Having braved the masses at AWP 2012, we’re back in Ames, Iowa working hard to get together our next issue to release. Thank you everyone who stopped by our table….we’ll see you next year!

Andrew and Lindsay at the table

Rhett Trull is the editor and founder of Cave Wall, a biannual print journal out of Greensboro, North Carolina. Flyway blogger Andrew Payton got the chance to ask Ms. Trull a few questions about her work.

Andrew Payton: What is the story behind Cave Wall? How did it start? What was the driving force?

Rhett Trull: My husband Jeff and I started Cave Wall five years ago in order to celebrate poems we love. I’ve been a collector of favorite poems my whole life and for years have kept notebooks and files of them, returning to them often. Also, I love literary journals. I’ve subscribed to many over the years and always wanted to start my own. When I met Jeff, someone else who appreciates journals and poetry, the timing was right and Cave Wall was born. Maybe it sounds kind of cheesy, but the driving force is love. When a poem excites me I want to shout it out to the whole world; I want everyone to experience it. Cave Wall is a way to try to share those poems with, if not the whole world, at least an enthusiastic, appreciative group of readers.

AP: Would you say that you have a particular aesthetic as an editor? What do you look for in a poem or poet?

RT: Whatever my editorial aesthetic is remains somewhat of a mystery to me, and I like it that way. My tastes in poetry are ever-changing. I try to be open to all styles, as do Jeff and our other main Cave Wall reader, Michael Boccardo. We like poems that are long, short, lyric, narrative, funny, sad, and everything in between, as long as they move us. I guess that’s what I’m looking for when I read through a stack of submissions: I want a poem to leave me somewhere different than it finds me. I want to be changed by a poem. Also, I’m looking for a voice, one that engages my attention in a way that makes me forget everything else but this poem in this moment.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed as I put together these issues is how each one ends up developing its own aesthetic; certain themes emerge and are echoed. Sometimes, at the end of a reading period, when we’re trying to figure out which poem out of twenty worthy poems gets the last slot in an issue, one of the deciding factors becomes which poem fits best with the others we’ve gathered.

AP: Your first collection of poetry, The Real Warnings, was published in 2009 by Anhinga Press. How does being a poet yourself inspire your work as an editor? Where do these two roles intersect?

RT: I think the main intersection between editing and writing, at least for me, has to do with an exchange of energy. Getting to spend the majority of my time bouncing between two types of work about which I’m passionate is a luxury I try not to take for granted. If the work on one gets frustrating, I turn to the other and am refreshed, renewed. Certainly, working on Cave Wall has improved my writing, as does any time spent reading and studying good poetry. Plus, spending time with poetry I love makes me a happier person, fills me with gratitude, and that good energy gets carried over into all other parts of my life. As for how being a poet might inspire my work as an editor, well, it helps me appreciate how much work goes into each line, each word, of each poem. I hope this appreciation comes out in my responses to submissions. We receive many strong poems and have room to publish just a few, but I try whenever possible to respond personally to those we don’t accept, pointing out something I liked about the poems, letting the poet know that I value the time I spent with their work.

AP: As I’ve said, I found the most recent issue of Cave Wall superb. As the magazine is not affiliated with a university, like many seem to be these days, how do you promote Cave Wall? Who are most of your readers? And do you hope to expand that base of readers?

RT: Thank you. Your enthusiasm about issue 10 makes me happy. And this interview will, I hope, bring a few more readers our way. Word of mouth and advertisements here and there are our main method of promoting Cave Wall, as well as venues like Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Luna Park Review, and New Pages. The editors of those sites are invaluable when it comes to letting readers know what’s going on in the world of small presses. It helps to win some awards recognition, too, and we’re thrilled that two poems from issue 7 were chosen by Kevin Young for the Best American Poetry that came out this fall. Our subscription numbers continue to climb each year, and yes, we want to keep that number growing. We try to expand our advertising a little every year. We go to AWP. Meanwhile, we try to keep the subscription cost low, knowing how many good journals are out there and how precious each dollar is these days.

AP: Cave Wall publishes exclusively in print and exclusively poetry. Is there any impetus to move some material online or to work in other genres?

