Introducing … Neil Young and Drunk Muse Press
by Cáit O'Neill McCullagh
Forty years ago, in a Chapman article in which he argues the need for a Scottish Writers’ Cooperative, the poet George Gunn pronounced this grim sentence upon the state of poetry publishing in Scotland:
… economic stringency dictates quite nicely what does and does not get published … The two phrases ‘won’t sell’ and ‘uncommercial’ put the kiss of death on any book that a publisher sees as a bit risky. There is no such thing as taking a chance anymore.
It’s a scene that will resonate for many who have been following the often sudden and seeming numerous closures of small-scale publishing enterprises throughout these islands. Many of directors of these sometimes-well-established entities have cited the ongoing effects of Brexit, pandemic, and the present cost-of-living crisis. Yet, somehow, in the midst of all, having really only set sail as the first of these apocalyptic horses was bolting in 2017, Drunk Muse Press continues to sustain as one of Scotland’s most notable independent publishers. Neil Young, collaborating founder (as he might put it) of this ‘maverick’ venture, shares his thoughts on sustaining this publishing gem, including how ‘taking a chance’ is key to the vision that motivates him and his fellow team members Jessamine O’Connor and Hugh MacMillan.
Cáit: Tell us about your background as a poet and as a publisher? .
Neil: My experience includes working as a political journalist and as a trade union activist. Around the time I moved to Scotland, 14 years ago, I was finding that the scope for the kind of work I had been used to doing and felt passionate about didn’t really exist anymore within journalism. Around that time, I also had my first poetry pamphlet, Lagan Voices, published, and I decided to concentrate my creative energies on the writing of poetry, first of all.
In terms of becoming a publisher, there was a hankering to do something more. Within trade unionism and journalism, I had learned a lot of organisational skills, and so thinking about following my desire to increase the options available to readers it seemed a logical evolution, especially the more I became involved in the margins of the Scottish poetry scene. There were certain things about it that I thought were staid and conformist. I’m speaking from my political background, of course. You could probably describe me as a lapsed Marxist, or as a libertarian Socialist. I took the view that if you don't particularly like the way that things are, the best response is not to acquiesce or co-opt yourself to its values, but to try to create your own forums. I was tapping into some of those kinds of radical cultural values espoused, for instance, in the beatnik movement, where people just started shaping the rules of culture themselves; creating their own set of critical values.
Cáit: I suppose you could see it as taking control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange?
Neil:Yes, but initially I didn’t have any resources or knowledge of how to do this. So it was a case of just finding out how it might be done along with other people who were also exploring similar ideas. It all started with The Poets’ Republic, a magazine and series of live poetry events, back in 2014. The political climate at that time was very militaristic, and nationalistic, in anticipation of the First World War Centenary. There was a kind of insidious rehabilitation of imperialism and our first issue came out to coincide with that because I felt that there was a need to create an antidote or alternative to the many other poetry magazines and outlets, which might have regarded themselves as being liberal or even left-leaning, but who had succumbed to a ritualistic memorialising.
The first magazine was really thin, having no real resources. It has progressed somewhat and is thicker and more varied. We put out Issue 11 just last winter as a republican response to the spectacle of the coronation. It’s out of this initiative of developing The Poets’ Republic that Drunk Muse Press then emerged. Hugh MacMillan and I were already working on the magazine together and we wanted to do more together. Eventually, we invited Jessamine O’Connor to join the editorial team. We’re all friends so it was an easy progression. All flowed out of a desire to expand on what we were doing with the magazine into longer forms, to publish books.
We maintained that spark that had begun with The Poets’ Republic, too. More positively, there is the perspective that there just aren't enough outlets around to reflect the plurality of writing; of voices. There are a lot of people writing really good poetry, but very few forums for it.
Cáit: What you are saying leads me to think about The Wee Gaitherin, the now annual festival of poetry that you and Hugh MacMillan launched in 2021, calling it ‘Scotland’s most democratic festival’. What inspired you to found this extension of the Drunk Muse Press venture?
Neil: I think, initially, it began as a reaction to those more curated events, some of which I would suggest perpetuate hierarchies or the status quo. Good things are happening but, given that the single most determining discriminatory factor in culture is class background, there is a tendency for festivals, publishers, and arts venues to reflect the bias of their situation, then magnify it. If you look at organisation and staffing, many of these outlets are revolving doors for people from a particular socio-economic background to enter and control cultural life. They already have much of the cultural capital and what is produced reflects their sensibilities and world-view. It then becomes what people are encouraged to aspire to. I realise that not everything I hear or read is going to be relevant to me personally, but when I pick up a magazine, such as The Poetry Review, and one of the poems published there, by a renowned poet, begins in Latin, I think ‘what are you doing here? Is this just someone waving to their pals? A reciprocal signalling that says ‘look how smart I am’.
