INTERNATIONAL PRESS WATCH

EXAMINING SMALL PRESSES OUTSIDE OF CANADA LITMUS PRESS THIS ISSUEJUR INTREPID CORRESPONDENT HEADS SOUTH TO THE WAREHOUSES OF BROOKLYN.

Tracy Grinnell started Litmus Press to make money. Okay, maybe not a lot of money, but the press' original purpose was to float Grinnell's poetry journal, Aufgabe. Over a decade ago, she was a 24-year-old student in San Francisco all too aware of the quick failure rate of upstart journals. So, she teamed up with her friend and business partner Peter Neufeld and the pair sought out a niche that would survive the tough literary marketplace.

That niche turned out to be the translated works of obscure foreign writers - an odd choice for Grinnell, who, at the time, had no education or background in the field of literary translation.

"If I was going to do something 1 wanted there to be a reason and there was a clear lack of translated material," she says over the phone from Brooklyn, where she now lives and works. Plus, she's captivated by the act of translation. "Translating is two-fold as an exchange is happening between the writer and translator. They're finding a common language," she says.

The journal's title (meaning "purpose" in German) comes from Walter Benjamin's essay, "Die Aufgabe des �bersetzers" or "The Task of the Translator." In its second issue, Grinnell sets out Aufgabe's own task: to bring translated works from around the globe to new authences, to challenge cultural norms and to take risks.

To do this, Grinnel brings in guest editors and translators to pick groundbreaking poets from around the world, while she edits the Englishlanguage poetry for both Aufgabe and Litmus publications. The plucky decision has meant translating authors from 16 countries who might never have reached an Anglophone authence otherwise. Over its 10-year history, Litmus has published poetry from Mexico, Brazil, Morocco, Poland and more, with upcoming issues introducing work from El Salvador, Egypt and India.

After the inaugural issue of Aufgabe hit the presses, Grinnell moved across the country to do an MFA at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and she brought Aufgabe with her. While Neufeld moved on to other projects, Grinnell founded the full-fledged Litmus Press, a small publishing house that, like Aufgabe, publishes foreign-language poets as well as home-grown authors.

Litmus started by publishing one book a year, with Grinnell paying for publication out of pocket. Two years after its foundation, Litmus was granted non-profit status and created an affiliate charity, Ether Sea Projects. Since the upgrade, Litmus has been able to release roughly three books a year. Its present catalogue of 20 books features mainly poetry collections and translations.

That catalogue includes the first full-length English translation of Japan's Ayane Kawata and her collection, Time of Sky & Castles in the Air (2010), a double volume of concise, dream-like verse, and of French poet Isabelle Garron's Face Before Against (2008) whose "tense and intimate" collection is divided into five acts. The press will soon put out cross-genre books, such as How Phenomena Appear to Unfold, that includes plays, poetic pieces and critical writings by the late American experimental writer Leslie Scalapino.

To bring out some of these unique collections, the press occasionally collaborates with other small presses. Four From Japan, for instance, is a joint publication between Litmus and fellow Brooklyn publisher Belladonna Press. It features poetry from four Japanese women writers - Kiriu Minashita, Kyong-Mi Park, Ryoko Sekiguchi and Takako Arai - in both English and the original Japanese. On the English-language side, Litmus published Kate Colby's 2006 collection Fruitlands, which was nominated for the Poetry Society of America's Norma F�rber First Book Award.

To keep the press churning, Grinnell, herself a published poet with two books released through O Books, relies on one part-time editorial assistant, a "good cycle of interns," a few volunteer editors and freelance Denver-based designer HR Hegnauer to run the website and design publications. Three days a week she's managing administrative tasks in the shared Brooklyn office with Belladonna and two other visual artists. The rest of her time is spent at home, writing, reading and editing manuscripts.

In the coming years, Grinnell wants to expand the press's mandate by taking Ether Sea Projects in a new direction. The charity already financially supports Belladonna and California's O Books, but she says it could take on more. Also, she's hoping to start a series of talks for foreign writers to recreate the act of translation and exchange in a literal, physical setting. "At the core of [our mission] is exchange on the international level," she says. "The attempt to engage contemporary artists is part of finding affinities across false barriers."

[Author Affiliation]

BY CHELSEA MURRAY

LITMUS PRESS, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY, LITMUSPRESS.ORG