It's the spoken word guide that’s essential to the survival of those interested in the poetry scene in and around New York City. For most of its history it was a bursting-at-the-edges broadsheet heralding locations and times for readings, lectures, performances and workshops. Twenty-one years after the first free monthly issues were dropped off at bookstores, cafes, libraries and other spots where literary types congregated, Poetry Calendar has expanded into a magazine. Event listings now share space with articles, interviews, essays and reviews.
"The changes we've made in format and content reflect poetry's recent growth and popularity," says Martin Paddio, publisher of Poetry Calendar since 1995. "The listings no longer seemed enough, it needed to be revitalized."
Poetry Calendar was founded in 1976 by poets Bob Holman, Susi Timmons and Sara Miles. "We knew each other from being around the poetry spots," says Miles, editor of the poetry anthology Ordinary Women (Ordinary Women Books, 1978) and now a freelance writer in San Francisco. "We thought of it as a service and had no intention of turning it into a little magazine."
According to Holman, a producer of "The United States of Poetry" television series, the late seventies was the best of times for poetry but few seemed aware of everything going on in it. "There were vibrant and diverse communities around the city, performance poets, the language school, the New York School, those at the St. Mark's Poetry Project," Holman says. "They didn't know much about each other, or as much as they should have. There was no way to find out who was reading where and when. We decided to formalize this, make a disposable list that could hang on the refrigerator door and then be thrown out or used as a placemat when it was no longer needed."
Holman, Miles and Timmons intended for Poetry Calendar to be a democratic listing that would include all poets and venues, the establishment and the upstarts, without a rating or star system. It didn’t matter to them if it was a Pulitzer Prize winner reading at the Dia Art Foundation or a young poet reading at a cafe on the Lower East Side, or if it was formal or experimental poetry being read or performed: they wanted the fugitive readings and events to appear in Poetry Calendar and to receive the same amount of space as all others. If it had to do with poetry, it was listed.
The first issues of Poetry Calendar, which at the time was called NYC Poetry Calendar/City Geese, were typed on three legal-sized sheets of paper, copied, stapled and distributed around the city by volunteers. Soon after it appeared, Holman, Miles and Timmons were calling up event hosts and asking them to submit their upcoming events. "After a while we drove their schedules, pushed them to set them up," Holman says. It was Miles' idea to use geese as the mascot for Poetry Calendar. She remembered that in ancient Rome geese were employed much like watchdogs--when a stranger came near, the geese squawked. "We were the squawkers," Holman says. "We told everyone where and when poetry was happening." The "city geese" had different themes in each month's issue. A "Geester Egg" on the front of the April, 1980 issue is wrapped in yellow and green bands. On the back of the same issue, a row of female images that look like Barbie dolls are fashionably dressed in "Geese Styles for the 80's."
Holman, Miles and Timmons used their own money and small donations from individuals to pay for paper and copying. "After two years of this we got a call from the New York State Council for the Arts," Miles says. "Someone there knew about Poetry Calendar and wanted us to apply for a grant. They wanted to give us money. We hadn't thought of doing that. We didn't think of ourselves as a legitimate literary organization."
Poetry Calendar received financial assistance from NYSCA in 1978 and also from Con Edison. As more readings, lectures and performances were included, the size of Poetry Calendar had to increase with them. The legal-sized format changed to a broadsheet and was printed at the Print Center, a non-profit organization in downtown Brooklyn where Frank Murphy worked. Murphy was a co-editor of Poetry Calendar from 1980 to 1991 and its printer from 1979 to 1995. "They negotiated a good price to have it done there," Murphy says. "Whatever extra paper was around was used for it no matter what color it was--pink, cream, light blue."
"I was using Poetry Calendar, knew Bob, and asked him if he needed help," says Sharon Mattlin, co-editor of Poetry Calendar from 1980 to 1991, and editor until 1995. "He gave me the alphabetical index file of subscriptions and I took that over."
By 1980 Holman and Timmons had left, Miles soon followed and Mattlin and Murphy shared editorial responsibilities. Gathering information, tracking subscribers, and writing the lists was almost a fulltime job for Mattlin. It also required the use of her telephone, mailbox, and much of the room in her East Village apartment.
"It was an obsession," Mattlin says. "Sometimes I'd walk by a run-down bar advertising a poetry reading, go in and talk to the owner about it. I wanted to get every event in there."
As had Mattlin, Murphy, who has published five books of poetry with small presses, also sacrificed to keep it comprehensive, accurate and punctual.
"I postponed a hernia operation to print it," Murphy laughs at the recollection. "The situation wasn't life threatening but my doctor wanted me in the hospital as soon as possible. I told him it'd have to wait until Poetry Calendar was done. We never missed getting it out on time. Not once.
Mattlin believed the contemporary poetry scene could be daunting for those just starting out and trying to find a way into it. "It's why I went after venues that would not otherwise be listed," Mattlin says. "I thought of myself as a matchmaker bringing poets to the places they belonged. Some venues didn't care if they were listed, but I did. I knew it would be important to someone." As time went on sponsors became more prompt at getting the information to her and she spent less time on the phone asking for it.
