While Norton's relaunched Liveright imprint under Bob Weil is mostly focused on nonfiction and edgy mainstream fiction, the imprint's director of publicity Peter Miller is working to build excitement around poetry for the upcoming season. In June 2013, the relaunched Liveright will publish its first debut poet: Columbia MFA graduate Adam Fitzgerald, whose first book is called The Late Parade, a collection of 48 poems which Boston Review has said perform a “fire dance around meaning itself.”
Liveright--which was founded in 1917 and was, from its beginnings, known for publishing important poets like Hart Crane, ee Cummings and T.S. Eliot--was acquired by Norton in 1974 and has been a repository for its storied backlist, having released no new books until Weil took over and published his first list in April 2012. Given its storied history in 20th century poetry, Miller says that while "most publishers don’t put a lot of money behind their poets, this is an opportunity to bring some attention to Liveright."
Miller says he'll focus on events in terms of the publicity campaign for The Late Parade: he hopes to arrange readings for Fitzgerald in various cities, pairing him with well-known poets. Miller also hopes to place poems from the collection in magazines around the time of publication.
Liveright has a few other poetry books on the spring list, including a reissue of the collected poems of major mid-century African American poet Robert Hayden, an author whose work has, until now, been a Liveright backlist title in an old edition. The imprint will also reissue an edition of Eliot's The Waste Land. Both of the will be overseen by Norton's Jill Bialosky--Miller says there is much synergy between Norton and Liveright, which will also publish a new translation of Dante by Clive James. The last time Liveright published a debut volume of poetry, it was Hart Crane’s White Buildings in 1926.
