The first perfect bound volume of Streams came out in time for the last New York Book fair in 1987. It was typeset on an electric typewriter and printed by the Print Center, a not for profit corporation, that assisted many small literary presses.
Richard Organisciak, the principal of Off Site Educational Services, encouraged his teachers to participate. Marcia Klein coordinated the schools creative writing program and presented awards to students whose works were included in Streams. I chose one selection from each of the site based publications that came out that year and included work from each teacher that sent in material at the end of the year.
Ten Penny Players editing, design, and production skills were rough-hewn. Some of that was our folk aesthetic. We were harnessing the new print technology to create simple poetry publications for the public school students attending alternative high schools. Our funding was minimal. Barbara and I donated time, space, and salaries to the project.
The Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players was a small press publishing project that took on an ambitious venture. We inclusively engaged all the students we came in contact with through the Alternative Schools. We were revitalizing an appreciation for the printed page in a segment of the society that others had written off.
Streams became an annual anthology, lasting through sixteen editions. It featured writing from each of the school sites with which we’d been working during the year. It also attracted writing from other students throughout the system.
Streams 1
Waterways published many site based small literary and expressive magazines during the year; and then gathered together the sites for an exhibition, small press book fair, and poetry reading. As teaching artists, Barbara and I shared with the schools not only our publishing skills, but the fellowship we knew from the New York Book Fair and the Waterways events that would generate excitement about small magazines and poetry chapbooks.
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