‘Down River, Deep Root’ latest title for local publisher, Carbonation Press

In the introduction to “Down River, Deep Root: A Spokane Poetry Anthology,” Sarah Rooney, one of the anthology’s editors, wrote, “Spokane is incredibly liminal, that feeling of steering away from the pothole you’ve come to encounter every day until one day it’s filled. Still, you navigate to avoid the space and save your car’s suspension.”

Local book publisher Carbonation Press will celebrate the release of its latest title at Patera Lounge on Saturday, with 37 people reading their poetry.

“I had been wanting to do something connected to Spokane for a long time,” said Greg Bem, Carbonation Press publisher and “Down River, Deep Root” editor. Since moving to Spokane, he has connected with a lot of writers, partially through another project he does with Rooney, Foray for the Arts, of which they are co-founders. Also, Bem’s day job is as a librarian for Spokane Community College.

“(It) also turns out a lot of writers that I’m connected with don’t have book-length manuscripts, and so I was looking to try to meet local writers where they were at by thinking about an anthology where it could just capture the voice of the many different writers that are here, but in a way that’s accessible to those writers,” Bem said.

Then, Bem decided to create an editorial board for the project made up of people from the Spokane literary scene: Margaret Albaugh, Asyia Gover, Dorian Karahalios, Rooney and Jessi Vasquez. The cover was created by local artist Kate Reed, and Samina Hadi-Tabassum was the copy editor. Spokane Arts awarded the project a SAGA grant.

Albaugh hesitated because her background is primarily photography, she said.

“I kind of felt a little bit out of my depth, because writing isn’t my main background in art,” Albaugh said. “My creative background is in photography and visual arts, and I write to supplement that. So, I worried that maybe I wouldn’t be able to bring enough to the project.”

Experienced with critique of photographers, Albaugh found that her skills applied to this project.

“You’re trying to see how people are bringing their perspective and their voice into something with photography,” Albaugh said. “Anytime that you have a frame in front of you that you want to analyze you’re trying to understand, ‘OK, what is the message or the story or the feeling that this photographer is trying to evoke?’ And so very similar for poetry and writing, ‘What is this writer trying to convey and how well do they seem to be doing it?’ ”

Collaborating with the other editors “was great to be able to work with them, to hear their ideas, the feedback that they had on work, to learn from them, and to just in general, work with other creatives is always a wonderful thing,” Albaugh said.

Similarly, Vasquez’s background is primarily in fiction, not poetry.

“I was a little intimidated by it, but I was excited to take part in it,” Vasquez said, adding one of the first things the editors decided was the theme – home and liminality.

“We wanted to be something relevant to Spokane, but we didn’t want to be specifically on-the-nose Spokane,” Vasquez said. “So, I think it was Asyia that suggested roots being the theme, and then also liminality, because Spokane itself is kind of a liminal space, the urban forest area.”

Bem said editors took a wider approach of interpreting the themes.

“If a person’s living in this place, and they’re writing through this place, and they’re submitting to this anthology, knowing that the themes are home and liminality, and they’re submitting to write about something that is seemingly completely different, that’s OK because they were doing it either here or through here,” he said.

Rooney, who received a master’s of fine arts in poetry from Eastern Washington University, was excited about the project and the opportunity to build upon the skills acquired reading for Willow Springs Magazine, the literary journal associated with the creative writing program.

“That was a great opportunity to kind of help hone recognizing those, like good techniques and just like what really hits well with poetry and what feels like a successful piece,” Rooney said. “We have so much talent in Spokane. It was hard for us to narrow down, and we had a lot of submissions and just a lot of incredibly well-spoken, well-written pieces.”

The anthology received more than 200 submissions, and published 63 poems. Bem said he intentionally sought an array of backgrounds and perspectives for the editorial board.

“Those perspectives was why I wanted to have more than just me working on it,” Bem said.

Bem started Carbonation Press when he moved to Spokane in 2023.

“It was an idea that I had when moving here and thinking about my literary commitments and projects and the things that I was leaving back in Seattle and then like new ideas to explore,” he said.

Bem had been involved with publishing for years, exploring the small press and indie publication scene on the East Coast, where he’s from originally.

“I had never run an actual physical book press before, and it was something that I thought I could start to do, because I have a lot of friends who are actively writing and creating longer works,” Bem said.

His vision was to take on books the traditional publishing industry would normally skip – “oddly sized works, oddly shaped works, that sort of thing,” he said. “As the press actually emerged, as it was happening and continues to happen, it has continued to hold that indie spirit.”

After the release of “Down River, Deep Root,” the book will be available for purchase at Patera Lounge, as well as Auntie’s Bookstore, Wishing Tree Books and Jupiter’s Eye.

Carbonation Press has two more books slated to be published this year, a bilingual anthology of poetry collected by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, a professor at Seattle University, called “We are Axolot/Somos Ajolotes” and another which will be the follow up to “Winter in America (Again,” an anthology which was poets responding to the 2024 presidential election.

“There’s always something happening in terms of the country and what’s going on … It’s incredibly disruptive, and so much violence, so much deconstruction, so much disintegration,” Bem said. “We are also seeing, in a lot of different communities, ways to support one another and be productive, in the sense that we’re creating things, not just working, but creating things and fostering things, and how that is indicative of what community looks like.”

“Carbonation Press is really at its core about doing that,” he added. “We are balancing a world that would otherwise be consumed with just overwhelming amounts of violence and sadness.”