Frog Mantra continues global offerings
By JW McAndrews
Is it possible to keep literature alive and affordable? Absolutely! Just ask Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, senior editor and founder of Accents Publishing. In its three years of operation the independent press has published more than twenty chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, a pace it intends to continue. According to Katerina, the original mission of the press was “to publish a book every month or two.” She adds, “Our mission is to promote brilliant voices in an affordable publication format, and to foster an exchange of literature among different world cultures and languages.”
A native of Bulgaria who immigrated to America in 1995, Katerian operates her publishing press out of her Lexington, Kentucky home. Each of the poetry chapbooks produced by Accents is made by hand and sell for $5 or (for full-length books) $12.
Although her background is in software engineering, Katerina returned to her love of poetry later in life. In 2009, she graduated from Spalding University in Louisville with an MFA in poetry. She founded Accents Publishing a year later. Katerina says, “I feel intense love towards poetry books. I don’t think I can not publish them. It makes me spectacularly happy to publish poetry. I’ve been born to do this.”
Beyond her editorial and publishing skills, Katerina is an accomplished poet herself and has published four poetry collections: The Air around the Butterfly (2009) and the Bulgarian-language Indivisible Number (2011) through Fakel Express, The Most (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and, her latest, The Porcupine of Mind (Broadstone Books, 2012). She also hosts Accents-a Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture weekly on WRFL 88.1 FM Lexington, Kentucky.
Frog Mantra
While Accents has published many Kentucky-based authors such as Richard Taylor, Jude Lally, Matthew Haughton and Bianca Spriggs, it seeks out authors all over the world, striving to publish unique poetic voices such as poet Thom Ward, whose book Etcetera’s Mistress enthralls readers with lyrical dexterity.
One of Accents latest chapbooks is Frog Mantra, written by retired professor and Korean War veteran Suchoon Mo. Part reminiscence and part postmodern poetic Zen, Frog Mantra emerges as a psalm encapsulating the drama of our often-disjointed lives, an enchanting gathering of poetry infused with ancient wisdom and contemporary philosophy. Mo creates poems that are reflective and adroit in their ponderings and display an uncommon and wondrous vernacular. “In an empty theater the stage is set,” Mo writes at one point, “for a mute tragedy of chorus singers who are mute on the stage.”
In Frog Mantra readers gradually enter a world encompassed by a merciful but silent moon as themes echo “the sound of civilization” in a chant of war, death, life, love and, ultimately, reverence for “the faint groaning elegy no one can sing.” Whetted observation and contemplative lucidity fuse in the collection to create an innovative style that inspires the heart and incites the imagination. Frog Mantra is yet another gem in the already considerable crown of Accents Publishing.
For more information, visit the Accents website at www.accents-publishing.com.
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