Thursday, July 28, 2011

Picture Books III

In 1998, Ten Penny Players, as a result of two grants, was able to hire artists to work for us as consultants. Among the visual artists who worked with us were Magie Dominic, Jonathan Sharpe, Desirae Foston, and Molly Barker. Molly Barker was employed by the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players to teach our students how to make picture books.

We met Molly at the annual Indie Book Fair at the Mercantile Library in Midtown, Manhattan. Molly's display of her limited edition art books was on a table next to Ten Penny Players’ display of Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, BardPress poetry chapbooks, Ten Penny Players' children's books, Streams, and curricula.

The picture book project evolved from Waterways’ poetry chapbook series, In Search of a Song, which had also evolved into a district wide program. Making picture books gave students new ways of thinking and approaching a subject, which helped them become better writers.

That school year Molly worked with 16-21 year old students from Frederick Douglass Literacy Center and New York City Vocational Training Center (VTC). Each class was a self-contained unit taught by one teacher. Each student produced a book, which was published in a limited edition. Some of the picture books were selected for publication in Streams.

Motherhood

Debt

We shared the picture book curriculum at the New York State Council on the Arts' Empire State Partnership’s summer seminars which enabled networking and constituency building among arts groups throughout the state. The picture book curriculum developed by Molly Barker and Ten Penny Players entered the NYS Academy of Teaching and Learning in 2000 after it underwent peer review in Albany.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Picture Books II

When I first met Barbara, Thomas was in the fourth grade at PS 41. For three years he had been home schooled. After the passage of PL 94-142, children with disabilities could no longer be turned away from the schools, and he was admitted to the local Greenwich Village elementary school.

Little Poems
Barbara designed a federally funded nutrition curriculum for the school. She wrote and illustrated little books for the classroom: Jolly Molly Molar,

Jolly Molly Molar

and Harmony Hurricane Muldoon, a little girl on a raft in the digestive system.

Harmony Hurricane Muldoon

When we began presenting book fairs on the New York City waterfront, Barbara designed the pages for the early NYS Waterways Project magazines, which were documents of the poetry reading at each event. She used Dover’s copyright free art, old prints from our bookshelves, and her own illustrations. The August 19, 1979 issue contained 19th Century illustrations that accompanied verses for children.

NYS Waterways Project - 1979 5

Barbara helped me mat my drawings, but none were exhibited. My friend, PJ, and I believed that art was priceless. Why attach a value? In London I had asked people to pay what they wanted for my chapbook Chrylust. At an early block fair, on Twelfth Street I asked people to pay what they wanted for my drawings. One local artist argued that artists need to expect a reward for their work. I insisted my art was non-conceptual. PJ had coined the term which he also referred to as noncon art.

Tally - Abstracting an Abstract

Each issue of Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream opened with a title page that contained an illustration and the theme for the month. In January ’87 the theme was “For what is the present after all,/but a growth out of the past?” The title page was illustrated with drawing of a chick developing within and then hatching from an egg. On the contents page was a silhouette of Father Time. He was chasing a dandy in top hat and riding boots. The third page of each issue of Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstreams was traditionally left for an illustration. For 1987, Barbara chose a 19th Century illustration of Father Time, a clock, scythe, old years passing away, a mummy, and a child representing the new year of 1889. Barbara's photographs from the Gansevoort Street Green Market and drawings she reduced on the photocopier illustrated the poems.

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 8 No 1

For the 1996 themes, we did away with words altogether and used pictographs from the Walam Olum (An epic of the Lenni Lenape):

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 17 No 1

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Picture Books I

For 32 years, my wife, Barbara Fisher, has worked with me to realize Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream. She’s read through the many submissions by students, unrecognized writers and accomplished poets. She hand printed covers and inserts on her Kelsey letter press and our leased photocopiers. She has chosen art and created collages that have accompanied the poems on the pages. She has done “the scud work as well as the more interesting stuff.” And jokes that she won’t wear nail polish because her “fingertips are engrained with black printer’s ink.”

In the second issue of the NYS Waterways Project (7/21/79), Barbara used two 19th century drawings as fillers: "floating his tricycle" and "the speaker's free platform."

NYS Waterways Project - 1979 2

A year later (7/26/80),

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 1 No 3

she presented readers with a collage from her children’s book, “Link Ups".

By July, 1984, we’d settled into what has become Waterways consistent format (7x4.25),

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol. 5 No. 7

Barbara was still printing the cover by hand on her letterpress, typesetting the issue on an IBM Selectric typewriter, adding illustrations to the title page, and accompanying the poems with relevent pictures. By July of 1987, we were using a two tone printer and Barbara was putting illustrations on almost every page.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Chapbooks IV

A symbol places the intangible vision of the individual into the material reality of the public realm. The writer evokes experience in names that are symbols; while the publisher takes the writers’ work and goes beyond the naming of things. Publishing brings out the work in print and on line.

For more than thirty years, while printing books of student writing and curriculum for NYC schools and programs, Ten Penny Players continued to publish Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, a monthly poetry magazine, and the BardPress poetry chapbooks. Among the poets we published both in the magazine and in their own chapbooks were Ida Fasel, Joanne Seltzer, Joy Hewitt Mann, and Albert Huffstickler.

