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So i think it’s worth talking about Small Press Distributions (spd) history in light of this recent article: https://damagedbookworker.medium.com/terrorized-by-spd-612014765e7c
I’m going to be using Matvei Yankelevich’s recent articles for Poetry out of convenience & also bc I think we can call this the ‘official history’
By the article’s own accounting, Small Press Distribution was created in the late 60s and funded (37%) by the NEA starting in the 70s
According to Brent Cunningham “even from a purely market-based perspective, SPD has been a pretty great investment” for the NEA. The NEA at this point was trying to ‘address the needs of small presses’
As I’ve previously argued, this was a Cold War investment to isolate poetry into its own discipline in conjunction with things like MFAs. Previously, poetry had its place in the pages of communist newspapers and periodicals.
SPD is part of what Incite, in the revolution will not be funded, called the counterinsurgency that was meant to undermine 60s radicals
This is why Cunningham speaks of the ‘long term investment’ SPD makes in books it feels ‘might become classroom material.’ This is SPDs value to the NEA
To be clear; this isn’t me saying ‘SPD and every book it publishes is a psyop.’ This is about the function that SPD was meant to serve as small non profit presses & academics began to dominate American poetry
