“Wouldn’t that be great?”

To keep going, you need to feel you are making good work—or moving in the direction of making good work, or interesting work, or are interested in the work you are making—and see that as the thing you are aiming to do. Anything good that happens beyond is a bonus…” Cameron Anstee, Some Silences: Notes on Small Press (Apt. 9 Press, 2024.)

Fertil3‘s primary focus this year is what it means “to keep going,” as a poet, as a small press/micropress of poetry, as a creator/purveyor of poetry, as a bookseller whose cornerstone is poetry and the reader/s who cherish the handmade/hand-held care that goes into such works.

Poet/publisher Cameron Anstee‘s Apt. 9 Press has set a standard and raised the bar numerous times over these past 15 years, beautifully crafted poetry chapbooks I can only refer to as exquisite in design and concept, (details, details) serving the poetry on the page.

I remember vividly when I first saw/held one when KFB first opened in 2016 thinking, “these are treasures.”

O, Cameron, I’ve learned so much from you, your work, but mostly delight. And enchantment.

And now to read your “notes” again, that rarest of “cookbooks,” simple recipes you all at once recognize, reminders you want to practice. Keep. Make.

What I hope for, finally, is to get to the end (whenever that is), look back at what I’ve managed to create (whatever forms it may have taken), think that isn’t awful, and maybe find that some of it helped keep the light on in one small small press corner, and that perhaps someone else will be using that corner for something else. Cameron Anstee, Some Silences: Notes on Small Press (Apt. 9 Press).

So glad we get to celebrate your 15th together at Fertil3! Well done.

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