In 1994 Emrys launched a publishing venture that came to be known as Emrys Press. In charge were two veteran writers and editors, Keller Cushing Freeman and Sue Lile Inman. Originally planning to publish the work of a woman poet of outstanding merit once a year, this goal was achieved with publications annually from 1996 through 2002. In 2003, the twentieth anniversary year, Emrys Press broadened its scope to print writings outside the realm of poetry and published two works of non-fiction. With printing costs rising, the editors chose to launch a series of chapbooks that would be lower in cost but still offer women poets an opportunity for publication. Since 2005, four chapbooks have been published. In 2008, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, a book about the history of Emrys, Emrys in Full Flower-A Quarter Century of Memories, 1983-2008, written by Jo Ann Walker, was published. Most of these publications are available for purchase online.
This publication is funded in part by the Metropolitan Art Council with grants received from the city of Greenville, BMW Manufacturing Corporation, Michelin North America, Inc., and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John and Susan BennettMemorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of SC.
Emrys in Full Flower, A Quarter Century of Memories, 1983-2008
Jo Ann Walker
$25 + $3 shipping
How Language Is Lost
Celissa Steele
$12 + $3.00
Home At Dark
Jo Ann Walker
$12 + $3 shipping
Stepping on Air Nancy Dew Taylor
$12 + $3 shipping
Writing Through a Year
Marian Willard Blackwell
$12 + $3 shipping
Glassworks
Marian Willard Blackwell
$12 + $3 shipping
Paper Clothes
Jan Bailey
$12 + $3 shipping
First Life
Becky Gould Gibson
$12 + $3 shipping
Children of Light
Editors Ashley Crout, Doug Grigsby
Poetry from SC high school English departments
$12 + $3 shipping
Cynthia Sheperd Jaskwhich
$12 + $3 shipping
Writing Through a Year
This book grew out of a project launched in 1999 by a group of writers united by their membership in Emrys and more than three decades of friendship. Each agreed to keep a journal to record what was happening in the concentric circles of family, community and the world. At year’s end when the journals were shared, it was decided that Marian’s needed a larger audience. It is a moving testament to the value of recording one’s thoughts and experiences as a way of examining personal themes and conserving one’s own history.
“Certainly I have been enriched by the necessity of lifting up scattered experiences to the light of contemplation and reason. . . . Self-consciously defining and describing the raw material of my routines helped me to claim and redeem them. Writing has also disciplined my introspection.” Marian Blackwell
Word Play
Between teaching fourth grade
creative writing classes,
I pass six-year-olds, standing silent
in a straight line for Art;
one little girl cranes her neck back
to look me eye to eye
(as much as is possible
with my height near six feet
and hers under four).
“My brother says why you’re here.” She grins.
“Why?” I squat to give her a better shot.
“To make kids laugh.”
Direct hit. Now I know why, too.
I had thought it was for metaphors
that I travel the state teaching poetry.
But like the clown of primitive tribes
who taught children to play (and other
lessons along the way),
I know from that first grader
that kids learn better when they laugh.
So now I don’t go to work, I go to play.
I teach them the games: we cartwheel couplets,
leapfrog dialogue, jump rope rhymes,
call all-y-all-y-in-free verse,
and whack a syntactical grand slam.
And by the end of the week,
their team poem lights up
the scoreboard. All players get points
for assists in wit, skill, and endurance.
and as their poem takes the Title,
amid our cheers and high fives,
we laugh that what we learned
was to play on words.