innovative. daring. beautiful.
Rockwood Press makes right-sized poetry chapbooks for people who need poems.
We believe chapbooks are an art form as much as a literary form, perfectly suited for revolution, protest, political change, and social critique. They can be both haunting and hauntingly beautiful.
We believe in emerging and established poets and aim to make room for all kinds of mighty voices in teeny books that might not otherwise find their way into the world.
We believe that a work doesn’t have to be full-length to have a full life. That’s why almost all of our releases are open editions.
In this moving sequence of poems, Annalisa Hansford conveys betrayal, loss, and potential redemption through an agile reworking of the lyric and a reimagining of traditional and new poetic forms. These poems revisit former relationships “where every version of myself wants / what I can’t have,” and reveal the poet’s candid longing for love and absolution in language that is rich and evocative. In this second collection, Hansford’s arresting voice conveys an incontrovertible wisdom and grace that demonstrates, despite the inevitability of forfeiture and change, how close observation of the world’s largesse—be it avocado toast, a postcard, or the first taste of samphire—is potential for reconciliation and joy; for memories that are, once again, “fresh like a bundle of lavender.”
—Christine Casson, author of After the First World
Here in these poems we find the complex nature of queer entanglement mapped out for us in the sonnet. Annalisa traverses the past, the present, and the desired future, teaching us how powerful language is when held in the palm of these forms: crisp, cool, and courageous.
—Dare Williams, associate poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine
Annalisa Hansford (they/them) is the author of Romanticization of Grief and Ghosts (Bottlecap Press, 2025). Their poetry has received honors from the Academy of American Poets and the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program. They’ve studied poetry with Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Victoria Chang at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. They previously interned at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, where one of their favorite poets, Frank O’Hara, used to frequent.
Banana Pancakes
Banana Pancakes
Recent titles
Different With Him by mk zariel, coming March 13!
The Biology of Leaving by Candice M. Kelsey, coming March 3!
Lavender Stones by Kenneth Pobo, coming February 24!
From the Bowels of Molluscs by Carlie Daley
Banana Pancakes by Annalisa Hansford
A Razor’s Edge by Matthew J. Andrews
In the Way of Things by Nicholas Skaldetvind
On Music: Collected Poems by Nancy Dillingham
Without a Prayer by Scott McConnaha
Confirm Humanity by El Bentivegna
View all our available chapbooks
submissions
We select manuscripts through an open submissions process that occurs year-round.
Manuscripts should be tightly linked collections of ten to thirty poems or up to forty pages, submitted in .rtf, .doc, or .docx formats only. All submissions should be made via email. We do not accept unsolicited paper submissions.
Eligibility: Poets writing in English are eligible. Previous book publication is not a consideration. Simultaneous submissions are permissible, but entrants are asked to notify Rockwood Press immediately if a manuscript becomes committed elsewhere.
There is no open submission fee.
We do our best to reply to submissions within one month, but the time can vary depending on submission volume. If your work has not been accepted or declined, it’s still under consideration. Every submission is considered thoroughly before a response is made.
All submissions are eligible for publication by Rockwood Press with a standard royalty contract.
submissions at Rockwood Press dot com
If we seem familiar
That’s because, Rockwood Press, a not-for-profit literary imprint, is a project of Fernwood Press and its parent company, Barclay Press. For years, we’ve made our books and full-length poetry collections available through POD services, but we wanted to produce more books in-house where we have control over color, texture, paper quality, and the overall shape each project takes.
We’ve also seen a ten-fold increase in poetry submissions over the last year and sensed from our conversations with writers that it’s getting harder and harder to find homes for good work.
The project of Rockwood Press is to bring more great poetry into the world in smaller, focused collections that can be produced locally, quickly, and beautifully.
