Today we’d like to introduce you to Landon Porter
Hi Landon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
In the summer of 2021, as COVID was throwing a global tantrum, I published my debut collection of poetry, “Whiskey & Cash”. New books, like babies, come when they’re ready, so rough seas be damned, we were going to surf. I celebrated with a book release in my socially distance-conscience backyard, in July, in a billion degrees—it went wonderfully. My lovely wife kept the provisions fresh and full, my tech-proficient pre-teens ran the book line eager to swipe credit cards on the reader (they are good at taking money, aren’t they, those darned kids), while I just hobnobbed and played the prestigious part of, ahem, “published author.” Apart from the overly strong cocktails (sorry folks, I should have told you they were doubles), I don’t think anyone fell ill or woke up the worse for it. In fact, after a quick review of the photos, it even appears most had a smashing good evening.
“W&C” is a beautifully bound hardcover with resplendent gold foil on burgundy cloth. When not being read, it’s handsome both on the shelf or on the coffee table (or from what I’ve been told, on the bar cart as well). The collection covers such topics as family, heritage, adoption, childhood, and some are purely for whimsy sake.
“W&C” also contains a dozen beautiful illustrations across several mediums (pen and ink, watercolor, copper etching, block printing) from the hands of six different artists commissioned specifically for the book. Prints of the pieces are available for purchase with one-half the proceeds going back to the artists to help them continue their great work.
In addition to being available on my website, “W&C” can be found at a menagerie of small shops, both local and wherever I vacation to (I take a couple copies, walk into an independent bookstore, and ask if they’ll carry it…I’ve not been turned down yet!).
Kansas City:
Oddly Correct Coffee
Wise Blood Booksellers
Rainy Day Books
ULAH (men’s fashion and interiors)
Outside of KC:
Manhattan, Kansas: The Dusty Bookshelf
Bentonville, Arkansas: Two Friends Bookstore
Moab, Utah: Back of Beyond Books
Camden, Maine: Owl & Turtle Bookshop Cafe
Seaside, Florida: Sundog Books
I am currently working on a subsequent collection of poetry as well as a book of short stories. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to knowing when they will be ready. The first one, after all, took 40 years to publish.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Like many publishing stories, mine was long in the making. And perhaps even longer than others because I had opted to bushwhack the self-publishing path rather than being chauffeured down the predictable highway of traditional publishing. Now, this is not to make light of the adversities of the latter (from what I’ve heard, the waiting alone can be tortuous); I just want to emphasize the unique weightiness of the DIY experience.
Along the self-publishing path the milestone markers (editing, layout and cover design, illustration, printing, publicity and marketing, sales and fulfillment, and whatever else I’ve forgotten) are craggy gorges to traverse, swift rivers to ford, fantastical beasts to slay, all by your lonesome self armed with little more than a dull pencil worn to a nub and an aging smart phone infected with flitting WI-FI. If you are lucky enough for a map to fall into your hands, you can only pray it comes from a trusted first-person source rather than the sinister, shank-ridden back alley of internet comment threads. Notwithstanding its origins though, this map is inevitably a quilted patchwork of the experiences of others stitched together with fraying threads of hearsay and dare-say, often leading first-timers into dead ends or down half-hidden trails marked with disappearing crumbs. Alas, it’s the journey that matters most, right?
The short of it is that I didn’t really want to play the submission-rejection game with traditional publishers. I had a very specific product in mind and figured the one sure way to bring it to life was to do it myself. I had the content written (only a couple years worth of work), the art produced (another six months), and no shortage of vision (I’m a bit of a daydreamer); all I needed was layout design help and a printer. For the former, I wrangled a competent and creative cousin of mine to assist with the book layout and overall design. As to the latter, I researched several on-demand printers, but the limited printing options and horror stories of poor quality and misprints (someone else’s book content actually could show up in your cover…yikes!) compelled me to go the route of traditional printing (i.e. offset printing). The obvious benefit of an on-demand printer is the lack of managing inventory: Someone orders a book, then said book is printed and shipped directly from the printer. But with offset printing a run of books is purchased and then produced as a batch. The publisher (in this case, yours truly) is responsible for paying for the books up front, warehousing the inventory, and fulfilling orders. This is no small feat. There are currently books in the trunks of both our vehicles, a couple boxes of them on the basement steps, a handful are sitting right here next to me in my office. I have prints of artwork tucked away in closets and hidden under the banquet bench in our kitchen. Packing supplies is, wait, Where did I put those boxes?
So, I wrote and rewrote and saved money and met artists for coffee and daydreamed a lot and rewrote more and researched for hours upon hours and figured out how to create my own website and found a printer and hustled and prayed and finally after a couple years and a few thousand dollars, 231 books of my very own making showed up just 2 days before my book release party. So, I guess that’s how it’s done.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
If poetry weren’t a narrow enough genre for readership, I figured I’d squeeze the gap even closer by specializing in formal/new-formal poetry (think meter, rhyme, etc.). I’m especially drawn to the craftsmanship required of the formal poet. Not only is there a story to tell or a sentiment to relate (all poets do that), but the meter and rhyme (or in the very least, syllable and sound) schemes dictate the rules for what is said and how it is said. Tennis, without the net or bounding lines, wouldn’t be tennis afterall. I absolutely love the process of slowly sculpting a poem into form, agonizing over each and every detail (whether an an should instead be a that), discovering new words, stumbling upon an apt metaphor, all in the hopes of leaving the reader changed.
