ABOUT US

Books - Art - Poetry

Black Swan Editions is a small press located in Santa Fe, NM. We are a group of friends in the Southwest who joined together to publish our works because we believe in real books - so you can enjoy reading the printed page. Our imprimatur, Black Swan Editions Logo, as shown in top banner and below, has been developed by Steven E. Counsell for his magical realism art book ILLUMINATIONS The Geography of the Imagination. Within our books you will find:

Black Swan Editions logo, or imprimateur, on white background

- - - - Mythological Imagery
        
        Symbolic/Suurrealistic Imagery
        
        Poetry/Word play
        
        Jungian studies

Steven E. Counsell, is the Visionary Artist with Black Swan Editions. His magical realism art and lyrical poetry leads us into dreamworlds which we have published into his award winning art book titled "ILLUMINATIONS The Geography of the Imagination". About his book Steve states:

"You can arrive at the extra-ordinary and escape from the matter of fact. You can go through the mirror with Alice. And when you go beyond the looking glass, you are coming home. The world is brighter, more mysterious, more freshly minted in new light. Like any excursion that goes beyond the fields we know, you will confront beauty, power, and magic.

What waits for you? What will you wait for? Where does your deeper, perhaps forgotten nature reside? How can you be found? This book is a travel guide for the soul. You can leave for wonderland by just turning the page."

Art and Poetry need to lead us to a higher plane of realization and help our minds to see further than the actual image or print before us. Poetry should be like music. The Poetry and Art within publications from Black Swan Editions invite close scrutiny and exploration. Black Swan Editions wishes you many hours of delight and discovery among the world’s presented inside our books.

Books & Art Prints available through these links:

- - - - BOOK CATALOGUE
        
        ART GALLERIES
        
        SHOP EVERYTHING

Artist Statement

Artist & Authors

Steven E. Counsell, Artist/Author

Steve Counsell is a narrative visionary artist and poet. He believes art must alter perceptions through myth, symbol, and archetype. With a Renaissance, even Flemish technique, in each of Mr. Counsell's art works, he thinks that a high level of technical skill is the very bedrock each observer deserves. Steven says, "It's far more interesting to be technically traditional and put your daring in the ideas or the depth of your feelings, or in the boundlessness of metaphor itself. Art must be transformational or it is merely interior decoration."

Steve feels the same about poetry. The classic definition of poetry really cannot be bettered; music, compression and meaning. The balance of these determine the caliber of the poetics. Steve’s training in landscape photography and environmentalism honed the eye to seek intense visual phenomena, to image and condense. There really isn’t a significant difference between music, poetry and art.To enhance one’s sense of aliveness, change breath and deepen life.

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Steve owned and operated the AMNIOTE GALLERY in Anchorage Alaska where he displayed his art and other Alaskan artists. Through this contemporary gallery he also sponsored “Thursday’s Circle” poetry readings and assisted with publication of several books by the same title. While in Alaska he worked as graphic artist for the Calista Native American Corporation and enjoyed doing landscape photography work. In 1988 he moved the gallery to Santa Fe NM. Currently Steve reads his poetry at different events in Santa Fe and sells art through his studio at his Black Swan Art Studio website.

In 2012 Steve published his first visionary art book titled ILLUMINATIONS The Geography of the Imagination with Black Swan Editions of Santa Fe. This award winning art book is available for purchase by clicking on Book Cover Photo to left.

pen & ink portrait drawing of Janet Eigner

Janet Eigner Portrait drawn by Barbara Alpert

Janet Eigner, Author

Janet Eigner’s What Lasts is the Breath (2013) was a Winner in the AZ-NM Book Awards 2013, a Finalist in the NM Newspaper Women Contest, 2015, a chapbook, Cornstalk Mother (2009), a Poetry Foundation Poet, and on American Life in Poetry. She wrote dance articles and reviews for radio, national and international magazines and newspapers. Forthcoming, a collection documenting 12 backpack trips over four decades into Grand Canyon, poems contrasting layers of the rock canyon and of her own life. She lives communally in Santa Fe, NM with her husband of 56 years, their son and his family very close by in a casita on the same semi-rural acre. Eigner lobbies for gun safety law, supports an organization that brings Israeli and Palestinian young women together, choice for end-of-life options, and a multitude of environmental and sustainable organizations. In spite of the Covid pandemic, they live in a bubble of gratitude with an old dog and three cats, a bit of life as circus.

