Three fantastic new interns have joined the Press this summer—remotely, from around the country—and it’s our pleasure to introduce you to each of them here. We’ll share their 60-second Q&As every #MeettheInternMonday in the coming weeks, so check back!
P.S. Interested in an internship with us in Spring 2023? Applications are due November 1. Learn more.
Meet Gabi
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
G: One of the best parts of this internship is that I can work with every department at CCP, expanding my experience in production and design while also broaching completely new subjects and assignments. The staff is very warm and welcoming, each person dedicated to publishing poetry that will touch readers and inspire them. Publishing is not only making a book, but making that book have a life of its own that helps others better understand the world and themselves. Knowing that I’m one of the people to make this possible has been extremely humbling and rewarding.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
G: I’m really excited for Taneum Bambrick’s second book, Intimacies, Received. I had the wonderful pleasure of befriending Taneum in 2020 and learning from her work how to see beauty in the mundane, the overwhelming power of “thingness,” and why existing in a changing body is so complicated. This second book will have the same powerhouse language as her first book, Vantage, but focus more on the body itself and its connections to the world. I couldn’t be happier to help shepherd this book into the world while working at CCP.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
G: Ever since reading Last Psalm at Sea Level, I’ve been obsessed with Meg Day’s writing. Day has a way of seeing that shakes the page yet offers tender comfort through dynamic images. I feel this with “Another Night at Sea Level” where Day explains that “Lately, the sky is a ceiling / I wake to: broad & blank / & stubborn, stiff at the edges / like a fever cloth wrung out / & gone cold in the night, damp / with the wicking of latent ache.” The unfolding image sends shivers up my spine in the best way.
Meet Johanna
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
J: I love that I get to participate in every step of creating a book. So much goes into how a book comes to be, from acquisition to marketing to design; it’s a privilege to be a part of those stages. Additionally, everyone at the press is so welcoming and eager to help. Whenever I am interested in a specific aspect of the press, I feel comfortable and excited approaching the staff to learn more. Being in a space where poetry is consistently appreciated and prioritized is, in my opinion, always something worthy of excitement.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
J: I am really excited about Intimacies, Received by Taneum Bambrick. This collection captivated me from the moment I started reading, its poems absorbing me and inviting me into the landscape she crafts through mindful and purposeful imagery. I am excited about this title because it spoke to me on both a personal level and one of literary admiration, as it is a complex exploration of trauma that is refreshingly vulnerable and vividly powerful.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
J: “In the dream where I am an island, I grow green with hope.” –Jericho Brown
Meet Apollo
CCP: What’s your favorite aspect of the intern experience at Copper Canyon Press so far?
A: Poetry is the most important thing in my life. Full stop. And to be able to work on poetry with people who care about it as much as I do, to devote time to every face of poetry, from how it’s presented to the public to italicizing a particular comma, is paradise. At the press I try to make all my actions an expression of praise to the work of writing. It’s so hard to live a life in pursuit of praise and truth. But this is a little bit of it.
CCP: Please tell us about a forthcoming Copper Canyon title you’re excited about, and why.
A: I’m incredibly excited about Things I Didn’t Do With This Body, by Amanda Gunn. Reading the book while I work on projects for it has been one of those experiences where you think… “I want to stay alive, if only to create something as good as this.” I want to sit with the way Gunn sees the world forever. Her technical ability to distribute syntax across the landscape of line in a momentous, compelling way fills me with genuine awe. Reading this book feels like prayer, testament, and proclamation all at once: to memory, to lineage, to survival.
CCP: Please give us a line from a poem that you can’t get out of your head.
A: Death and what comes out of it has always been one of my biggest fixations. Not just physical death of the body, but how we envision and concretize transition from one state to another, and how the variety of figurative and literal ghosts we leave behind haunt us. When I read this line it hit a bell in my head that won’t stop ringing. “What I had once // mistaken for death / was, instead, a door.” (Rachel McKibbens)