had them resettled into far better examples of my own ability.

CV2: As your book was being produced, were there any surprises—good or bad— you encountered that you had not expected?

LC: My publisher gave me the leeway to choose my own cover art—not the cover design, but the image. That was a wonderful gift I’m not sure I would want again. It is a writer’s dream to have some or all the say in their cover art, but for me it turned out to be stressful. Suddenly the book’s face, its entire presentation to the world (by which I mean the buying public) was my responsibility. It made me acutely aware I knew nothing about marketing, advertising, publishing trends, graphic art or photography. I knew I wanted something to which I responded artistically and emotionally, but what, how? After my original idea (a woman alone on an urban rooftop looking precariously like she were about to fall or fly away) came out altogether wrong, I had to rethink the whole thing. My niece/photographer and I came up with the image of the girl (from the original photo shoot and who is, in fact, standing on a very windy rooftop of an old university building) superimposed over an image of paint peeling off a rusting metal surface. Of course I’d had the option to just choose an image already created, but carte blanche to a creative person is hard to resist. It turns out a photo shoot is not a straightforward task like running to the store for something you need; it’s more like planning a small wedding.