Interview with editor and publisher Andre Gerard - part 3

To read part 1, click here. To read part 2, click here.

Cendrine Marrouat: How have people reacted to the book, so far?

Andre Gerard: The response has been terrific. Readers love the selections. They love the quality of the pieces. They love discovering great writers, writers they may have heard about but have never taken the time to explore. Take, for instance, Saul Bellow, Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing and Derek Walcott. All five are Nobel laureates, and Fathers offers a chance to sample some of their best writing and then perhaps go on to read more.

I’ve had several people who--having bought or been given a copy--have come back to buy four or five more copies as gifts for family and friends.  One man bought copies for all of his children, so that he could start a conversation with them about the individual pieces.  Another man, a friend of mine, told me that he was rethinking his father. Rather than continue to hate his father as someone who was deliberately neglectful and destructive, he was reinterpreting his father as a damage. 

CM: You are the owner of Patremoir Press, a publishing company. Why did you choose to create it? And what are some the challenges that you have encountered?

AG: Creating Patremoir Press was an accident born of necessity and obsession.  When I started working on "Fathers," I thought I would find a publisher.  Reputable people in the book trade told me that the book was a wonderful idea and well worth doing.  By the time I discovered that the project was too expensive for most publishers, I had invested so much of myself and was having so much fun that I couldn’t stop. 

Apart from the financial challenge (getting permissions for big name anthologies is, indeed, a very expensive business) the biggest challenge has been trying to be writer, translator, editor, publisher and publicist all at the same time.  I often felt that I was galloping madly off in all directions.  Luckily, I had a lot of advice and help along the way.  Naturalist and historian Stuart Houston; Monica Brown, graduate student at UBC; Patty Osborne of Desk Top Publishing; Jennifer Bunting, publisher at Tilbury House; Gary Geddes, editor of "20th-Century Poetry and Poetics"; and Brian Busby, also editor of several anthologies, are only a few of the many who helped me along the way

CM: What is next for you?

AG: When I started "Fathers," I thought my next book might be an anthology of matremoirs, or mother pieces.  Now, though, I think that such a project would be too repetitive, too much like "Fathers."  Instead, I’m thinking of doing a very different anthology, an anthology which would be a mixture of my own poems and favourite poems by poets such as Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Hardy.  One big benefit is that the copyrights would all be in the public domain, and the book would be much cheaper to produce.  Who knows, I might even break even.

CM: Where can people purchase "Fathers: A Literary Anthology"?

In Canada, I now have Sandhill Books of Kelowna as a distributor, so "Fathers" should be available through most bookstores. "Fathers" is also available through Amazon and through IndieBound.  Unfortunately, because of prohibitive copyright costs, it is not available in electronic form.

CM: Any last words?

AG: Sure.  As a teaser for my next book here is one of my poems:

“Sub-version”

Those who dig 

Too deep    

Often undergo 

A lot

Only to overlook

The surface.

End of the interview.

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Cendrine Marrouat may be contacted for potential interviews, reviews and general enquiries at info@cendrinemarrouat.com