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How a local poet publishes, from zines to the Internet

The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2009

Last year I wrote a batch of poems, one for every letter of the alphabet and each inspired by an obsolete word of English. I didn't "send them out," as many poets would, to literary journals for their consideration.

Instead, I made a little book. I asked a friend to design and typeset it, which he did, beautifully, and another friend to print it. This friend, Taylor Ball, is from Virginia but lives in Philadelphia now. He runs Parcell Press (www.parcellpress.com), a company that distributes zines and other independent media. At some point he acquired a printing press and learned to use it, so now he can consider himself a publisher, too.

"Zines" are self-published, mostly handmade (maga)zines. They are often, though not always, produced very cheaply on a photocopier, but even inexpensive ones can have more elaborate elements. Some have screen-printed covers; some are hand-bound with thread. They can contain anything a book can contain - poems or stories; memoirs; nonfiction about cooking, gender identity, bike repair. Depending on whom you ask, zines have their roots in '70s punk culture or the '90s riot-grrl scene.

Poets who self-publish trace their lineage to - well, to William Blake, at least - but more recently to Allen Ginsberg, who paid to have something like 25 early copies of Howl printed on a mimeograph machine. My collection, titled Obsolete, is like a book in some ways, but it's also kind of a zine. These things aren't always easy to define - mainly because they don't have to be.

Poetry is especially well-suited to these kinds of projects. Amanda Laughtland, another zine friend of mine, lives in Seattle, where she makes her poetry journal, Teeny Tiny, from one sheet of paper, cunningly folded into eighths.The DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative blog gives a sense of the breadth of work out there; the site even has demonstrations on how to make your own chapbook (another name for a small book). Its tagline is encouraging, seductive: "You are a micropress . . . you just don't know it yet."

Bluestockings, a volunteer-run bookstore on New York's Lower East Side, has sold my zines for a few years now, and in January I participated in a poetry reading there. At the store I found a small, limited-edition zine, one of only 50, of a work-in-progress by Ali Liebegott, a new favorite writer of mine. I bought a copy for $4, and somehow this was far more exciting than discovering she had published a new book.

Sometimes I sit at craft fairs, at a little table I found at a thrift store for $3 (it is, in fact, my kitchen table), and sell my zines and books. This is a good thing to do because then you can talk to people.

"Tell me, with the Internet, aren't zines going away?" people sometimes ask. "With everything being online now?"

"Well, no," I say. "Not really.”

It's like this: Zines and blogs serve different purposes. There are certainly many writers who used to self-publish on paper and now use blogs instead, because it's free or close to it and the scope can be huge. But physically constructing a book has its own pleasures. Sitting on my living room floor and creasing pages with a bone folding tool gives me a visceral satisfaction that I need to feel complete as a writer.

But of course the Internet is valuable. I sell my things online (thelalatheory.etsy.com), as do many self-publishers, and the Internet has helped us connect with one another. Late last year, Krissy Durden, a writer and artist from Portland, Ore., started a networking site called We Make Zines (wemakezines.ning.com), and every day since then new people from around the world have joined it.

Being an inventive self-publisher means being part of a community, which also provides a ready-made readership. I have traded zines with friends in Belarus, Scotland, and the Czech Republic, and my books are sold in a shop in Melbourne, Australia. All of these are connections I made online. I see no reason that the two formats, digital and print, can't comfortably coexist.

Not long ago I interviewed N. Katherine Hayles, a scholar of digital literature, for a newspaper article. Her idea is that, as digital becomes the default medium, books and other printed matter are becoming "fetish objects." She didn't mean this in any disparaging way. She meant that people cherish them. They love to hold them, page through them, read them on the train, take them to bed.

Obsolete, my eye.