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In The Triggering Town, poet Richard Hugo writes that “a small town that has seen better days” is an inspiring image to start a poem. Indeed. But poems can start in warehouses, in mills and shops, throughout Indian Country, and along the rail lines that no longer have scheduled stops in smaller communities. Pulley Press wants to find poems from places like these and bring them into the hands of readers.

Founder and editor of Pulley Press, Frances McCue, acts on a life-long mission to connect literature to community life, whether that is through Richard Hugo House, founded by McCue and Andrea Lewis and Linda Breneman in 1996, or Where the House Was, a feature documentary about gentrification and loss in Seattle. She initiated, co-wrote and co-produced the film. McCue founded Pulley Press with Greg Shaw.

Together, Shaw and McCue reflected on how a small press could reach into rural areas. As the pandemic progressed, McCue saw how the press might be inspired by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, an initiative that brought people together and inspired artistic productivity that came from all parts of the country.  How might this press be a microcosm of a similar effort to encourage poets to create books from where they lived?

Greg’s experience as a journalist and writer who covered rural America in his home state of Oklahoma included a stint as writer and editor for the Cherokee Advocate, the tribal newspaper of the Cherokee Nation. Shaw’s latest book is Last One Walking: The Life of Cherokee Community Leader Charlie Soap. has co-authored numerous best sellers, including Reprogramming the American Dream, a Wall Street Journal bestseller that examined economic opportunities in rural America. Greg brought Pulley to one of its first collections: Mankiller Poems: The Lost Poems of Wilma Mankiller. The story of Frances and Greg traveling to Mankiller Flats with Charlie Soap and searching the barn is in Indian Country Today. See the story here.

The traditional path to publishing beautiful poetry is a long one, usually leading to an MFA and a tangle of contests and submissions with reading fees and on to publications. From there, poets publish in magazines and try to move into publishing a collection. Pulley Press is a mechanism that hopes to make that whole process more accessible, and faster.