“Whiskey & Cash” was a semi-finalist in the North Street Book Prize (2022) and over the years several poems have received individual accolades and awards.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I am a relative late-comer to sit at the grownups’ table of literature. I had been invited to join earlier of course—there was that short story competition in middle school that flexed a muscle I had not known existed, or that probing English professor years later asking if I would consider changing my major to one of those proffered in the hallowed cloisters of his college (I think I actually laughed him off). Yes, there were winds of alternative futures, but instead of hoisting the sail of a willing curiosity I just let the current have its way. So for the first three decades of my life I ate at the kids’ wobbly card table where hearty and robust plates of the classics sat mostly untasted, picked around and pushed aside for the whipped and fluffed potatoes of box scores and comic strips; heirloom crystal glasses brimming with profound and perfumed cordials of poetry despised as if they had gone to vinegar.
During my school years, I read what was assigned and wrote the required papers, but in no way would you have found me nose-deep in a novel (especially one that wasn’t sanctioned by Accelerated Reader…I read for points, not pleasure) on a long car ride or writing couplets late into the evening over flickering candle flame. A quintessentially rambunctious boy, my younger self gravitated toward outdoor pursuits over indoor. I am sure that both being raised on a farm and bookmarked 18 months either side by similarly minded brothers contributed to my energetic and active endeavors.
The extent of my exposure to poetry is rather short and unfortunately uninspiring. In high school, our freshman English class was forced to watch “Much Ado About Nothing” (the one with Denzel, 1993) through half-closed, sleepy post-lunch eyes, that Early Modern English falling deaf on our country ears more tuned to “ain’ts” than “doth nots”. Then, four years later I suffered through another incomprehensible Shakespearean stage production in a culturally progressive mountain town held under a cartoonish summer tent (not quite unlike the kind found within Bert’s chalk sketches near 17 Cherry Tree Lane, sans penguins). At intermission I sought reprieve outside in the crisp high-altitude air, but instead was accosted by a high-browed retiree—the bejeweled-eyeglass-chain-and-Shitzu type—who peppered me with Shakespearean platitudes while her dog defecated nearby, claiming she had read the poet to her children bedside every night when they were little (I am sure they fell right to sleep, I thought at the time.).
So, what changed?
At some point in my mid-thirties I was struck with conviction of my literate shallowness, or at best, an unfortunate narrowness of genre. I wasn’t a rube, mind you. Quite the opposite in fact. I loved school and scored well. I was eager to learn and wanted to ace every exam. For the most part though, the books I read were constrained to the various syllabi and I didn’t venture much beyond. Early in marriage my wife and I committed ourselves to limit the amount of television we consumed. Inevitably this meant there were hours to fill, especially in those few years before we started having children. And a young, financially hamstrung couple can only, err, take so many walks, so we began reading. But we usually steered clear of fiction, thinking we couldn’t learn anything from a novel. As for poetry, well, a certain bad taste returned at the thought. We plowed through books on marriage, parenting, personal finances, business, and faith and spirituality. All fine and good and it served us well. Then we began having children. That book on predestination and free will on the bookshelf doesn’t exactly scream Read me! to a sleep-deprived father of three. During those years of parenthood we succumbed to ending most evenings watching shows. Not a sin, mind you, unless it was truly binge-inducing (I’m looking at you, Lost, and also you, 24).
And then a decade passes, your oldest child is 10 years old, the youngest 5, and sleep has been restored. You’re not quite as fully rested as you were when you were 25, but it’s close enough. And now the books begin to call out your name again in the evenings as you pass the bookshelf on the way to the TV room. What begins as murmurs—mere whispers in the shadows—slowly crescendos into a clambering invitation. It’s Saturday night, nothing on and nothing going so you accept the call and choose one from random, plop down in “the reading chair” and open it to a chapter on budgeting, only to be met with the acrid aroma of memories falling asleep before the end of the first page. Your commitment waivers, you close the book, sigh. Then from somewhere along the lower shelf a twig snaps, wakes you from your stupor, grabs your attention. You return the personal finance thriller and pull down “The Deerslayer” and a new chapter of your own life begins with the first of Natty Bumpo’s.
My reintroduction to poetry was merely coincidental if you’re a pessimist, nothing more than a cute anecdote for the memoirs. But should you have a mere ounce of optimism or two meager mites of faith and wonder, you might be tempted to see it as providentially synchronistic. One blustery October evening, as autumn was moving in with her refreshing attitude and bombastic wardrobe (and a little too revealing I might add), I spied a prettily bound pocket-sized Frostian collection on the shelf (no idea where it came from). On a whim I decided to give it a whirl. Whoops, who knew that decision would launch me into the powerful seas of poetry. The poem I had turned to first was none other than October. Whether from the ripened leaves or the calling crows or the amethyst tinged landscape I do not know, but I was immediately enchanted and forever changed. After that evening, I strung up the sails of curiosity and awe and found myself cruising headlong through soul-sousing waves over fathomless depths.
For the grapes’ sake, I hope you’re an optimist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ltporter.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/landonporter
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/landontporter