With The Wee Gaitherin we’ve been calling on poets to ‘turn up, tune in, take part.’ It’s a risky mantra in one respect, as it could be taken as an invitation for chaos, but so far things have run with only a few hiccups, and close to schedule. Given the truism that poetry readings and revolutions always start late, that’s not bad going.
By being democratic, we mean we really do want everyone with an interest in poetry - writers, readers, and listeners - to take part on an equal footing. We don’t select and book the poets according to who or what we think is worthy. We throw out an invitation for poets to be in touch and aim to offer a platform for as many as is practicable. What we hope is that we maintain in being non-prescriptive.
Cáit: Why is it important for you all at Drunk Muse Press - and others involved with you in The Poets’ Republic, and The Wee Gaitherin – to support more people to share their poetry?
Neil: Unpublished material leaves no record. There is a loss in terms of the intellectual life it represents. That is a loss for the future, certainly, and in the present, there’s just always a need to respond to the world in which we live. This is reflected in the way we develop relationships with the poets we publish. In some ways it's a bit of a maverick operation. We are interested in tuning in to culture that is happening on an almost subterranean level. I think that's where the best stuff happens, and as publishers that’s where we should be.
The bigger publishers are able to do great stuff, of course, but they also are inhibited by being part of a marketing circus. This makes it difficult for them to take the kind of risks we have been able to, for instance publishing Dareen Tatour and Mohammed Moussa. Both are internationally important poets, but they may not appear to be obvious choices for a small, independent Scottish publisher. Again, this comes down to building authentic relationships with people who are outside of the established circles, remaining close to those who have been marginalised, and drawing on our backgrounds, for example my journalism, maintaining a kind of grassroots participation.
I would see Jessamine, Hugh, and myself very much as participants; each of us, ourselves being poets. Yes, there's a degree of privilege in being able to publish but we’re using that to open-up opportunities.
Cáit: You describe Drunk Muse Press as an outcome of friendships, shared values, and the kinds of poetry you want to see being published. In a short period you have achieved a great deal, including a back-catalogue of 13 books, and a list of forthcoming titles taking you into the mid-2020s. How do you manage it all?
Neil: It’s a fairly quiet operation. In simple terms, we produce the books and publicise them on the best terms possible for poets and within our resources. But I think every book we have published has been outstanding, both in terms of the poetry and in terms of being well produced. For me, that is key to our purpose; to demonstrate that that is possible.
This idea of the quietness is rooted in the financial model, which is essentially working on a shoestring. While there might not be the bells and whistles paraphernalia of the bigger publishing houses, competing for attention in what sometimes feels like a very full market of poetry, we have been able to sustain our intention of publishing, which is the primary purpose of a publishing house. It requires a degree of attention because for most independent publishers this work is by no means anyone’s sole occupation, or even means of income.
The biggest inhibitor to doing more are the limits on time, energy, and resources. Having said that, as we found with The Poets’ Republic, if you’ve got a small pool of talent, and keep it tight, you can do a lot with a little. I remind myself that I have been involved in publishing for more than 35 years as a journalist, so I must have picked up something that was of use. I look at other publishers and wonder ‘why is it so expensive for you?’. Well, if you look at established publishing houses, they need an office; they need to pay people salaries, all those kinds of things. They've got to make a profit. It's a pressure and I'm sure it must guide the selections they make, always minimising risk.
You've probably seen recently quite a few magazines and smaller publishers closing down because of increasingly tighter margins. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for poets to get published. We maintain by running as a kind of cottage industry, especially in the face of the dilemma that more and more people are seeking publication, but not enough people are buying books. I think of it as a kind of twin track approach where I'm trying to publish more poets, but also encourage an uplift in the reading and buying of poetry; encouraging this cultural activity as part of peoples’ everyday life. The only way to do that is to keep the books relatively inexpensive to buy, without that in any way reflecting on the value of the content.
Cáit: Thinking about the range of people you publish and your commitment to participating in the margins, I see the synergy. For instance your publication of Dareen Tatour’s poems in the original Arabic, with an English translation; making available to readers here the works of an exiled woman, once imprisoned for the very act of writing a poem. I also see it in your tabling of Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir (Martin MacIntyre), a poet who is writing tri-lingually in Glaswegian Scots, Gaelic, and Scottish English.
