On Making Zines

Crafting Poetry Publications and Communities

Dear read poetry friends,

Zines (pronounced “zeens,” short for magazines) are one of the most accessible DIY forms of publication that exist. Often made by individuals or small groups, they prioritize sharing culture and ideas over profit. They are fun, collaborative projects, simple ones are easy to make at home with the iconic 8-page mini-zine style. Or can be as expansive or digital as you wish!

Born of fan culture and DIY/punk cultures, zines often prioritize the freedom of expression and the accessibility of sharing information. They are often given away or made available for free online. If looking for a place for your zines, or to find zines local to you, first places to check should be independent or second-hand bookstores, coffee shops, or wherever your local artistic/writer community gathers.

Zines have limitless potential — perhaps as a passion project, an accessible way of sharing information and resources, or as a form of artistic or political expression. Poetry is a popular subject matter for zines because it captures many of the similar themes or creative impulses behind zine-making.

Riot grrrl and Queer Zines

The cultural importance of zines is in part due to their ties to countercultural movements. Manuscripts and printings of poems weave through this radical history, ideas and communities formed and traceable through the pages of zines people created.

Poetry is a place for self-disclosure; all of it, authentic and independent, is accessible to anyone. An avenue to expression of selfhood and a freedom of being, it tied perfectly to the art and political productions being made and channeled through zines by countercultural communities.

Riot grrrl was an underground feminist punk movement that emerged primarily in the early 1990s in the disparate Washingtons — in Olympia, Washington, and in Washington D.C. The movement was targeting sexism and sexual assault, mixing punk music with political activism and a strong emphasis on DIY. Zines were a dominant form of expression for this movement, a channel for the music, literature, and ideas the Riot grrrls were building. Refusing to assimilate to anyone else’s creative or social standards, zines were the perfect outlet. Fanzines were a place for interviews and feminist topics and for expression of personal experiences with sexism. A form of writing instruction, they also encouraged women to dive into literature, essays, and poetry.

Many of the punk bands, such as Bikini Kill, started creating zines and DIY flyers for their shows and fans. But the art took off in the movement as a whole.

“Evolution of a Race Riot” was a compilation listing resources and compiling zine projects for people in the punk rock and punk culture, with an emphasis on helping women of color navigate the punk scene. Poems were included alongside these resources, such as “all mixed up,” in which a writer reflects on her parents and her mixed black/jewish identity. Poetry was an essential undercurrent and place for the movement’s ideas to flourish through personal expression.

Chelsey Minnis is a poet who emerged post the height of the Riot grrrl scene, but whose work was deeply invested in third-wave feminism and ideas of the movement. Her Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetices (2010) exhibits witty and “unladylike” behavior that challenges social norms of how a woman should be and should write.

Zines are a permanency. When a reader returns to them, they remain the same. They become a living archive of an idea, or a place to save and share your poetry as it was when you wrote it down.

Modern Zines

If this post excited you to start your own zines, or to begin reading more, check out our 9 Poetry Zines to Make Your Indie Heart Sing and this recent collection from Button Poetry for further inspiration on modern poetry zines. Or, follow this guide from the Barnard Zine Library on how to create your own Zine. Begin writing poetry, and know no one has to approve it for publication other than yourself! Find a like-minded artistic community, and put it out there!

Poem of the Week

Each week, I feature a poem under our monthly theme at the end of the Substack article, with the opportunity for a subscriber to submit a poem along that theme and to be featured on our page. Send us a direct message on Substack to be considered! This July, we’ll be highlighting a theme of music & dance.

“Dancers Exercising” by Amy Clampitt

Frame within Frame, the evolving conversation
is dancelike, as though two could play 
at improvising snowflakes’
six-feather-vaned evanescence, 
no two ever alike. All process
and no arrival: the happier we are, 
the less there is for memory to take hold of, 
or—memory being so largely a predilection 
for the exceptional—come to a halt
in front of. But finding, one evening
on a street not quite familiar, 
inside a gated 
November-sodden garden, a building 
of uncertain provenance, 
peering into whose vestibule we were 
arrested—a frame within a frame, 
a lozenge of impeccable clarity—
by the reflection, no, not 
of our two selves, but of 
dancers exercising in a mirror, 
at the center 
of that clarity, what we saw, 
was not stillness
but movement: the perfection
of memory consisting, it would seem, 
in the never-to-be-completed.  
We saw them mirroring themselves, 
never guessing the vestibule 
that defined them, frame within frame, 
contained two other mirrors. 

Until next week,

Happy Writing!

Claire