So far at the conference I’ve overhead lots of talk about online vs. print, which seems to be a hot topic this year. The conversation has many parts: on the shuttle ride over it was about the fight at some journals just to get an online submission manager (fear being that it would increase submissions exponentially and make it unmanageable to cull); then the wide spectrum of traditional print journals that are now wrestling with providing online content (or going online completely to reach wider audiences and cut costs); and now with the Kindle and iPad, the move to downloadable content, possibly making online html/website-based journals obsolete.
And yet I can’t help but think about the counter-trend too: the rise of handmade chapbooks and return to letterpress and book arts. That actually might make a great panel for next year’s AWP, to contrast those two impulses. With some title like “current trends in contemporary poetry: the handmade and the electronic” or something like that. I wonder if anyone would be interested.
I think what Didi Menendez is doing with Oranges & Sardines and MiPOesias and OCHO, and the folk at Ouroboros Review, where the journal is online but laid out like an actual magazine, with turning pages and all, via a service like Issuu, is a good future for lit journals. It can reach a wide audience, has a polished and professional look and feel, can be embedded it sites and blogs, and you have the option to purchase a hardcopy of the journal, so if you really like what you read, you can go to Amazon or Createspace and get a copy for your library.
Morning musings. I passed out last night and couldn’t muster the energy to get back out there, so I ordered room service and watched Project Runway and called it a night. About to eat some breakfast and then am meeting Joe and Chenelle Milford of The Joe Milford Poetry Show at a Starbucks down the street. Check out the latest issue of their new online lit journal, Scythe.