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.
This Rough Magic, a work dedicated to the author’s father, who died in 2025, addresses common themes of memory, familial relationships, forgiveness, loss, and bereavement with the impetus to find meaning in the mundane aspects of our quotidian lives. A central poem of the work, “Prodigal,” has been nominated by Apricity Press for a Pushcart Prize. deSouza employs a wide spectrum of approaches in his poetry, including astonishing linguistic and formal innovation, dialogue with established poetic tradition, and a compelling use of ekphrastic reference. It is a work of lyric invention that both entertains on first reading and yet rewards rereadings. The music of verse is a central aspect of the collection, where deSouza asks us to listen for the "singsong spell of now," and in doing so be present in the moment, as he affirms “Now is all there is—”
Praise for This Rough Magic
In a voice both sagacious and enchanting, John A. deSouza’s This Rough Magic reminds us, gently, that “Now is all there is.” In here are all things green and golden. deSouza’s language is abundant and lush, his words pooling up from the deepest wells of human emotion and experience in “hooks of remembering, sickles of sense” that instantly bewitch the reader. Each poem flows and reflects, full of light, into a kaleidoscope of our sacred things. This Rough Magic hums with an internal music that sparkles and captivates. Like the soundtrack to a searching heart, this collection sates the soul with a rich, sensory feast that urges us to open ourselves, to listen and to resonate.
—Danielle McMahon, is the author of irl
This Rough Magic by John A. deSouza is a powerful collection exploring aging, memory, loss, and grief—where “every transformation is a kind of dying,” and “at the heart of knowledge is a broad and sunny sea / of naps.” Tender and unflinching, these poems find light even as they reckon with what fades.
–Leah Huete de Maines, Poet-in-Residence Emerita at Northern Kentucky University
You can almost smell the musk of the earth as John tills a garden of memories to name feelings and a “flailing love that only words collapse.” There are tender moments as he comes to terms with the aging of his parents and finding forgiveness. “Watching the last swallows as twilight…seeps / downward to dusk,” he faces his own mortality and finds acceptance in remembering their stories.
—Susan Kier, poetry editor at WayWords Literary Journal
In This Rough Magic, John A. deSouza’s poems fold back and forth in time, contemplating mortality, loss, and intersections of the human psyche and the natural world. The poems layer sparkling language-play over whispered questions about the nature of grief and the place of poetic voice in the world. At the core of this collection, a poem such as “Prodigal” offers a simple and moving meditation on forgiveness. Amidst his resonant imagery, deSouza also offers surprises we would do well to consider more deeply, even as we chuckle: “At the heart of knowledge is a broad and sunny sea/of naps.”
—Lea Marshall, author of The Slow Hammer of Roots
A beautiful new collection filled with sunshine and shadow, past and present. John A. deSouza's poems offer a stillness and lyric introspection much needed in this age of fragmented attention. These poems do not rush; they walk beneath trees, wander through seasons, visit places real and remembered—all of it “frail with majestic life.” The opening poem asks, “So how connect / this to that?” And this is the rough magic contained within these pages: the connective tissue of love, of memory, “of a thing gone right.”
—Juliana Woodward, poetry editor at The Writing Disorder
About the Author
John A. deSouza is the author of Concord Ave. Georgics (Broadstone Books, forthcoming 2027) and four chapbooks: Hidden, a sequence of poems addressing the war in Ukraine (Bottlecap Press), Labyrinth (Bainbridge Island Press), This Rough Magic (Rockwood Press) and In the Garden (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming). He was shortlisted for the Letter Review Prize for Unimaginable Hardship, poems for Ukraine (2024). John has recently been featured in Poetry Salzburg Review. His poem, “Prodigal,” has been nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. He has upcoming poems in The Dalhousie Review, The Courtship of Winds, and Abstract Magazine.
John is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a B.A. in English and has been a resident of Jersey City for over a decade where he lives with his wife, Oksana, whose family is of Ukrainian origin.
Details
Title: This Rough Magic
Author: John A. deSouza
Publisher: Rockwood Press
Released: 2026 - April
Format: chapbook, acid-free paper, silk cover
Pages: 52
Price: $10
ISBN: 978-1-59498-227-9
This Rough Magic
This Rough Magic
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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.