Neil: Yes, and George Gunn, a well-established poet, writing bilingually, including in his own Caithness dialect, whose work is of an extraordinary quality, but whose worth is under-represented in terms of the Scottish poetry canon. We recognise him and want to demonstrate to all publishers that they should be queuing up for him
Cáit: It’s evident that even among independent publishers active in Scotland Drunk Muse Press is outstanding in demonstrating an interest in poets who are based outwith the central belt. I wonder if that's a reflection of the team, each of you also being outliers to that scene?
Neil: Yes, very much so. We don’t move in those kinds of social/cultural circles as much as other people simply because we don't live there. So we don't ingest and digest same kind of material. I wouldn't say that we would exclude somebody on the basis of them living in the central belt, but I think being based in Aberdeenshire, and Dumfries and Galloway, and with Jessamine over in Ireland, we circulate with different communities; participating in a different variety of activities.
For example, take Alistair Lawrie, now in his seventies, deeply committed to writing in his own tongue, which is Doric; I believe he one of the most outstanding poets writing today in Scotland. It also just so happens that he lives in the same town as me, which is how I got to meet him first, about five years ago. I've been talking to him for all of that time about publishing his poetry. And that is what we are doing this year, and it will be his first collection. If I was living somewhere else and moving in different kinds of circles I might never have encountered him. It seems bizarre to me that Alistair has not put out a collection before now. He is so well respected as a poet in Scots, and in English. I'm delighted. The book is going to be brilliant.
Again, there we are, a maverick operation, looking to the so-named margins where most attention might gravitate towards the capital, and Scotland's other big city!
Cáit: This poetry that you're trying to socialise, inviting people to see poetry as part of their day-to-day life, are you able to foresee what Drunk Muse will bring to the fore in the longer term? What poetry will we need in the future?
Neil: It's the stuff that we're doing. There isn't a prescriptive formula. Certainly, we are motivated in a lot of ways by trying to create antidotes that reflect our backgrounds and perspectives, but you know, we’re not dogmatic about it.
Cáit: Thinking about the early years of The Poets’ Republic; and the developments of Drunk Muse Press, and The Wee Gaitherin; none of this has happened in an ideal environment - the pandemic, Brexit, the cost-of-living crisis. What has kept you going throughout it all?
Neil: In some ways, sheer bloody mindedness. I think that the first book that we did was Dareen Tatour’s memoir. I had never published prose before that, so it was an enormous challenge. But once we had done it, I thought, ‘this is the most difficult thing I'm ever going to do. I can do anything else that comes after this’. It’s a book in Arabic with an English translation that needed a lot of editing and also tremendous attentiveness in communicating with the translator and with Dareen in English. And also, of course, I didn't have any time, so, it meant taking two hours of my day each day, for about four or five months. I couldn't do it again, but it was worth it. It was a really good exercise in confirming that we were doing what was right for us, to dedicate the time and energy to what electrifies us, that unpredictable electricity that can change people’s ways of thinking. Good art or most of it comes from a position of bloody mindedness in the end, doesn't it?
Cáit: It seems so in terms of addressing the importance of poetry for sharing plural perspectives, and for exemplifying an independent (and maverick) press getting things done.
Neil: Well, to expand on that, I think the foundation to it all can also be seen in the writers we choose to publish. Take George Gunn, again. George is very politically active. He doesn't see any separation between that and his writing. That's great. That's the way it should be; people being fully alive and engaged in the world.
Cáit: I’m thinking about Brecht now …
Neil: Brecht has been a tremendous influence on me, right from the time I studied drama. He gave us different way of structuring theatre; a real revolt against the conventions of the time, concerning what art and the role of the artist should be. He was an absolutist about it, saying you either had to be part of changing the world or accept that you're part of the problem.
Ultimately, it is hard to know whether writing and publishing poetry changes anything but if you don't wake up in the morning and try to affect the circumstances that you or the people around you live in through some form of creative action, then it would seem to me to be a fairly dull existence.
If you wanted to understand the importance of poetry, just try living without it. As Brian Patten observed, when it comes to the big occasions in their lives people reach for it. Look at Ukraine, poets are at the forefront of speaking about the war at the moment. They are revered figures, articulating their society’s experience. Try finding this distilled crystallisation of what it means to exist in any other form, other than poetry. Without it, well there would be this immense absence; a vacuum of the soul.
Visit Drunk Muse Press and buy their books online at https://www.drunkmusepress.com/
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