Mansfield and I

I joined Mansfield Press in 2006, when Denis De Klerck asked me — as an experiment — to bring to the press a book or two to publish. He had read an essay of mine in Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer in which I implored some publisher — any publisher! — to make me poetry editor, or at least let me put a book through the press.

The first publisher to take me up on that, in 2002, was Bev Daurio, who then ran The Mercury Press. I brought her Mark Laba's first full-length poetry book, Dummy Spit. Which was hell to wrench out of Laba. I practically had to threaten him to get the poems from him. So Bev published that book, and it likely sold very few copies, but I think it's one of the most exciting, original books in Canadian poetry.

Anyway, a few years later, Denis at Mansfield was willing to experiment with me too. I'd bring him a book or two a year (and later a book or two a season), and we'd see how it goes. Eventually, I got my own imprint at Mansfield, "a stuart ross book."

Here are the books I brought to the press and edited, up until 2013. I'm proud of them all. (There are a couple books here I brought to Mansfield after I got my imprint, but they didn't fit what I'm doing with the imprint, so they are under the broader Mansfield umbrella, and I edited them jointly with Denis. I've marked them here with an asterisk. And Jason Heroux migrated to my imprint after his first book was published by Mansfield before I joined the press.)

Nelson Ball, In This Thin Rain (2012)

George Bowering, How I Wrote Certain of My Books (2011)

George Bowering, Teeth: Poems 2006-2011 (2013)

Stephen Brockwell, Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books (2013)

Stephen Brockwell & Stuart Ross (eds.), Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Government (2010)

Alice Burdick, Flutter (2009)

Alice Burdick, Holler (2012)

Jason Camlot, What The World Said (2013)

*Sarah Dearing, The Art of Sufficient Conclusions (2012)

Paula Eisenstein, Flip Turn (2012)

Jaime Forsythe, Sympathy Loophole (2012)

*Sara Heinonen, Dear Leaves, I Miss You All (2013)

Jason Heroux, Emergency Hallelujah (2009)

Jason Heroux, Natural Capital (2012)

David W. McFadden, Be Calm, Honey (2009)

David W. McFadden, Mother Died Last Summer (2013)

David W. McFadden, What's The Score? (2012)

Leigh Nash, Goodbye, Ukulele (2010)

Lillian Necakov, The Bone Broker (2007)

Lillian Necakov, Hooligans (2011)

Peter Norman, At the Gates of the Theme Park (2011)

Peter Norman, Water Damage (2013)
Natasha Nuhanovic, Stray Dog Embassy (2010)

Catherine Owen & Joe Rosenblatt, with Karen Moe, Dog (2008)

Stuart Ross & 29 collaborators, Our Days in Vaudeville (2013)

Marko Sijan, Mongrel (2011)

Jim Smith, Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems (2010)

Jim Smith, Happy Birthday, Nicanor Parra (2012)

Robert Earl Stewart, Campfire Radio Rhapsody (2011)

Robert Earl Stewart, Something Burned Along the Southern Border (2010)

Carey Toane, The Crystal Palace (2011)

Steve Venright, Floors of Enduring Beauty (2007)

Tom Walmsley, Dog Eat Rat (2009)

You can order any of these books through your local bookstore, through online booksellers, or direct from the press.

This spring, I'm shepherding new books by poets Gary Barwin, Dani Couture, and David W. McFadden through the press. I'm mighty grateful to Denis for giving me this amazing opportunity. And grateful to all the writers who have trusted me with their work.

Over and out.