Needfire, and ... Um, Whatever Happened To That Pound Chapbook?

For the foreseeable near-term future, Needfire Poetry will be going on hiatus at Belfire Press. This is something that Jodi Lee and have talked about, and we both agree that it's for the the best. To put it frankly, my personal life is a mess right now. It has been for years. However, the problems have accrued like this: my mother's failing health was always a distraction, but there was something a little bit more afoot.

I have a mortgage, and my wife and I got that mortgage at the peak of the housing bubble, when everybody was telling us to "Buy, buy, buy!" Problem is, I was a full-time-for-part-time-pay college adjunct back then. The thought was: after only a few more years of adjunct hell, I could finally land a full time position at least at a community college. That never happened, and out of financial need, I went to Walmart in late 2008. The housing bubble burst ... and now my wife and I have been constantly fighting off foreclosure, especially since our mortgage was sold by our lender to a predatory group of douchebags. So, now it's 2011, and the mortgage nightmare has never gone away. Which leads to one other place: online freelancing. I spend a lot of time doing it, partly because there is just so much debt that I have amassed, and I am constant need for cash just to keep creditors from coming after my wife and I. Actually, 90% of my freetime behind a computer is spent trying to squeeze nickels and dimes from the internet.

And so, that dovetails into The Ezra Pound/Ghost Chapbook that has seemingly taken years to put together. Forget about the circumstances/drama with the original publisher. The chapbook was then going to be published through Needfire, but the bad economy necessitated cutting it from the line up. Then, I was going to create a digital ebook/print chapbook imprint for Needfire, but after the ongoing financial problems I'm having, that seemed like a very bad idea. So, that leads me to right now. The book is clossally late. I still wish to do it, and I'm still going to try very hard to, soon, once the dust settles a little at work.

But, that also brings me back to Needfire going on hiatus. Jodi and I both agree that it should and will be revived at some point. However, it will be once everything is sorted out, and I can come back to running a imprint when I can devote much more time to it without freaking out about how up the air everything regarding my home is. Until then, my personal time will likely be spent either writing my own material or finishing off prior obligations like Pound.

Also, there's this UFO poetry anthology that I promised Barry Napier I'd help him with. Just in case anybody's curious, that book is his baby. He's the lead, and I'm just sort of an assistant -- we haven't really talked at length, but I think I'm helping with the slush. There may be some skullcracking -- ahem, I mean editing -- going on there, too. So, it doesn't really conflict with the reasons why Needfire is going on hiatus. But, more on UFO book a little later.