The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is now open for submissions! Send us your innovative, new or out-of-print chapbooks that risks, interrogates, plays: chapbookexchange@gmail.com No reading fee!
Check out the collection…
Tag: poetry center chapbook exchange
Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange reading & discussion at San Francisco State University
Reading “little stem” at the SFSU Poetry Center, April 2017
every once in a while it goes the other way too
Feeling rich with poetry gems right now (which is great cos we’re broke & the world at large is feeling more friable than ever). You write these poems & wonder where they came from & then sometimes they are published in great journals like Vector & Flag+Void who are great to work with, & have consistently been producing interesting work for years. This past week saw the release of my poems in both of those journals simultaneously. Amazing. (Copies are available at the links provided.)
In other poetry news – after much planning, I’ve gone ahead & started a new reading series for teens and adults at the Library. We will meet every other month & feature a visiting poet, followed by an open mic. While funds are limited, I have a modest budget for paying performers, & am currently seeking grants as well. I’ll be releasing an open call for submissions soon – so please write me if you know a poet that would like to be considered. Here’s a write-up the local paper did of our first reading in the series featuring MK Chavez!
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is also still open for chapbook submissions through August 1st so send some work our way!:
Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange
Open Reading Submission Period: June 1st – August 1st
The Poetry Center invites emerging and established poets to submit work to the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. The PCCE is a community-curated chapbook archive created in 2010, by poets recommending other poets using an each one-invite one model. See http://poetrychapbooks.omeka.net
We aim to provide and maintain open access to small-press and out-of-print chapbooks to promote readership of contemporary poetry as well as encourage its value and availability for use as free, educational, teaching resources.
Send us your work that plays, sings, risks, interrogates, provokes, and moves beyond.
Guidelines:
Length: 10-40 pages
Currency: New work (written within the last 5 years); published work that’s fallen out of print.
Aesthetics: seeking a range of forms, approaches, hybrids.
There is no reading fee.
Please email submissions to chapbookexchange@gmail.com.
Hope you’re all well & finding some strength in poetry.
DIYnamic: Librarians in Motion – CLA Be the Change 2014
Transcript:
As a librarian and poet, it’s long been of interest to me to find
new ways of providing and sustaining democratized access to
poetry. So – when I found myself in my final year of my MLIS
enrolled in collection development while simultaneously
volunteering at the Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives
at San Francisco State University, synapses ignited. I
began to consider the inherent vulnerabilities of cultural
agency within poetry as a network of ideas reflecting
currencies of our time and began to wonder who
decides what gets saved to tell the stories we leave behind.
Along with digital preservation threats like data loss and bit
corruption, I considered the ephemerality &
vulnerability of poetry chapbooks produced by small presses.
I also sought means of reinvigorating stale & arcane
poetry collections I had found in many public libraries, and
desired a new method of expanding access to socially &
culturally diverse poetry along with promoting work of local
poets in the community. The confluence of my studies and
passions for poetry and librarianship catalyzed my creation
and development of an open-access digital chapbook archives:
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange.
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is a communitycurated
archive created and developed for poets to convene,
correspond, and collaborate via chapbooks: the
currency of the poetry community. Our mission is to engage
our poetry community by sparking dialogues between the
chapbooks in the interest of collaboratively building
a community archive.
As a cooperative model, it has facilitated the compilation of a
diverse and innovative collection of poetry chapbooks for
public access. We began by inviting a select group of
core contributors – and grew our collection in just a few
months to feature chapbooks from over 40 contributors.
The Process
Contributors are invited to share their chapbooks via upload
and as such gain access to the chapbook repository. They are
also invited to recommend another poet to contribute to the
exchange. The model is “take a chapbook, leave a
chapbook.” The chapbook exchange is a contributor-driven
peer-to-peer environment that allows users to exchange
chapbooks as a variation on the pay-to-play theme in that in
this case, poetry is the currency required for participation.
Deploying Chapbooks as Community-Bonding Tools
Chapbooks have a long history of communicating impelling
messages to communities. “From the 16th to early
19th centuries, chapbooks were mass-produced, cheaply made
booklets sold hand-to-hand by traveling salesmen, or chapmen
in Western Europe and North America.” (Craig, 2011) Today’s
chapbooks are regarded as essential to the evolution of
ongoing dialogues around poetics and poetry.
“…[They’re] part of ongoing poetic conversations, as well as a
practice of exchange that is ever present in the maintenance of
community” (Craig, 2011). They are often handmade
and sold cheaply or given as gifts. The message within often
outweighs financial compensation for the author; often, what
fuels their tenacity is a desire to contribute to a powerful
lineage of poets as well as a commitment to correspondence
and collaboration with peers.