Poetry book cover illustration by Steven E. Counsell

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Jane Lipman, Author

Jane Lipman’s first full-length poetry collection, ON THE BACK PORCH OF THE MOON, Black Swan Editions, 2012, won the 2013 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award and a 2013 NM Press Women’s Award. Her chapbooks, THE RAPTURE OF TULIPS and WHITE CROWS SECRET LIFE, Pudding House Publications, 2009, were finalists for NM Book Awards in Poetry in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Her poem “Unsung” won Second Prize in a national poetry contest, Honoring Cole Porter, 2015. She was First Runner Up in the Lummox Poetry Contest, 2016.

ON THE BACK PORCH OF THE MOON award winning poetry book by Jane Lipman

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During the ‘80s she founded and directed Taos Institute, which sponsored performances and workshops by Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, Gioia Timpanelli, Paul Winter, and others. She gave Comedy Therapy and Enneagram workshops in NM––also in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Russia. Until Covid sequestering, she gave Mystical Poetry and Writing workshops three times a year in Santa Fe. She has lived in northern New Mexico since 1970.

Linda Whittenberg, Author

Linda Whittenberg has lived East and West, mostly West, but still it’s hard to take the Middle-America farm girl out of her writing. Upon retiring as a Unitarian Universalist minister she turned from sermons to poetry. In the past twenty years, every day before sunrise has begun at her desk in the quiet, before the day has taken over. Thus, she has produced five publications of poems and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Themes run from early childhood memories in her grandparents’ home where she spent her early years to an entire book of poems written in Ireland, where she has traveled many times to take in the green of her Shannon ancestry. She says of her work: "I am always searching for a way to get at the nooks and crannies of my inner life and put them into words that might resonate with others. When someone says, 'I have felt that too,' or 'that struck a chord in me,' I am gratified. But, in all honesty, I write because I love the feeling of putting words together in some new way, the challenge of bringing a bird song onto the page or finding a fresh way to express grief. I think of poetry as a way of countering the destructive impulses that flourish the global political world. It has become my life’s work.”

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Hope Reed, Director Black Swan Editions, Santa Fe NM

Hope Reed, Director of Black Swan Editions

Black Swan Editions is a small book press located in Santa Fe NM. Black swan Editions is owned and operated by Hope Reed her husband Steven E. Counsell. Hope handles the website and all correspondence for Black Swan Editions. Our friends Janet Eigner, Jane Lipman, Linda Whitenberg, and Steven E. Counsell have published their books under the Black Swan Editions imprimatur.

Hope Reed recently retired from the State of New Mexico Governor's Commission on Disability (Governor’s Commission) where she got to work with many wonderful people throughout New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment,” and throughout the nation. As a member of the International Code Council, American National Standards Institute A117.1 Committee she participates in developing accessibility codes for people with disabilities. With this expertise she part-time consults with the Governor’s Commission and the City of Albuquerque Parks & Recreation. Originally from Minnesota, she received a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota, and has worked extensively in recreation, historic, and school site design in Minnesota, Alaska, Florida, and New Mexico.

Stella S. Counsell, Art Student

Hi my name is Stella S. Counsell, I love art, dogs and horses along with other hobbies like martial arts, trumpeting, and writing. I started deciding to draw more ever since I’ve been given access to some new materials instead of the same crayons and stuff, I have decided that water color is a favorite of mine!