What is worth fighting for?

What values do you want to carry forward?

Recently, all of us who love the arts have been sitting with these questions. Here at Copper Canyon Press, we have landed on a simple answer: We want a future with poetry in it. And if you’re reading this, you likely do, too.

In our current reality where arts funding remains under constant threat, we invite you to make a stand to create a world we want to inherit by donating to our What Will We Carry Forward? campaign. Your gift will help ensure Copper Canyon Press remains a safe haven for poetry—a home where poetry and poets can thrive, connect, and inspire.

This May, your support will help bring Heritance, Paisley Rekdal’s “most personal collection” yet across the production finish line. A generational “family photo album” set to verse, Heritance is a collection where the personal and the political mirror each other and in which we can continue conversations with those we’ve lost by way of what they’ve left behind. It’s a collection that asks: What is it that we inherit? What values do we want to carry forward? What is worth fighting for?

Our goal is to raise $25,000 by May 31, 2026.

A future with vibrant poetry in it is worth fighting for, and our poets give us the empathy and vision to create it. Your gift will support not only the next step in Paisley Rekdal’s writing life at Copper Canyon Press, but also our entire fall season, including works by Erin Belieu, Sherwin Bitsui, Tishani Doshi, Aleksandar Hemon, Ha Jin, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Chase Twichell, and James Richardson.

When you make your gift today, you affirm the visionary work of Copper Canyon Press poets like Paisley Rekdal. You sustain a Press to which poets can return with confidence at all stages of their writing careers. You give us the chance to create a world worth inheriting. To put it simply, we at Copper Canyon Press believe poetry is vital to language and living, and our poets create art that affirms we are not just alive, but living. Please join us in creating a world we want to inherit and make your gift today.

Your Rewards

Please browse the list of beautiful donor rewards we have cultivated just for you below, including your name in a special acknowledgements section in Heritance.

$25 — One copy of Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal

Receive a copy of Paisley Rekdal’s 2019 book Nightingale, a collection described by the Library Journal as a “must-read,” filled with poems that ask: how does language name, and fail to name, that which permanently changes us?

$50 — One copy of West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal

Receive one copy of the ground-breaking, award-winning hybrid collection West: A Translation. Winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and long-listed for the National Book Award, West is an unflinching hybrid collection of poems and essays that draws a powerful, necessary connection between the United States’ transcontinental railroad’s completion and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943).

$100 — One copy of Heritance by Paisley Rekdal

Be among the very first to receive Paisley Rekdal’s newest collection Heritance, sent to you hot off the press as soon as it arrives at our headquarters from the printers.

$150 — Your name printed in Heritance by Paisley Rekdal

See your name, or the name of a loved one, listed inside Heritance in a special section just for donors to this campaign. You’ll also receive a freshly printed copy, among the first to see the finished volume.

$250 — Exclusive letterpress broadside

Receive all the rewards from the $150 level tier PLUS a hand-typeset letterpress broadside of a poem from Heritance printed exclusively for this campaign.

$500 — Early viewing of Paisley reading a poem from Heritance

Receive all rewards from the $250 level tier, and be the first to receive viewing access to a gorgeous video of Paisley reading a poem from Heritance.

$1,000 — Donor's Circle Membership

Receive all rewards from the $500 level tier, plus curated boxes of poetry in your mailbox every quarter for a year.

$5,000 — Editor's Circle Membership

Receive all rewards from the $1,000 level tier, plus your name printed in a special section of ALL books we publish for a year.

We expect to ship rewards after Heritance publishes in fall 2026. Thank you for your support!

What Will We Carry Forward?

Help Copper Canyon Press create a future worth inheriting, a future with poetry in it.