Though we're uncomfortable with the fact that Scribd.com carries advertising, the site gives us an opportunity to bring our poetry archive to a larger audience. At this writing there have been more than 230,000 reads of Ten Penny Players’ publications on Scribd.com.

Once their chapbooks were published, students could walk away, write another book, or stay to consider the effects of their published words upon other writers and other communities: How did the rhythm of the author’s voice echo in the reader’s response? What ideas or phrases were repeated? How did it shape contemporary consciousness among other students?

Ten Penny Players online archive of chapbooks provided data to describe reading trends that shifted like the wind. Clouds of chapbooks (the textual embodiments of student voices) passed across cyber-sky.

Poems exist in the consciousness streaming between authors and readers. Ancient poets sought inspiration in the words of the muse carried by whispering mists rising up through fissures in the earth.

To publish poetry is to make manifest a pattern of human communication that asks the reader to respond. The influence that moves poets to make poems leads publishers to put in print books that animate the blood and bones of every day existence.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Chapbooks III

In London, England (1970) I published Chrylust and a poetry broadside that came out of my experience teaching in Liberia.

Four years later on Upper West Side of Manhattan, I began publishing a poetry chapbook series under the imprint BardPress. The poets I published were part of a group then known as the Scribblers. I had founded the group by offering a weekly reading held in the apartment I shared with Vinnie Gunn on West 85th Street. Clint McCown’s Labyrinthiad and my poem, Icarus, were the first chapbooks BardPress published. Works by Barbara A. Holland, Matt Laufer and Patricia Kelly followed.

In 1974, I was also working for Bantam Books, selling new and back list titles to bookstores and distributors by phone. At Bantam I also worked with Ted Solotaroff on the editorial board (for the last two years) of his literary magazine, The American Review. I also worked as a play reader for Joseph Papp at the Public Theater; and initiated a series of poetry readings, the Hell’s Kitchen Poetry Festival, at St. Clement’s Church on West 46th Street.

On W. 10 St. and Greenwich Ave, cater-cornered from the Jefferson Market Library, was Paul Johnston's bohemian garret. PJ was born in 1899, moved to the Village in the 1920’s, and became a fine press printer and book designer. PJ operated a letter press printing fine poetry chapbooks, including the Poetry Quartos for Random House and helped me understand design and publishing in the age of photocopiers.

On Greenwich and W. 12th Street, around the corner from Abingdon Square Park, was Barbara Fisher’s loft, home to Ten Penny Players, Inc. Barbara used a letter press to print miniature books. She exhibited at Manhattan art galleries and the annual Alternative Press New York Book Fair. Ten Penny Players and BardPress began working together in 1978. The New York State Waterways Project was the first imprint from both of us.

By bringing our publishing program to public schools, Barbara and I gained a livelihood, while dedicating ourselves to poetry. The chapbook series, In Search of a Song, began when Barbara taught a weekly writing workshop at Public Schools 114 and 276 in Canarsie (1981). The series continued at the children’s poetry workshop she conducted weekly at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library.

When we brought the project to NYC alternative high schools, I joined the many teachers who were preparing their students to write and read. We were in the classrooms, developing a new audience for poetry. We collaborated with teachers to prepare lessons, introduce students to the work of other contemporary poets, and inspire the students to express their own ideas.

The volumes from our ‘In Search of a Song’ presented a new urban student literature depicting the latter part of the Twentieth Century seen through the eyes of public school students. We were invited into their new world.

Contact with the teachers and teaching artists influenced the students’ work. Teachers helped the students to realize that their thoughts were worth expressing and their talents need not be hidden. The best teachers created a classroom atmosphere where all students felt safe to read their work to others.

Joshua Wolinsky wrote to his teacher:
Thank you Ms. Economos
for showing me the talent
I never took seriously.
Without you, these poems
in this book would never be here.

Students wrote about their esteem and affection for the teachers. Among the many teachers and artists who worked with Waterways were Donna Campbell, Molly Barker, Louis Reyes Rivera, Magie Dominick, Michele Beck, Nena Shaheed, Benny Daniels, Magdalena Gomez, Randy Wright, Lucia Ruedenberg-Wright, Ellen Lytle, Frank Stearns, Alison Zadrow, Sal Canale, Ronald G. King, Jane Califf, Frank Grabinski, Janet Griffith, Paul Douglas, Miriam Lock, Tom Mitchelson Jack Giordano, Madeline Brownstone, Paul Takis, Lisa Jesse Peterson, D. Nurkse, Linda Notovitz, Mel Cohen, Zoe Anglesey, David Glick, Gus Rodriguez, Alison Koffler, Ron King, Matthew Hejna-Luque, Margo Mack, J. A. Brathwaite, Builder Levy, Joan Martinez, Max Mendes, Judith Rosenbaum, Moli Ntuli, Maura Gouck, Thomas Perry, Rodolfo Rodriguez, César Roquez, Ofelia Rodriguez Goldstein, Tyona Washington, Jonathan Sharpe, Roslyn Kaye, James Patton, Thelma Ruffin Thomas, Olga Economos, Jonathan Shapiro, Barnaby Spring, Donald Lev, Enid Dame, Wendy Thorpe, Gail Tuch, Barbara Youngman, Toby Greenzang, Myrtle Liburd, Leila Riley, Ben Jacobs, Paul Auerbach and many others.

