“Either I will find a way, or I will make one.” – Sir Philip Sidney

It was the third time we’d passed the small picture of a castle on a green road sign. It seemed to follow us around each roundabout we used that day. This way to Longleat. We were at the beginning of a...

Photo Credit: Molly Choma

When Phillip first suggested that we each write our “goodbyes,” I agreed. But as Phillip and Matty both submitted their drafts, I had yet to write mine. Not because it was too sad, necessarily, but because I had already moved through my feeling...

My favorite TV show, possibly ever, is the short-lived sci-fi/western masterpiece, Firefly.

Not many people watched Firefly when it aired in 2002, heralded (as it was) by a perfect storm of insurmountable obstacles: interference over the show’s characters, a network “d...

After three fantastic years, we have decided that it’s time to close Backwords Press, our brave little poetry fashion press in Portland.

To mark the ending, us three co-founders were grateful to have spent this last weekend together in Los Angeles. Phillip and Jenny fl...

Right now, in this world, in this country, this state, in small liberal-minded Portland, OR–I’ve been thinking a lot. Reading. Meeting people. Listening. I’m in a gathering period. My fingernails, untended, are too long. I feel slow. I’ve turned off all my social media...

I’m not going to write about the “orange thing with tiny hands” that I know people in my camp are writing about, talking about, avoiding, bemoaning, resisting, marching, crying, and/or self-medicating over. I won’t mention how “orange face w. tiny hands” on his first d...

As we move into December 2016, after a long year of enormous change (both good, bad, and in-between), our team here at Backwords Press is grateful for a mainstay: the poet and freelance graphic designer, Phillip Brown.

Given that Phillip has worked with us throughout o...

Where do I start? Do I start on Wednesday November 9, 2016 at 4:27 a.m. when I woke up to the confirmation that Donald Trump would be the next President of the United States?

Do I start somewhere in the middle of my sleep-deprivation, moving through the waking nightmare...

I had something else written. Something I felt good about, but was honestly somewhat rushed. Wordstock prep consumed me last week, and now I'm in Boston for a conference all week long. This is rushed, but the urgency feels right.

After last night, I wrote this instead...

"Matty"                                                                                                               Photo Credit: Molly Choma...