I haven't done any kind of 2014 retrospective on my blog yet. In fact, I don't think I've had retrospectives of any kind in recent years. Not because there wasn't anything to talk about but because I've just been too busy. Fortunately, things are quieter this week, so I'm going to take this time to post some highlights from last year in no particular order.
Above is one of the last images I took in Cambridge while it was still 2014. Toni Bee, reading from issue #2 of my poetry journal/zine Stone's Throw as one of its many contributors.
Much of my poetic energies last year were focused on maintaining Stone Soup Poetry and Oddball Magazine. I helped to produce some amazing work for YouTube, public access TV and online publication. I'm proud of what I did, but a weekly grind is still a weekly grind no matter how satisfying it can be. There's going to be some repetition after a while if you're doing anything right, and that needs to be addressed sooner or later. You either quit something, or you do one thing different that helps change the grind just enough to be exciting again.
I created Stone's Throw to try and get some fun back into my work as a poet and editor. I started with a small number of people that I could work fast in putting it together. It also forced me to create a new poem for each issue (I encouraged my contributors to write new pieces based on my themes and would have felt like a hypocrite if i didn't do the same), which jump-started me back to writing after a bit of a dry spell. I even got my old friend and artistic collaborator James Conant in on the action by contributing art for the first issue's cover.
My intention at first was to make Stone's Throw only available in print, experimenting in cheap and fast guerrilla publishing. I did this because I wanted to include poets from Stone Soup Poetry's open mic who were completely removed from the internet. This included Martha Boss, who actually has given me work to be published in Oddball Magazine. I didn't want to take more work from these poets and not give them anything in return by placing it in a forum they couldn't access. A solid contributor's copy was the very least I could do.
When I got the idea to do an issue themed on Ferguson and the trial over Michael Brown's death, I decided to do an online version as well because I wanted to share the amazing and socially relevant work with as many people as possible. So now loveable Luddites like Martha and Laurel Lambert have the best of both worlds as I give friends of mine a potentially wider audience.
Now the contributors want more physical copies to share with people, and more people want to be published in a future issue. So something I intended to fully control kind of got out of control, but in a good way. My plans for Stone's Throw in 2015 include another issue by March, which will either be a theme I've had planned since September, or an issue guest-edited by DiDi Delgado, who gets to pick her own theme and list of contributors.
My thanks to everyone who contributed and read and shared. You all helped me get my poetry mojo back.
Both issues #1 and #2 are still available in print at Stone Soup gatherings and online by clicking here.
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