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange has made
available virtual hubs for collaboration and exchange. The
open-access format is conducive to quick and efficient
chapbook sharing, and can serve as a forum for writers and
other patrons to communicate and share ideas. Our
desire is for the site to act as a nexus; a lively and vital
cooperative space for poets to practice the continuum of
reading and writing in the creative process. Contributing
creative works in this forum also allows users the opportunity
to generate creative responses to extant works in the
collections.
As a community-curated project, Poetry Center Chapbook
Exchange participants are actively involved in the process of
archiving their own work. Once they become active members,
they are also able to assign metadata to their books with
pertinent descriptors to make their works more findable. In
doing so, they become agents in the shaping of our shared
history for future readers. Contributors also choose their own
creative commons licensing attributes and permissions, and
can permit or decline use in any number of ways.
The site was built using Omeka: “a free, flexible,
and open source web-publishing platform for the display of
library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and
exhibitions.” (Ray Rosenzweig Center for History and New
Media, 2014). We chose Omeka as our trial platform because of
the Roy Rosenzweig and Center for History and New Media’s
great reputation for preserving and archiving creative works.
Omeka enables participants to control how their
work is presented, and offers tutorials to facilitate the user
process.
This type of peer-to-peer crowdsourcing can be a
means of promoting and increasing circulation for existing
poetry collections while directly engaging with local and
global communities. Libraries can improve poetry collections
by crowdsourcing chapbooks from local poetry communities
and expand awareness of collections using social media to
share chapbooks. A poetry project of this kind will serve all age
groups, and will be particularly vital for reengaging teens on
the move. Teens are mobile content creators. Libraries
recognize that “if librarians want to attract young adults to
their collections and services, they must become integral
members of the online community.” (Hassell and Miller, 2003)
Libraries have the opportunity to reshape their teen image by
creating virtual spaces where teens will feel free to collaborate,
create, consume, and share content with peers on the move. At
the same time, they can promote intergenerational bonding
between unlikely age groups.
As Tyckoson (2003) writes “The nature of publishing is going
to change and libraries are going to play a greater part in the
process.” Libraries can provide both the tools and the expertise
to help users get projects off the ground. Our communities are
rife with content creators, and the urge to share our creative
efforts has galvanized social media as a primary source of
information and communication. Outreach to local museums,
archives, community colleges, and K-12 schools may also be a
way to develop existing collections reflective of the local
community. By incorporating works by local poets and writers,
public libraries can involve users directly by showcasing
selected works to ensure patron’s continual value in the future
of library service.“Community practitioners need to know how
given communities tell stories and how powerful these stories
can be for either demoralizing or strengthening
community.” (Collins et al, 2004)
Flexibility
Like any project, the initial concept for the chapbook exchange
went through several iterations requiring flexibility and
patience. Initially designed for public libraries & later
conceptualized for an archives within an academic institution,
it was necessary to consider how this might change the target
audience and/or create a more insular reader community,
thereby possibly inhibiting access to the “average public
library user.” While the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is
publicly accessible via URL: poetrychapbooks.omeka.net, the
predominant audience is largely comprised of other poets.
How I hope to mitigate this problem & expand access for nonpoets
is to recommend the chapbook exchange as a discovery
tool teachers can employ in the classroom to promote active
learning, collaboration, and creative problem solving through
reading & writing poetry along with navigating new
technologies. Creating student collections in Omeka can also
help learners discover primary resources along with growing
their interests in history and technology. I’m interested in
encouraging & teaching information & media literacies
through diversified tech tools to augment, support, & partner
with local schools to best serve youth in our community.
Connecting learners with the right tools is critical to their
academic success.
In creating, developing, and managing the digital archive that
became the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange, I was able to
gain project management skills that prepared me for my role as
the new Teen & Adult Services Librarian with Mendocino
County Libraries. Along with creating engaging programming
and services for teens and adults, managing projects effectively
is key to my ability to provide energetic and efficient services to
all our patrons.
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange: A Community – Curated Model
Following is a transcript of my talk at AWP 2014 where I presented on a panel commemorating 60 years of the Poetry Center’s Digital Archive. I presented the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange in its current manifestation as both archive and site for circulation of current work. I discussed its creation, development, and direction as digital repository; the importance of community curation, development of collaborative tools within a public space, and original notion of chapbook as gift–sharing poetry as opposed to ownership.
