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.