How-to and Why What makes a poem worthy of a broadside? What makes a broadside worthy of a frame? Message. Visual possibilities. Yes. Name? The author’s reputation? Not important to us. Message. It’s worthy if the message is great. Great as in large. Especially if universal in the specific but not always. Great as in classic quality but fresh. Give it a door for us to walk into its room—a ready accessibility, such as has been the nature of Write, Dance, Sing, (some of my broadsides) and now our new broadside, Vespers, by Steve Abbott. These have that accessibility but at the same time do not lapse into a prosy, narrative style. Not a format so much as an awareness that the piece will be, revisited. Picture chunks of language that glimmer in the lake that is this broadside. We want always to be able to visually catch these fish time after time in their waters. Here as much as anywhere, “make words dance together that have not danced together before.” This is my dictate for poetry, period. If you’re going to enlarge it, hang it on a wall, it is especially so. Pudding House is looking for poems suitable, no not “suitable” … let’s start over. Not merely “suitable” for broadsides or posters. No no no. We’re looking for poems to place on broadsides that will change people’s lives. That’s all. We don’t care who writes them. Forget “name.” You don’t have to be a great name to produce a broadside; you just have to be a great writer... No, not true. You have to write one great thing. It should work well on one large page, be visually interesting or attractive, and if you’re passing in front of it the eye should easily fall into it and remain. The poem or language art must drive the reader to re-read, to hover over the work for long periods of time, to experience such emotion that the chest feels like it will explode if you hold back any longer, or such laughter that you couldn’t possibly contain it. Well, it should do that for a few people anyway, and not simply the sentimental among us. The work should get better with each subsequent reading. One should never get used to the message, it should never wear out. It isn’t enough that the poem is a learned and crafted work of art. Publish those in literary journals and chapbooks. It must offer that and more. It has to work on your mind and body like a million dollar masseuse. A poem meant for a broadside deserves a $600 frame job or at least the spot next to the water cooler at work. And it might deserve a $500 price tag eventually, because it must appreciate financially as well as in meaning. This poem does not merely be, but mean. I most appreciate broadsides that call us to action, that drive us to gratitude, or that change our minds or the direction we were headed. It should stop traffic, create controversy. Nearly everyone who passes it should scratch their heads or doubt or want to sign up for something they never wanted to sign up for before. People must NEED to own it. Write like that. If you do, we’ll publish your poem on a big sheet of beautiful paper and have you sign and number them. You’ll get a batch for free. They’ll sell first for about $10 and go up over the years until they’re $55, $75, $95, $125 for the last 5 and then sold out … and then? … sold on eBay for whatever the market allows. You’ll be out there large. To view our broadsides, look on this page. Send your best work that is unquestionably broadside material to: Pudding House Publications—Broadsides 81 Shadymere Lane Columbus Ohio 43213 |
| By Jennifer Bosveld, for Pudding House updated Spring 2006 See the "Publications List" for broadsides that are currently for sale from Pudding House. |