____________________________________________________________________________
How much agency do we have in deciding what gets saved to define a poetic history or lineage? When we talk about born-digital, electronic, or out-of-print books that exist only as PDFS or Word documents, there’s a huge risk for future data loss due to format obsolescence and bit corruption. Sometimes, these creative losses are a welcome relief – we don’t need to save everything after all nor is it possible to do so. But as communities of practice, it behooves us to participate in the telling of our shared history for future generations by collecting moments enough to define our time.
With the Poetry Center, I’ve taken a small step in this direction by creating an open-access digital repository to help expand and ensure sustained access to chapbooks. The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is a community-curated archive created and developed for poets to convene, correspond, and collaborate via chapbooks: the currency of the poetry community. Our mission is to engage our poetry community by sparking dialogues between the chapbooks in the interest of collaboratively building a community archive.
The model for the chapbook exchange was catalyzed by the need to invigorate poetry collections in public libraries and was expanded to include extant poetry communities. This cooperative model has facilitated the compilation of a diverse and innovative collection of poetry chapbooks for public access. We began by inviting a select group of core contributors – and have grown our collection in just a few months to feature chapbooks from over 40 contributors.
Contributors are invited to share their chapbooks via upload and as such gain access to the chapbook repository. They are also invited to recommend another poet to contribute to the exchange. The model is “take a chapbook, leave a chapbook.” The chapbook exchange is a contributor-driven peer-to-peer environment that allows users to exchange chapbooks as a variation on the pay-to-play theme in that in this case, poetry is the currency required for participation.
Deploying Chapbooks as Community-Bonding Tools
Chapbooks have a long history of communicating impelling messages to communities. “From the 16th to early 19th centuries, chapbooks were mass-produced, cheaply made booklets sold hand-to-hand by traveling salesmen, or chapmen in Western Europe and North America.” (Craig, 2011) Today’s chapbooks are regarded as essential to the evolution of ongoing dialogues around poetics and poetry. “…[They’re] part of ongoing poetic conversations, as well as a practice of exchange that is ever present in the maintenance of community” (Craig, 2011). They are often handmade and sold cheaply or given as gifts. The message within often outweighs financial compensation for the author; often, what fuels their tenacity is a desire to contribute to a powerful lineage of poets as well as a commitment to correspondence and collaboration with peers.
A 2009 report from the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute via the Poetry Foundation titled Poetry and New Media: A User’s Guide – describes their “vision for engaging educators, institutions, and communities” and names the importance of open-access publishing and “working to increase the access of poets as producers.”
The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange aims to foster that ethic, by making available virtual hubs for collaboration and exchange of chapbooks. To augment existing print collections as well as build a virtual poetry collection sustained by global and local poetry communities. We’ve maintained an instrumental role by providing and moderating key access points to this portal to engage local writers. The open-access format is conducive to quick and efficient chapbook sharing, and can serve as a forum for writers and other patrons to communicate and share ideas. We’re interested in capturing the many ways we activate one another as writers in the community.
Currently, the site is in the early stages of what we hope will be a lively and vital cooperative space for poets to practice the continuum of reading and writing in the creative process. Contributing creative works in this forum also allows users the opportunity to generate creative responses to extant works in the collections. As such, this chapbook exchange might be a model for teachers wishing to employ emerging technologies in the classroom to highlight opportunities for both active and collaborative learning.
As a community-curated project, Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange participants are actively involved in the process of archiving their own work. Once they become active members, they also able to assign metadata (or tag) their books with pertinent descriptors to make their works more findable. In doing so, they become agents in the shaping of our shared history for future readers. Contributors also choose their own creative commons licensing attributes and permissions, and can permit or decline use in any number of ways.
The site was built using Omeka: “a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.” (Ray Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, 2014). We chose Omeka as our trial platform because of the Roy Rosenzweig and Center for History and New Media’s great reputation for preserving and archiving creative works. Omeka enables participants to control how their work is presented, and offers tutorials to facilitate the user process. Omeka uses Dublin Core metadata standards and allows for user tagging which enables participants to define how items are remembered. It also hosts various plug-ins, which allows users to import myriad file formats.
Cooperative Archiving & Preservation
As archivists, it is incumbent on us to meet certain criteria to maintain our digital collections: digital objects must be controlled, i.e. findable, secure, readable, renderable, and authentic. Digital preservation necessitates the use of metadata by which to store and retrieve our digital objects. A collection must be safe and secured from both internal and external threats. We must also know when to upgrade our software and hardware to maintain readability of our collections. Congruent with readability is renderability; we must know how our digital objects should be displayed.
Though not without its limitations, the cooperative archiving model is an active means toward long-term preservation. First, by crowdsourcing descriptive metadata from the community to assign to our digital collections, we are improving chances for a file’s findability in 10 or 15 years by activating memories of individuals as well as the community at large. Through remembering nuances or details, we give voice to these subtleties and allow for the chance to re-experience lived events through the archive. In this sense we do indeed converse with the dead.
