Pulley Press is looking for new manuscripts!

Are you writing poems from rural places? Are you living in a small town or in the country? Do your poems overturn clichés about rural life? We’re looking for you! We are specifically looking for poets who have full-length book manuscripts available for publication. 

We are also looking for poets who would like to create a collection of poetry using the “Pulley Method.”

A book created with the Pulley includes:

1. An introduction offering context of the place and life the poet is writing about;
2. The poems written by the poet in collaboration;
3. Selections of the interview transcripts and biographies of the participating community poets.

More information about the “Pulley Method” and how to submit to us can be found at the call here.  If would like us to consider your manuscript, or you have a Pulley pitch, please send submissions and inquires to hello@pulleypress.com.

Pulley Press aspires to locate, encourage, and publish poetry by poets who write from America’s rural places.

Pulley poets may be writing about their working lives and the places where they live. Within the intersection of landscape, workplace, and identity, the poets’ own back stories may influence their verse and bring new experiences to light

We’re seeking those poems and poets from places perceived as remote—Indian Country, farms and ranches, small towns, from routes of migrant work, from factory floors and breakrooms—from the rich diversity of people and places beyond bright, shining cities.

Our poetry imprint takes its inspiration from the industrial pulley: a sleek, ubiquitous tool that enables anyone to move heavy objects. In our case, we see the press itself as a device to help poets glide their poems into the hands of readers.

We intend to publish poetry that feels beautifully designed and artful. At the same time, we want to be open to the hand-made, surprising poems that we might turn up unexpectedly in rural places, just as one might find a squeaky old pulley in a barn or warehouse.

What are the qualities we look for in the poets who work with us?

• You are an open collaborator;
• You have a network, whether you have tapped it or not;
• You appreciate fine editing;
• You are eager to give readings, attend events and sell your book;
• You love all sorts of poetry;
• You are willing to travel with your book, both virtually and in person;
• You imagine, and collaborate in, unusual venues (hardware stores, barns, fruit stands, school gymnasiums, for example). 

The imprint wants to operate with more urgency and efficiency to make it easy for poets to express who they are and share their stories with the world. With this desire in mind, Pulley Press was born.

In The Triggering Town, poet Richard Hugo writes that “a small town that has seen better days” was an inspiring image to begin poems. Hugo hailed from the town of White Center, just outside of Seattle, but landed in Montana to write about far-flung places in the American West. Frances McCue’s life-long mission is to connect literature to community life, whether that is through Richard Hugo House, founded by McCue and Andrea Lewis and Linda Breneman in 1996, or through this new poetry imprint from Clyde Hill Publishing, founded by Greg Shaw.

Together, Shaw and McCue reflected on what a press might do and be. How could it showcase overlooked people and places? As the pandemic progressed, McCue saw how the press might be inspired by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. How might this press be a microcosm of those efforts to hire poets and ask them to write about their lives and the rural places where they lived?

Greg’s experience as a journalist and writer who covered rural America in his home state of Oklahoma included a stint as writer and editor for the Cherokee Advocate, the tribal newspaper of the Cherokee Nation. He has co-authored numerous best sellers, including Reprogramming the American Dream, a Wall Street Journal bestseller that examined economic opportunities in rural America.

Frances contacted a number of poets, publishers and readers for advice about how a small poetry press might make a contribution to new American literature. The traditional path to publishing beautiful poetry is a long one, usually leading to an MFA and a tangle of contests and submissions with reading fees and on to publications. 

Pulley Press wants to do more.

If would like us to consider your manuscript, or you have a Pulley pitch, please send submissions and inquires to hello@pulleypress.com.