The Poetry Chapbook That "Saved My Life"

Poetic process and publishing advice from poet Amy Small-McKinney

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing poet Amy Small-McKinney about her latest chapbook, One Day I am a Field, plus thoughts on working in the poetry chapbook form vs. full-length collections, and how chapbook projects can encourage poets to write through life's toughest times.

Amy Small-McKinney’s third chapbook, One Day I Am A Field (Glass Lyre Press, 2022), was written during COVID and her husband’s death. For the 2020 virtual AWP, she co-moderated an interactive discussion, Writing Through Grief & Loss: The Intersection of Social and Personal Grief During Covid.  Her second full-length book, Walking Toward Cranes, won The Kithara Book Prize, 2016. Small-McKinney has been published in numerous journals, for example, American Poetry Review and Cortland Review, among others, and is forthcoming in Banyan Review. Amy is proud to be part of Anhinga Press’s forthcoming anthology dedicated to pregnancy, abortion, and choice. Her poems have also been translated into Romanian and Korean. She resides in Philadelphia.

Watch the video below, or keep scrolling to read the interview in text. To hear Amy read a few poems, check out the video.

Poetry Chapbooks & Writing Through Tough Times

Radha: I thought we could start with a question I get from students quite a lot, which is: Should I try to publish a chapbook or a full length book? You've done both. Aside from the difference in length, I'm curious how you think about these two choices in publishing.

Amy: I'm thinking about when I was just starting out. The idea of putting together an entire book was overwhelming for me, to be honest. When I looked through my poems, I began to see surprising themes that repeated over and over, without even being conscious of it, but there wasn't enough for a small book. And I discovered the chapbook. 

I consider my first chapbook my calling card. I was so excited to have something out in the world. It gave me the courage to tackle a full length book later. Chapbooks are brief but powerful, small but powerful. I recommend poets begin with them, as I did.

Radha: Because a chapbook is a little more doable for a poet who's starting out?

Amy: Well, it's complicated. To be honest, I don't think I felt I was a poet yet. I was afraid to say “I'm a poet.” It seemed like a world I could never enter. Your students may be braver than I was, they may feel far more confident than I was. But as I put my poems together, I saw I had I mean, I had about 24 to 30 that I felt really were strong. I had such confidence in that particular packet of poems. Whatever my concerns were, whatever my fears, I believed in those poems.

Radha: Your new collection is a unique book, as all books are. Could you tell us a little bit about the process of developing the poems for this chapbook, and where are those poems started?

Amy: This book began like none other. It was COVID. I was a caregiver for my ill husband, who eventually died. He had been in hospitals, in rehab. The day that the rehab was ready to lock the doors to family, he wanted to come home. And I agreed. 

This book was not written as a plan, there was nothing I expected from it. But I believe—and this is going to sound very corny—that it saved my life. I was frenetic, I was feverish. I would leave his bed and run to my laptop. I didn't even know what I was going to say. It sounds kind of new age or something, but it's true. My fingers would hit the keyboard, and I did not know what was going to come out. I felt like a vessel. I did this through the whole process, thinking I had no goal. But I had to do this in part to survive, to put language to a grief that I could not put language to any other way. 

Sometime after he died, I looked at the poems and they surprised me. I was grateful to them. I realized it was a chapbook, that I did not want to write a full length book because I was finished. This is what I called my grief book. I knew I could not make it into a full-length collection emotionally. There was a kind of closure for me when it was sent out.

Radha: We’ll talk a little bit more about the difference in chapbooks versus full-length books in a moment, but first, I just want to express my deep sympathy for your loss. What a tremendous time to be going through something like that. And thank goodness for poetry. I'm glad to hear it was a practice that helped. 

How did you know this was just a chapbook? How does one know what they're working on?

Amy: I'm pretty controlling in life. I like to know where everything is. I'm a planner. Poetry is different for me. In some ways, I let it be in control. It's the one place I get to listen and just follow what's happening intuitively. 

I have friends who are fabulous poets, but they work differently. They plan in their minds long before they write their marvelous poems. I don't know how to do that. I think that's important to bear in mind when you’re talking about process, all these processes. The second book I wrote Walking Toward Cranes, I wrote during and after my breast cancer treatment. So clearly, for me, my life is in the poems, but I don't ever want content to manipulate the reader. Writing poetry is not journaling. That may be where it begins, but poems have to stand up in the craft, the music, the language. 

When I wrote Walking Toward Cranes, I was clear about the subject. I just kept writing until I knew it was going to be a book. But other than knowing this was the scene, the subject, I didn't want to control the process until I thought I had the poems. Once I had the poems, I began to see them as sectioned. I began to see them as the trajectory from treatment to closure. One is never cured, but some closure. 

I remember putting the poems across my floor, trying to see what was going on, where they might go in the book. I took a bunch out. I revise even after I publish, and I got to the point where I felt the book was strong enough to send out. 

Radha: I love how you’ve described the stages of the process.

Amy: Poems had to be written before I realized that it was becoming a book. I didn't say, Oh, I'm writing a book. But then I began to see, look at this, these are the themes. I made my discoveries as the poems were emerging.