RT: I love all genres, but Cave Wall is strictly a poetry and art journal. We like the size of it: just 72 pages each issue. And although we put a few poems from each issue online and may add some other digital supplemental features, Cave Wall will remain a print journal always. The simple reason is that I love books and don’t enjoy reading on a screen for long periods of time. We’re happy with Cave Wall just the way it is. Technology is exciting and fun to explore, but isn’t there something about print publications that ought to be celebrated and continued, too? I think so. I’m going to keep celebrating. I’m in love with books.

Hey there, blog enthusiasts! Here are Flyway’s updates for this week:

1. We’re still looking for your poetry chapbook submissions for our Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest! Get published, win money and prosper.

2. Find our table at AWP. Look for our awesome paper-mache tree, stop by for some freebies,  get information on subscriptions, and tell us who you are — we want to know!

3. Are you an artist or photographer? Looking for a way to get your work out there? Flyway wants YOUR art submissions for the cover of our upcoming Spring 2011 issue. Please send all inquiries to flywaypub@gmail.com! Attach your submission and write a cover letter in the body of the email. Submit before 3/20. We’re especially looking for art with a focus on place and environment — up for all interpretation.

Oh — and, have you found us on twitter? @flyway_journal

Who are your favorite authors?

That’s a hard question. Haruki Murakami, Lorrie Moore, T.C. Boyle, George Saunders, too many to all list here.

What is your favorite book?

No such thing.

What does “place” mean to you?

Place grounds experience and thought. There’s more to the story than what the characters think and do. Place is both the physical and intangible environment in which story happens. It’s what makes fiction resonate.

What is your favorite place or environment?

I haven’t yet become the kind of person to feel like any one place is home, so my favorite places are scattered around. I like quiet places. The high desert. The redwoods. The more rugged stretches of the Pacific coast. I like mountains. The Cascades. The alpine Sierras.

What do you look for in a piece of writing?

First I look for something that captures me as a reader, not an editor. I look for fiction that takes stylistic and structural risks. I look for a story that has something to say about the world but doesn’t beat me over the head with it. I want a story to linger with me after I have finished reading it.

What’s something surprising you learned last week?
Whales have different dialects and accents—each whale family has its own song patterns. That probably should have surprised me less than it did. There’s an online experiment called Whale FM where you can match similar whale songs to help scientists understand whale communication better.

Flyway editor, Chris Wiewiora, reviews John Brandon’s, Cirtus County.

John Brandon focuses Citrus County, his second novel, on a trifecta of characters: Toby, an orphan and the track team’s solo pole-vaulter, who lives in the muck house of his drug-dealing uncle; Shelby, the new kid in school, shadowed by her mother’s death that lingers over her father and sister; and Mr. Hibma—Toby and Shelby’s geography teacher at the middle school—numbed by a routine of student presentations and bogus lectures.

As a fellow Floridian, I appreciate that Brandon sets Citrus County west of Orlando’s Disney developments and north of Tampa Bay’s beaches. Instead of trite lush sprawl and touristy hot spots, Brandon submerges his characters in cracked concrete, dried palm fronds, and thick, sticky heat. Unable to escape, Toby, Shelby, and Mr. Hibma take drastic actions to redefine themselves. Toby kidnaps Kaley, Shelby’s younger sister, but discovers that “whatever had been wrong seemed more wrong now.” Shelby, who doesn’t know of Toby’s transgression, develops a crush on his loner attitude and then acts out in school to get his attention. Mr. Hibma plots to murder Mrs. Connors–the English teacher next to his classroom who tells him that he needs to post class rules identical to the school rules, reminds him his shirts are wrinkled, and has a poster in her classroom with the word PERSISTANCE underneath a sailing ship.

Just as Kaley needs rescue, Mr. Hibma, Shelby, and Toby need to be saved from themselves. However, is there a hero in Citrus County? Brandon reveals the crux of this question—you survive things by making it through them, alone—when Mr. Hibma tries to assure, but ends up over-sharing with Shelby:

“We never know what’s going to screw us up,” he said. “We think it has to be glaring tragedies, but that’s not always the case.”

Mr. Hibma wasn’t sure where he was going with this. He was, to his own surprise, taking a stab at being profound and helpful:

“Sometimes the tragedies strengthen us in the end. They make us more ourselves, you know—concentrate us.”

Mr. Hibma, Shelby, and Toby’s lives are braided together in Citrus County. However, their redemptions occur separately. And so, Brandon gives his reader the relief of being able to exit Citrus County along with the grief of leaving the three characters behind.