How a Local Poet Publishes, From Zines to the Internet
by Katie Haegele, special to the Philadelphia Inquirer

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 he 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.

If you don't know, zines are self-published, mostly-handmade (maga)zines. They are often, though not always, produced very cheaply on a photocopier, but even these inexpensive ones can have more elaborate elements. Some have screen-printed covers; some are hand-bound with thread. They can be literary, with poems or stories, or they may contain memoir-style writing, or be about nonfiction topics - cooking, gender identity, bike repair. 

Depending on who you ask, Zines have their recent roots in 70s punk culture or the 90s riot-grrl scene. Other kinds of do-it-yourself publications have their own histories. Comics artists traditionally start out making "minicomics" with the hope, sometimes, of getting picked up by a publisher. Book arts is a category of fine art that seems to be growing in popularity - the careful construction or deconstruction of a form that sometimes transcends its content.

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 *Obsolete* collection 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. 

Amanda Laughtland is another zine friend of mine. She lives in Seattle, where she makes her poetry journal, Teeny Tiny, from one sheet of paper, cunningly folded into eighths (www.teenytiny.org). Poetry might be uniquely suited to these kinds of projects. The DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative blog (diypublishing.blogspot.com/) gives a sense of the breadth of work out there, and the site even has demos on how to make your own chapbook. Its tag line is encouraging, seductive: "You are a micropress ... you just don't know it yet." 

Bluestockings (http://bluestockings.com/), a volunteer-run bookstore in 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 (http://www.aliliebegott.com/), a new favorite writer of mine. I bought a copy for $4, and somehow this was far more exciting than discovering she'd published a new book. 

Sometimes I sit at craft fairs, at a little table I found at a thrift store for $3 (and 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? With everything being online now?" people sometimes ask.

"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 I need to feel complete as a writer. 

But of course the Internet is a valuable tool. I sell my things online (thelalatheory.etsy.com), as do many self-publishers, and the Internet has helped us connect with each other. Late last year Krissy Durden (www.ponyboypress.com), a writer and artist from Portland, OR, 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 a crafty 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 (www.stickyinstitute.com). All of these are all 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, people cherish them. They love to hold them, page through them, read them on the train, take them to bed. 

Obsolete, my eye.