In the early eighties, two weekends of labor-intensive work were required to produce Poetry Calendar, one to paste it up and one to print and deliver it. Mattlin and Murphy typed the listings on crack-and-peel paper, cut them into strips, and placed them atop stacks organized by the days of the month on which the events would take place. The deadline for event information was around the twentieth. After that the crack-and-peel strips were set onto a master copy and given to a typesetter. From the typeset copy a master plate was shot and sent to Murphy at the Print Center.
The front of the broadsheet was used for the listings, separated into appointment calendar format by days of the month. It was unusual for there to be a day without an event, and most days had several, some more than ten. The back of the broadsheet was used for advertising, a locations key with the names, addresses and phone numbers of all of the sponsoring venues, and a "notes" column.
"The notes area was a letter to the reader," Mattlin says. "It was used to admonish them to get listings in on time, to subscribe, and to support the community." A note in the April, 1980 issue about the sixth annual New York Book Fair read: "At this writing there is a possibility of a transit strike. Don't let it stop you! Walk. Run. Fly. Bike. Jog. Roller skate. But don't miss it (the City Geese will be there).
Poetry Calendar developed as the poetry scene expanded. More readings and events were added and it became increasingly important to those running them. "We got better at knowing what was going on out there," Mattlin says. "Eventually, the appointment calendar look had to go, there was too much white space around each date." Three dense columns of listings replaced it. Entries were on both sides of the broadsheet and workshops were added. "Advertising was next to go, which meant losing money, and the city geese soon followed," Mattlin adds. "We started using two colors of ink to orient the reader's eye in the dense columns of listings."
Mattlin and Murphy didn’t have the budget to add more pages. Mattlin admits they were not business people or fund-raisers. "Poetry Calendar was frozen in content and format," she says. "Grants from NYSCA continued, but began to diminish." NYSCA funding peaked at fourteen thousand dollars in 1987 and dropped incrementally to seventy-five-hundred by the time Mattlin left. To compensate, Mattlin periodically increased the subscription rate--from eight dollars a year, to ten, to twelve. Mattlin and Murphy paid themselves a salary of a few hundred dollars a month after production costs. Small as it was, it represented much of what Mattlin lived on for ten years while the building she had an apartment in was neglected by the city. During that time she paid fifty-five dollars a month in rent. "The city had bought it with the intention of tearing it down and replacing it with a project of some kind, but they never did this. It was as if Poetry Calendar was also getting a grant from the city," Mattlin says.
The Print Center closed in 1985. Mattlin and Murphy bought the printing press used to print Poetry Calendar and moved it into a rented space in the basement of a building in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Murphy continued to print Poetry Calendar and Mattlin upgraded production by renting computer time by the hour. The number of listings had increased to almost four hundred a month and every available corner of space was used. "Money was tight and I had to increase subscriptions to fifteen dollars at the end," Mattlin says. "I did whatever I could to cut corners. I didn't like asking subscribers for more money.
Mattlin knew the poetry scene had grown beyond the ability of one broadsheet and one staff person to keep track of it. Murphy had left as co-editor in 1991. As Mattlin had played matchmaker with venues and poets, she played that role again when she decided to find a new publisher for it. "I was looking for someone who knew how much work it was going to take and would keep it responsive to the needs of the community," she says. "I was willing to wait for as long as it took to find that person."
Before taking over Poetry Calendar from Mattlin in 1995, Martin Paddio met with approximately a dozen members of New York's poetry community, including Holman and Lee Bricetti, the Executive Director of Poets House in Manhattan. "We discussed how Poetry Calendar might grow from where it was," Paddio says. "I came away from these meetings encouraged and inspired to get underway. Bob and I talked about the potential of taking it beyond the listings. He also suggested I set up an advisory board. Lee gave me a lot of practical insights on how to build and fund an organization." All agreed with Paddio that Poetry Calendar had the potential to be more than a listings medium, that it could also spread rich ideas and writing throughout the community.
Paddio has over ten years of experience in circulation management and promotion in non-profit publishing houses. He also has a degree in finance from the University of Southern California. Perhaps this latter fact as much as his publishing background and love for writing and art has helped him to achieve his goal to make Poetry Calendar a small publishing organization.
"To do this I knew I had to generate new money," Paddio says. "I thought advertising and raising the subscription rate a few dollars were the key elements that would accomplish this. We could no longer be dependent on the vicissitudes of public funds."
Paddio rented an office from the Limon Dance Foundation, a six foot by six foot space in a corner of the dance studio on Broadway near Houston Street in Manhattan. That’s where on one or two days a month the listings are entered on computers that have been donated to Poetry Calendar. The September, 1995 issue, the first Paddio published, saw the format of Poetry Calendar change from the pastel broadsheet to a sixteen page magazine. The listings were spread out and advertisements were back, an average of about one per page. "We had eight hundred dollars of advertising in that issue," Paddio says. Paddio asked Lina Pallotta to be the staff photographer and three of her black and white photos appeared on the cover of that issue. Pallotta's photos, the listings, and advertisements were the basis of Poetry Calendar through the March, 1996 issue.
