Martha King, a publisher and poet, was born Martha Davis in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1937. King spent her early years in New York City before her family moved in 1950 to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her father, Lambert Davis, became director of the University of North Carolina Press.1 At the University of North Carolina bookstore, King found a copy of the Black Mountain Review with an essay by Robert Creeley, writing that opened her eyes to the experimental work being done at Black Mountain College. King applied for the summer 1955 session—the second to last summer for the college. Her letter of acceptance read: “Come with what money you have in hand and what you are used to for cooking.—Charles Olson, Rector.”2 That summer, students included Tom Field, William McNeill, Michael Rumaker, and Joe Dunn; faculty included Stefan Wolpe, Joe Fiore, Olson, and Creeley; and independent agents included Dan Rice, Ed Dorn, Jonathan Williams, and Fielding Dawson, who visited sporadically. Although Black Mountain challenged King, it also showed her an alternative path for women, one that legitimized a career as a poet rather than simply as a housewife.

After Black Mountain, King moved west, eventually landing in San Francisco in 1957, where she reconnected with Black Mountain poets John Wieners and Joe Dunn at a City Lights Books reading. It was at this reading that she met artist and fellow Black Mountain alum Basil King, who became her lifelong partner. Wieners provided the new couple premarital counseling on the street by giving them an astrology reading, kissing their foreheads, and assuring them, “You’ll be fine. It works.”3

In 1959, the couple moved to New York City and joined the dynamic social circle of poets, artists, and bohemians who congregated at the Cedar Street Tavern, a group that including Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, Frank O’Hara, LeRoi Jones, Diane di Prima, and Dan Rice. King worked a series of office jobs, including for an advertising company, a knitting company, and Random House. The couple had two daughters, Mallory and Hetty, while King earned a reputation within the community as a typist, transcribing speeches by Malcolm X, journals by Hubert Huncke, and manuscripts by points with means. After a decade in Manhattan, the Kings permanently moved to Brooklyn in 1969.

In 1975 King published her first book, Women and Children First, published by Two and Two Press, which was co-edited by King and Susan Sherman. It was followed in 1978 by Weather, published by New Rivers Press, which included drawings by Basil.

King has written of this time, “I didn’t play well with others. Instead I played on my own.”4 This independent spirit led to the creation of the magazine Giants Play Well In the Drizzle, which was published from 1983-1993. The title was inspired by a newspaper headline referring to the New York Giants football team. The first two issues were supported by the Assembling Foundation, but subsequent publications were supported by King and donations from readers. The magazine was distributed for free and produced as cheaply as possible: three pieces of paper were printed on both sides, and then folded up three ways, with one leaf left empty for the address and stamp. King created mock-ups using scotch tape and photocopying, and then photocopied the dummy to create an issue. After she had wrapped up production, King wrote to Sylvester Pollet (in a letter found in the collection) that she had published over 200 people in Drizzle, “the wild, the fine, the dirt bags; minimalist zealots, zine-scene hysterics; ancients (like Gael Turnbull, to whose Migrant, of course, Drizz owes parental deference); classics (like Bob Creeley); and even a couple of little kids.”

In the early 1990s, King also assumed editorship of Michael Carlson’s Northern Lights poetry pamphlet series, which featured one poet per issue, moving the publication from London to Brooklyn. King evolved the project into the short-lived SpotS series, which also focused on one poet per issue.

After the conclusion of these editorial projects in the mid-1990s, King published a series of books, including Seventeen Walking Sticks (1997), Little Tales of Family and War (2000), Separate Parts (2002), Imperfect Fit: Selected Poems (2004), and North and South (2006). Of her poems, Burt Kimmelman has noticed both “the elegance and grace” and the “sinew-and-bone detail”5; while Robert Creeley has commented on King’s “acerbic wit and deft humor.”6

1Martha King, "Seventy Years Ago in the South," Big Bridge 17. Accessed 4/27/2017.

2Martha King, "Outside Inside," A Public Space No. 23.

3Martha King, "Outside Inside," A Public Space No. 23.

4Martha King, "Outside Inside," A Public Space No. 23.

5 "Introduction," Imperfect Fit.

6Blurb, Imperfect Fit.