Poetry suffers in a culture valuing marketable content over quality. Journals housed in universities suffer funding cuts. Independent presses live or die on shrinking NEA funds. But most of us are already our own editors; with some tools already available, you can control your work’s destiny. Take the outlaw road." Mick Parsons presents more than a how-to, but an explanation as to why indie and diy publishing are the past, present, and future of poetry. Providing tools and suggestions based on more than 20 years of experience as an independent DIY publisher. The key to all of it is community. Know your community. Find your community. Help your community. Build networks. Be realistic about outcomes and expectations, but dream.
Mick Parsons is the author and publisher of the poetry collection, The Call Sign is Jonah (2026). He is also the author of the poetry collections, A Treatise on Unseen Stars (2025), Growl & Mud (2024) 92 Tanka, (2021, Basement Books.) and the limited run chapbook God’s Tired Plumbers (2020). His work has also been published in a variety of journals, most recently in Rusty Truck, Pioneertown, Rust Belt Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry, and Ohio: The Body Politic - Anthology of the River Roots Poets He's organized open mics and reading series in the Midwest and the Appalachians, and used to run One-Legged Cow Press. His work has appeared in Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry, Ohio: The Body Politic - Anthology of the River Roots Poets, SmokeLong Quarterly, Impspired, Moon City Review, on Cajun Mutt Press, Unavoidable Disaster, Contemporary Haibun Online, Thimble Literary Magazine, Poetry Flash, The New Southerner, Pegasus, Antique Children, The Smoking Poet, The Dispatch LitaReview, The American Mythville Review, The Licking River Review, Inscape, and on semantikon.com. A steamboat fireman, former journalist, former educator, he has also, in previous incarnations worked as a security guard, a dishwasher, and a general factotum in various factories and warehouses in the lower Ohio River Valley. He has made his home Louisville, Kentucky with his wife Amanda. His favorite color is blue.