Paddio's search for an editor ended in late 1995 when he was introduced to Molly McQuade by Mary Bisbee-Beek, a member of the Board of Directors of Poetry Calendar. "Molly offered to fill the role and I gladly accepted," Paddio says. McQuade has been an editor and journalist for over fourteen years. She has published essays, reviews and articles in The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, Lingua Franca, and many other publications. She is presently a Pew Fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and a columnist for Hungry Mind Review. "It was a good match," Paddio says. "I was pleased to find someone with so much experience. I also think she was attracted to the magazine's potential."
Paddio and McQuade targeted the April, 1996 issue as the first to showcase the expanded thirty-two page format, deciding to distribute it during the first annual National Poetry Month when poetry would be receiving nationwide publicity. McQuade asked writers she knew to contribute to it. That issue included an interview with Poetry editor Joseph Parisi by Bruce Murphy, and reviews of books by Robert Pinsky, John Haines, Charles Wright and others. The listings were made more compact to save one or two pages of space so more writing could be included. Also appearing in that issue was the first installment of the "Wordwatch" column, which was McQuade's invention. McQuade asks a poet to write about a single word, one that might be obsessing them. In the April, 1996 issue poet Edmund Pennant used the request to fill half a page writing about lugubrious: "'Lugubrious,' spoken with the lips pursed, the oo doloriously stressed, and with a slight widening of the eyes, can provide the pointed put-down par excellence--mortally mocking or sticky as shoe-goo, depending on how much oo you put into it."
Paddio's vision to include work that accentuated affinities between poetry and various other arts, especially opera and painting, would continue to be realized in forthcoming issues. "I had in mind collaborations, of painting and poetry by Kenneth Koch and Larry Rivers, and also by W.H. Auden, Chester Kallman and Igor Stravinisky in 'Rake's Progress,'" Paddio says. "I also wanted articles by poets doing other things besides writing poetry." Following issues included an interview with poet Sapphire about her first novel Push (Knopf, 1996), an essay by Denise Levertov about a bicycle trip she made to Cezanne's studio in Provence in 1951, and an essay by Edwin Frank about an afternoon at the Guggenheim Museum with Ann Lauterbach.
"Unpredictable," is the first word McQuade uses to answer the question about her future editorial plans for Poetry Calendar.
Before starting as editor, McQuade talked with about thirty teachers, booksellers, poets and editors, including Ira Silverberg, Associate Publisher of Serpent's Tail/High Risk Press and poet Galway Kinnell. From these conversations she developed a fourteen page plan to show to Paddio. "I wanted to clarify my own thoughts about what might be possible," McQuade says. "Mostly I've stuck to what I outlined for Martin. It's not to be a journal of poetry, but writers entertaining thoughts about it. We also want to build it into something we can afford to edit without losing the possibility of surprise." As an example of what she means, McQuade mentions the short story "The Rare, Fat-Faced Chinese Peony" by Rudy Wilson that appeared in the May, 1996 issue. McQuade had read it for a short fiction contest in Chicago and subsequently asked him for it. The story is about poetry readings in a small town cafe and contained just the type of unusual poetry-related material McQuade was looking for. In addition to "Wordwatch," McQuade added another new feature called "The Poem That Never Was." She asks a poet to think of a poem they would have liked a poet to write. In her essay "Lyoo BLYoo" that appeared in the June, 1996 issue, poet Virginia Allen described a poem she wished Pushkin had written.
"We don't want to restrict the editorial scope and we plan to include work beyond the New York community," McQuade adds. "The Parisi interview is an example of this. We'll also have reviews in every issue, some long, some short. The only criterion we have is to review books not getting attention elsewhere and encourage reviewers to approach them with a fresh perspective. Martin and I also strongly feel that writers be paid a nominal fee even if we're not."
"The listings are still very important," Paddio says. "But I want to see Poetry Calendar evolve to where people go to it for the writing first. I want to push it to the outermost. I could see it getting bigger though that would require a larger budget."
The budget has doubled since Paddio became publisher. Its revenue comes from grants from NYSCA and The Greenwall Foundation, subscriptions, fundraising and advertising. The September, 1996 issue had twenty-six-hundred dollars of advertising and it now represents twenty-five percent of Poetry Calendar's budget. Subscribers have increased to seven-hundred-fifty, some from as far away as England and California. The remainder of the eleven thousand issues printed are distributed to approximately one hundred places in metropolitan New York. Eighty-five percent of the distribution is in Manhattan and Paddio doesn’t yet see a need to spread more issues beyond the city, though he doesn’t exclude it as a possibility.
After one and half years of expansion Paddio and McQuade agree that Poetry Calendar is still in development, still finding its mark. Its aim seems true.
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