Theodore Richards Comments on IPPY Win

 This award is specif­i­cally focused on “inde­pen­dent” authors and publishers,those out­side of the con­glom­er­ates that com­prise the main­stream of — and increas­ingly dom­i­nate — the pub­lishing busi­ness. Its impor­tance, not just for me but for the lit­erary world in gen­eral, is that it cel­e­brates diverse and cre­ative ideas. The world needs rad­ical ideas (like, I hope, Cosmosophia); such ideas are increas­ingly muted as the pub­lishing industry becomes increas­ingly mono­lithic. The thanks I’ve given in the past — to my wife, my family, col­leagues and teachers, the Earth and the stars… —still apply here. But I’d like to make a spe­cial note of Hiraeth Press, given the nature of this award. Here is their mis­sion state­ment:

“We are pas­sionate about cre­ativity as a means of trans­forming con­scious­ness, both indi­vid­u­ally and socially. We hope to par­tic­i­pate in a rev­o­lu­tion to return poetry to the public dis­course and a place in the world which mat­ters. Of the many impor­tant issues of our times we feel that our rela­tion­ship to the envi­ron­ment is of the most fun­da­mental con­cern. Our pub­li­ca­tions reflect the ideal that falling in love with the earth is nothing short of rev­o­lu­tionary and that through our rela­tion­ship to nature we can birth a more enlight­ened vision of life for the future. We believe that art and poetry are the uni­versal lan­guage of the human expe­ri­ence and are thus most capable of trans­forming our vision of self and world.”

Their vision and mine are one and the same. May this be the vision that guides our writers in the future.