About the editors
Jeff Miller and Jamie Felton started this project in 2012. It has been sporadic and sometimes regular. Our goal is to publish poets whose poetry seems to be seeking and yearning towards something expansive and beyond the grasp of reason and explanation. Our inspiration arose after reading an essay written by the poet Peter O'Leary on Apocalypticism in poetry. We like to read poetry about things coming together while simultaneously falling apart. Anything that approaches infinity, yet is only three words long, is something we'd like. If the space between your words says more than words could ever say, that's good too. We don't care whether or not you have an MFA or have been published before. Really.
The name Lightning'd Press comes from Ronald Johnson's "Last Poem", published in To Do as Adam Did and The Shrubberies. In his editorial afterword in The Shrubberies, Peter O'Leary says:
"Last Poem" appeared in To Do as Adam Did: Selected Poems of Ronald Johnson,
which I edited. I include it again for its sense of completion and also because I
discovered in looking through the final notebook that what RJ had typed as
"lightning'd" was actually supposed to be "lightning's."
Here is the To Do as Adam Did Version:
shambles this way
antipodean being
come full circle
sparks in darkness
lightning'd eternal return
flipped the ecliptic
And the version from The Shrubberies:
shambles this way
antipodean being
come full circle
sparks in darkness
lightning's eternal return
flipped the ecliptic
For us, the tension created by the line "lightning'd eternal return", as opposed to the more straight forward "lightning's eternal return", and the fact of it being a mistake, speaks to aspects of our understanding of Apocalypticism in form as well as content.
Because one of us is a barista and one of us waits tables, we don't have much to offer in the way of a regular publishing schedule, and when you submit, we may not be able to get back to you in a timely fashion. We hope that that means people who submit really want to be a part of what we're doing. Maybe you're wondering why you should want to be a part of this. We aren't going to sell you on it. Either it's something you want or it's not. We won't be offended if it's not. We are also committed to offering this journal for free because we believe that not everything can be bought and sold.
Neither of us like the way the publishing industry runs. We don't like how trends in academia and within publishing create the poetry that gets seen. We don't like to sell things. We like to read and write poetry that is alive and that is purely created without intention to please an audience or to make money or to garner some kind of fame or reputation. If this is you, please check out our submission page for guideline and instructions.