The St. Paul-based Laurel Poetry Collective was formed in late 2002 with a four-year charter to publish a book for each of its 20 poet members and an annual anthology with contributions from all members. As they near the end of their fourth season, we thought this would be a good time to find out how they are coming along with their publications and where they will be going from here, so we contacted co-founder Deborah Keenan and member Eileen O’Toole, each of whom have a Laurel book coming out this fall. Keenan and O’Toole will be reading from their books at Micawber’s bookstore in October, check with the store for date and time (2238 Carter Ave., St. Paul. www.micawbers.com, 651/646-5506). The entire collective will hold a reading on Nov. 4, 2 p.m., at the Central Library in Downtown St. Paul. www.laurelpoetry.com

Tell us about how the collective was formed.
DK: The collective was formed about four years ago. I invited about 40 people to my home to talk about forming a collective. After three meetings, people chose to continue or to not join. We ended up with 23 members, poets, book artists, a book designer--it felt quite stunning to discover the range of talents in the people who chose to join.

Each year every member contributes between $250 and $500 in dues, we all have had different jobs to do for the collective over the years, and share responsibility for creating opportunities for readings, special events.

We came up with a list of four possible names for the collective. As with all our decisions, the majority vote wins, and so we became Laurel Poetry Collective. Our book designer, Sylvia Ruud, who lives in St. Anthony Park, designed our gorgeous Laurel Tree logo, that we put in all our books and as a part of all our broadsides. We have four more books to publish and we will have achieved our original goals. The broadside series is complete, and more than half of them are already sold out.

Are members involved in some way in the process of publishing the books by other members?
DK: Each poet works on his or her book as they wish. Some have asked a few members of the collective to read, edit, arrange their poems. Some have worked privately, and then after submitting the book to our book designer have worked with Sylvia to get the vision of the book clearly in place on the page. Since we began we’ve also had small working groups inside the large group--some poets have asked their small group companions for editing or structural help with their books. Most poets honor their solitude during the writing of the poems--for some, that’s enough privacy, others continue the solitude into the final editing process.

Do you have editors involved in the project? And what does a poetry editor do?
DK: Only if requested by the poet. Poetry editors do a range of things--line edit, suggest syntactical changes in lines, stanzas, suggest alternative titles, work on arranging the set of poems, help make decisions about books being arranged in sections, or not, etc. etc.

You’ve been watching as other collective members have had their books published over the past four years; how has that affected you during that process?
DK: I can honestly say I have learned from each poet who has gone before me. I have been spiritually inspired throughout these years—to watch poets step up, claim their space as public writers; and I have been inspired by the generosity and kindness and extraordinary talents of the book artists and the other poets.

EO: I’ve anticipated each new book and enjoyed watching and being part of the publication process. . . . In my time with Laurel, I’ve probably been most affected by my apprenticeship in letterpress printing and the book arts. Being mentored by Regula Russelle and working alongside printers and artists Georgia Greeley and Nancy Walden has been a highlight of my time with the Laurel Poetry Collective and added to my thoughts of a book as a whole, as its own world.

While there is a solitary aspect to writing, my experience is that community is critical for any creative work, whether that community is one trusted reader or something much larger. One of the wonderful things about the Laurel Poetry Collective is that as part of our commitment to each other there is a lot of excellent support available for each manuscript. This is a willing and generous group. But people are free to choose their own editors and advisors, and, even with the resources available within this large group of poets and artists, there is around us a much larger circle of writers and artists supporting each book. I am part of a small group of poets called the Trugs; they were an important part of my editing process.

In the final stages, though, the work again felt very solitary to me. Throughout, I received much invaluable feedback. But at some point, the decisions left to consider were very subjective and it became more a matter of going inward to get clear about my vision for the work, as tempting as it was to seek outward affirmation. This work will only ever be excerpts of a whole and yet each poem is the seed of a larger memory. In this same way, the book had, very early on, its own seed energy in a phrase, an early piece. It was this energy I tried to connect to, during the final stages of editing, in order to understand how I could be most true to it.

Tell me a little about your forthcoming books.
DK: My new book for the collective is my seventh collection of poetry to be published. It is called Kingdoms. I will meet with Sylvia Ruud, our book designer, in September to work on the design for the book---I am counting on finding the right color for the cover, and I am counting on Sylvia to help me think about a single visual element that might work for the book. I believe all my books speak to the same themes--the life of the imagination, the destructive and benign powers of human beings, what it means to be part of a family, what the natural world is trying to teach us, if we would just pay attention, the place of memory, humor, the spirit life in the human journey.

EO: For my own book [Excerpts From Girl], I did not look to external models as much as try to pay close attention to the energy of the work and allow it to take shape organically. It is an early childhood memoir of sorts, both fragmented and cohesive—a series of vignettes in the form of prose poems that range from flash fiction to delineated poetry. It opens with a quote by Paul Eluard, “There is another world, but it is in this one.”

Space is key to the design of this book. It’s not the kind of attention a poet usually pays to placement of words on the page. Rather, it is an attempt to provide both an external and internal feeling of space around and within each poem. Time is different to a child. And in writing Excerpts From Girl I realized how much looking and seeing is a part of these memories. A seeing that requires a particular kind of attention that as adults we sometimes have a hard time sustaining. I can’t give the reader time, but I can try to give space, space around the poems through the design of the book and space within by paring each piece to its essence. With clarity of image or vision, I think mystery reveals itself; seeing reveals mystery as inherent, and we may begin to perceive it.

The poems have been described as delicate, evocative, unresolved and layered; designer Sylvia Ruud did a beautiful job highlighting these qualities with the book’s design.