Another benefit of cooperative archiving is the use of community standard file formats, which will aid renderability later when we want to read files. Experts in digital preservation recommend opting for community standard or widely used data formats like PDF because there are greater chances that we’ll have the right programs to open files.
The LOCKSS system, which is also known as (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), may also help ensure that our peers or colleagues will have a copy of our book downloaded to their hard drive. While this is a common preservation method, it is not necessarily the most secure since LOCKSS lends itself to the possibility of copies being whittled down one by one for various reasons (unreadable formats, human error, etc). However, cooperative archiving does allow for more content to be saved due to sheer volume. Lastly, cooperative archiving encourages participants to share their diverse skills, knowledge, and expertise and facilitates opportunities to learn from others in the community.
Future Directions
Some future directions for the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange are to cooperatively bridge the gaps between the historicity of the archive and the currency of pen striking paper. We’re interested in what happens when communities come together to archive the now while also honoring historical conversations around poetics, art, and poetry that helped generate contemporary creative works. As archives are creative forces in themselves, we’re excited by the energetic possibilities for poets to further engage with the collection by producing new works and developing partnerships.
As a cooperatively curated site, the chapbook exchange can also be a self-sustainable method of disseminating the current arcs of various poetic movements and potentially may prove successful in engaging users all over the world. In fact, we recently added a bilingual chapbook to the collection from a poet living in Ireland who had written to us with interest.
Conclusion
Our sense of communing with the dead through the written word, our wonder and fulfillment at the dread and elation of writing – These are some of the reasons we feel called as readers, as writers, and also as archivists. It is this continuum that catches us in its legacy as we root with it. As we live and write we extend laterally to encompass the time we’re in, the currencies moving about, and we pulse on. It is also this vitality and community that we as writers can feel alienated from or urged to maintain. However, our combined resources are mighty – and with a little collaboration and cooperation – we may just keep this thing going.
References
American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights. Accessed May 10, 2012 from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill
Andrade, Mary. 2012. Crowdsource your next program design. T+D, 66(3), 52-56.
Antonucci, Ron. 2004. A rhyme a day. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ljinprint/currentissue/871807-403/collection_development_quotpoetryquot_a_rhyme.html.csp
Caplan, Priscilla. 2009. Understanding PREMIS. Library of Congress. Retrieved from at http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/understanding-premis.pdf
Collins, K., Furman, R, & Riddoch, R. 2004. Poetry, writing and community practice. Human Service Education, 24(1), 19-32.
Craig, Ailsa. 2011. When a book is not a book: objects as players in identity and community formation. Journal of Material Culture, 16 (1), 47-63.
Dymoke, S. & Hughes, J. 2009. Using a poetry repository: how can the medium support pre-service teachers of English in their professional learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing in a digital age? English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (3), 91-106
Fallows, D; Horrigan, J; & Lenhart, A. (2005). Content Creation Online. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, February 29. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2004/Content-Creation-Online/2-Content-Creation-Online/1-The-material-people-contribute-to-the-online-world.aspx
Grotke, A. 2011. Cooperative archiving: Event harvesting in perspective. Annual meeting with Library of Congress and National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Retrieved from http://search.loc.gov:8765/digitalpreservation/query.html?st=1&charset=utf-8&lk=1&nh=10&si=0&col=loc&qp=url%3A/http%3A//www.digitalpreservation.gov/&qt=revolution
Holley, Rose. 2010. Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3) 5-23.
Hughes-Hassell, S., & Miller, E. T. (2003). Public library websites for young adults: Meeting the needs of today’s teens online. Library and Information Science, 25, 143–156.
Jones, P. (2002) New Directions for Library Service to Young Adults. Chicago: American Library Association.
Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2005). Teen content creators and consumers. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, November 2. Accessed April 27, 2011: http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp
RLG. (2002). Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities: an RLG-OCLC Report. Retrieved from: http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/past/trustedrep/repositories.pdf
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. About CHNM. Retrieved December 10, 2011 from http://chnm.gmu.edu/about/
SinhaRoy, S. 2011. Libraries tap into the crowdsource. American Libraries, 42(11/12), 22-23.
Smith, Aaron. (2010). Mobile Access 2010. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 7. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Mobile-Access-2010.aspx
Tyckoson, David. 2003. On the desirableness of personal relations between archivists and readers: the past and future of reference service. Reference Services Review, 31 (1), 12-16
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Copyright
apoetlibrarian by Melissa Eleftherion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
A Poet Librarian 