innovative. daring. beautiful.
Rockwood Press makes right-sized poetry chapbooks for people who need poems.
We believe chapbooks are an art form as much as a literary form, perfectly suited for revolution, protest, political change, and social critique. They can be both haunting and hauntingly beautiful.
We believe in emerging and established poets and aim to make room for all kinds of mighty voices in teeny books that might not otherwise find their way into the world.
We believe that a work doesn’t have to be full-length to have a full life. That’s why almost all of our releases are open editions.
Different With Him is a collection of haphazard masculinities, an effort to find belonging, a lovesong for genders and genres in flux. Each poem doubles as a late-night text for the trans boys who reinvent the world together at 1 a.m., the cis boys who could use a little reinvention themselves, and the subcultures that can empower or break them. From classic inner-voice scenes to an overly dramatic debate at an anarchist convergence, this chapbook describes the ephemera of a transmasculine adolescence, the joys and failings of homosociality, and the experiences that negate and reinvent us.
Advance praise for Different With Him
Different With Him by mk zariel is a rare blue jewel—part hymn to transmasculinity and desire itself, part nonlinear stream of consciousness that flows like running water, part 3 a.m. lyric. Don’t let the brevity of this book fool you—it unfolds in ever deepening layers, and I find some new wonder every time I revisit it. Different with Him is highly worth a read, then another, then another, because these lines will seep into your bones.
—Lazarus Halliwell, author of fear not the brave pain and singing molten gold to the morning
zariel’s language swings wildly between a winning colloquiality, a shimmering curtain of jargon from the discourses that immerse its author (anarchism, antireproductive queer politics, trans rights, Discordian theology, youth lib, online existence), and startling moments of direct and frank image-work that bypass conscious thought to convey instantly the felt texture of life in the third decade of the twenty-first century on a burning world. Built around a brilliant central sonnet sequence that traces with precision and vulnerability the grandeur and despair of a fleeting intellectual romance, Different With Him is an urgent map of boyhood, selfhood, rage, loneliness, and love.
—Kit Eginton, editor of Hypocrite Reader
mk zariel’s Different With Him reminds us that transitions are both necessary and healing. If you’ve ever felt yourself in the middle, then this book is for you. zariel turns loss of a relationship into learning, reflection, becoming anew, and standing on one’s own.
—Ashley Elizabeth, author of A Family Thing and Red Line
Different With Him
Different With Him
Recent titles
by-the-wind-saylor by Maya Cheav, coming March 31!
Off to War, Daughter by Trapper Markelz, coming March 26!
Different With Him by mk zariel
my mother is a mixed metaphor by Shivani Gupta
The Biology of Leaving by Candice M. Kelsey
Sky Over by Lana Hechtman Ayers
Lavender Stones by Kenneth Pobo
From the Bowels of Molluscs by Carlie Daley
Banana Pancakes by Annalisa Hansford
A Razor’s Edge by Matthew J. Andrews
In the Way of Things by Nicholas Skaldetvind
On Music: Collected Poems by Nancy Dillingham
View all our available chapbooks
submissions
We select manuscripts through an open submissions process that occurs year-round.
Manuscripts should be tightly linked collections of ten to thirty poems or up to forty pages, submitted in .rtf, .doc, or .docx formats only. All submissions should be made via email. We do not accept unsolicited paper submissions.
Eligibility: Poets writing in English are eligible. Previous book publication is not a consideration. Simultaneous submissions are permissible, but entrants are asked to notify Rockwood Press immediately if a manuscript becomes committed elsewhere.
There is no open submission fee.
We do our best to reply to submissions within one month, but the time can vary depending on submission volume. If your work has not been accepted or declined, it’s still under consideration. Every submission is considered thoroughly before a response is made.
All submissions are eligible for publication by Rockwood Press with a standard royalty contract.
submissions at Rockwood Press dot com
If we seem familiar
That’s because, Rockwood Press, a not-for-profit literary imprint, is a project of Fernwood Press and its parent company, Barclay Press. For years, we’ve made our books and full-length poetry collections available through POD services, but we wanted to produce more books in-house where we have control over color, texture, paper quality, and the overall shape each project takes.
We’ve also seen a ten-fold increase in poetry submissions over the last year and sensed from our conversations with writers that it’s getting harder and harder to find homes for good work.
The project of Rockwood Press is to bring more great poetry into the world in smaller, focused collections that can be produced locally, quickly, and beautifully.