I look back over these books twenty years after they were published. Some of the best writing still stands out. The publications are worth repeat readings.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Chapbooks II

In the summer of 1970, my first poetry chapbook, Chrylust, was printed at the London New Arts Lab on Roberts Street in London, England. I hawked it on the streets, parks, galleries, theaters, libraries and coffee houses, including the Arts Lab, the Troubadour, and Roundhouse.

The poems came from journals of creative expression I kept while teaching Literature at Buchanan High School in Liberia, West Africa (1969). I left the Peace Corps and traveled with the journals. On the Canary Islands I burnt most of the manuscript in an act meant to unburden me of their weight. I saved a handful of pages, which I carried through Marrakech and Casablanca in Morocco, Leon and Malaga in Spain; and then across France to Amsterdam and over the Channel to London.

The printer at the London New Arts Lab in 1970 was amused by the slim manuscript of expressive writing that I called "anti-literature." The first edition of Chrylust was limited to a few hundred copies, saddle stitched, with a cover illustration that I had drawn.

I often hawked my chapbook, Chrylust, at the psychedelic events at the the Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road. The poetry reached out to a generation that was forsaking material possessions and unburdening itself from the weight of history. The hippies at the Roundhouse were tripping high above serendipitous safety nets. They were networking for food, shelter, and communication.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Chapbooks I

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration.”
-- Shelly 'In Defense of Poetry'

To develop new audiences for poetry and encourage creative writing, we began in 1978 to publish children, student writers, and unrecognized poets along with accomplished authors. We typeset, photocopied, and saddle stitched our magazine, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, which contained no advertising.

By 1985, our Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players, Inc. was adopted as an arts in education partner for New York City’s Office of Alternative High Schools and Programs, turning out weekly site based magazines and an annual student anthology, Streams. The limited edition site based magazines were typeset, printed, collated, and saddle stitched in our loft. Streams was printed offset and perfect bound by the Print Center, a not for profit literary printer in lower Manhattan.

In 1996, David Bickimer, from Pace University, suggested Ten Penny Players reward students, who present 15 or more poems, with an individual chapbook. The books became part of our chapbook series (In Search of a Song) which Barbara began with the children from her weekly writing workshops at PS 276 and 114 in Canarsie and the Jefferson Market Branch of the NY Public Library in 1981.

In Search of a Song Vol. 1

The original library chapbooks (2.75” x 4.25”) had letter press printed covers and were typeset on an IBM Selectric and saddle stitched. The chapbooks that became part of our arts in education curriculum were modeled after the early Bard Press books I had published. They were (4.25” x 5.5”) typeset using Quark on a Mac computer, printed and collated on a Minolta copier, and saddle stitched by hand.

We adapted to the special needs of our students by publishing literacy students with less than 15 poems, and on occasion publishing prose. A student who made the effort to write 15 poems did not prove she was more deserving of being published than the student who wrote one or two brilliant poems.

Ten Penny Players/Waterways poetry chapbooks were intended to reward the student for positive behavior (creative writing) and develop a new audience for poetry and expressive writing. We published all students, and on occasion discovered the writer who was capable of exceptional poetry. Finding a talented writer did not mean that the student would create better work over time. An author may be constantly challenged to write better, but that will not always be possible.

For many alternative high school students from poor urban neighborhoods, writing a book and seeing it published was the rare occasion when success touched their lives. The same would be true for our students in hospitals and other institutions. And in the adult world for most people the rare joy of that kind of recognition also holds true.

The Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players worked in partnership with NYC’s Alternative High Schools and programs. Waterways brought expressive writing and publishing to schools, group homes, community centers, hospitals, rehab centers, and teen parent programs.

Waterways poetry teachers engaged students with disabilities in New York City’s prison schools in creative writing. Students wrote expressively in their own voices, to state their cases through poetry published in chapbooks. In the mid 1980’s the Waterways Project was introduced as part of NYC’s public school curriculum. Ten Penny Players community of poets, artists, and NYC licensed teachers used word processors and worked on line. Students created files of fifteen poems and submitted them on floppy disks.

For the Internet of the late 90’s, we developed Streams On Line (SOL), an open source program. SOL ran on local intranets and later on the Internet itself. It was designed to help students develop a body of work while getting feedback from teachers and peers.

In 2010 Scribd.com offered us a presentation application and free space for our large archive of print publications. We wanted our archive to be accessible to students, parents, educators, researchers, and the interested public. Giving voice to an era. We had already put the work in print. We never charged for the books. They are our only asset. I digitized chapbooks by scanning them on our Minolta printer, uploading them to Scribd.com, and sharing the link on Facebook and Twitter.

Students were reliving memories from their youth on the Internet. Our work online got the word out while publishing and developing new audiences for poetry. The Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players put creative expression and poetry online to give others a chance to learn.