A Series of Their Own

In 1999, when San Francisco named Lawrence Ferlinghetti as its first poet laureate, City Lights Publishers decided to initiate a poetry series to commemorate each poet laureate's work. The resulting San Francisco Poet Laureate series, published by the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, created to promote literacy and literary arts, will be distributed by Small Press Distribution (SPD). Consortium will continue to distribute City Lights Publishers to the trade.

"We've been a Bay Area institution for more than 30 years," said SPD development officer Emily Grossman, "and City Lights has been here even longer. So it seems like a natural relationship. City Lights Publishers is one of our biggest sellers. They're in the top ten. They have a really nice mix of established writers, emerging writers and political writers."

The first two paperback originals in the series are just out—Ferlinghetti's San Francisco Poems and Janice Mirikitani's Love Works. Each includes the poet's inaugural address as well as a selection of their work. With devorah major's recent inauguration as the third poet laureate, City Lights is hoping to move up future publications closer to the beginning of the poet's tenure.

According to City Lights publisher Nancy Peters, the foundation chose SPD, because "we want to support them. They do such a nice job with small presses and independent presses." She's hoping that other cities will embrace the idea of naming a poet laureate the same way they have citywide reading programs. "There's a lot of press for the inauguration that poetry isn't normally given," she observed. In addition, City Lights has worked with the city of San Francisco to get books into the hands of visitors. The city purchased a thousand copies of each book to use as giveaways.