Radha: It’s not exactly a logical process—a left-brain, hyper-rational process. Nevertheless, there are distinct stages that you describe that are instructive for us: Having the work emerge from one's life. Beginning to see thematic possibilities. And perhaps not even then saying, “Okay, I'm writing a book about this,” but leaning in a thematic direction, into a territory, trusting that it makes sense, even if you don't feel in control. 

Amy: That's very important to me as a writer. Having said that, when I felt it was finished, I did go to someone to look through the book with me and talk about how it might be organized. I chose someone who knew my voice really well. I needed someone outside of myself, another reader to see it.

Radha: There’s a beautiful balance between elements of story and the lyric impulse in your poems.

Amy: That was new for me. I haven’t written much narrative poetry. I have always been attracted to more “hidden” poets. Jean Valentine was was sort of a mother-poet for me, and Denise Levertov. I tended towards being that kind of poet, writing poetry with a kind of hiddenness. So I startled myself when I saw I was a lot less hidden in this book, that I was telling some stories as they happened.

Radha: That’s a question I get a lot from poets who are more lyrically oriented, who are drawn to elliptical or mysterious poetic writing: Do I need to tell a story? Is this poem enough of a story? I'm very adamant that poets do not have to tell a story, but where storytelling and lyric elements come together, in balance, can create a lovely opportunity for the reader to enter the book.

Amy: I think lyric poetry, at its best, invites the reader to add their own story. However, lyric doesn't mean being abstract. It has to be authentic. Even if the story isn't there, the emotions have to be there enough to let that reader in. So there's a fine balance between hiddenness and the concrete. 

Denise Levertov wrote some daughter poems in Life in the Forest. They almost felt like she was practicing or experimenting. I noticed she would take leaps of imagination, lyrical leaps. And she would always land not on something abstract, but on some very clear and earthly object. When I was studying her, the lesson for me was to try to move between the two. I don't care if I'm lyric or narrative. I care if the poem is working and that a reader can enter it, even if it is a little abstract. A door has to be opened. 

Radha: Absolutely. I think about that in terms of the themes of your book, grief being the obvious theme. Grief is a territory we all will encounter at some point during our lives, but it can be very different for each individual. So there’s specificity, there are feeling tones, and there are the concrete details or the earthly details in the poems that help us to enter that territory with you in the book.

Amy: That felt important to me. When I finished my process of discovery, I realized I had begun to talk about what it was like to be a caregiver. I felt I had permission to say “This was really impossible. Really very hard.” I was so sick of hearing “Oh, you're so strong.” When I've read caregiving poems at readings, I've had people thank me: “You're telling some truths about caregiving.” 

Radha: That speaks to the the power that poetry can have for people. It’s wonderful when our work can can function in that way. Not all work does.

How did you go about finding a publisher for this book? And for other books, what was your strategy? Did you submit to open reading periods or contests?

Amy: I have a spreadsheet that I started in about 2004. I have lots of red rejections. Blue is for acceptances. I spent many years trying to get my books published. When I was studying with Jean Valentine, she had a good friend of hers, Kate Greenstreet, email me: “Jean says get your manuscript together and send it to Kevin Curry.” I said, “What manuscript?” I had some things together, but it wasn't a book yet. But I wasn't going to say no to Jean Valentine. 

I had a little one at home, and I said to my husband, “For about 48 hours, don't talk to me. Tell her I'm writing a book.” And, and I would hear them in kitchen, ”We can't bother mommy. She's finishing her book." And I worked on this book, and I did send it to Kevin. As expected, it was rejected, but with a beautiful note. It showed me something about putting together a book. A whole lot of those poems went into my first book. I kept sending it out all over the place. And it was just rejected. 

Then a good friend of mine had a book published. She mentioned me to her publisher who requested to see it. They were a local press and they did an absolutely gorgeous job with the book. Going somewhat locally, or through friends, was helpful. But just because someone is a friend, doesn’t mean an automatic acceptance for a book or poems. 

Where I am in Philadelphia is a vibrant poetry community. The second book, I sent out about five places, but I heard from Glass Lyre first. And they told me I won an award. I remember crying, sobbing with joy, that this has happened to me. Because this is someone who had who did not know me, and they're out of Chicago. 

Between all of this, there were many, many years and many manuscripts that were rejected. I went through contests, I went through open readings. The first few rejections are horrible. You can’t take it personally. You don't know who's reading it. You don't know what they care about. Just keep going. If you’re persistent, it’s impossible. You need persistence to get published. 

I have another manuscript out now that's been rejected. It was a finalist with Trio House, Barrow Street Press, and White Pine Press. But I've rewritten it with each finalist and each rejection, and now it's going out again. It takes patience, and belief in oneself that isn't easy when you're younger and isn't easy when you're older. My poet friends keep me going.

Radha: I recently had a conversation with the poet Sean Singer. He won the Yale Younger Poets award some time back. He said it really well: When you reach a publishing milestone the reward you get is another mountain to climb. It’s a never-ending challenge. I love what you're suggesting about being persistent, really developing a sense of yourself as an artist, as somebody worthy of having a public audience. Thank you, Amy.

Learn more about Amy’s work at amysmallmckinney.com.

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