Paper and Ink: Broken Hearts and Broken Bottles Vol. 1

Edited by Martin Appleby

www.inpursuitofexpression.com

Reading the introduction to this lit anthology I realized I was the wrong person to review it. Appleby writes that "The theme of this issue is heart break. A subject that most people can relate to and empathise with. I find something extremely cathartic about tales of lost love, of hearts being ripped out and shattered into a thousend [sic] peices [sic]."

And sure, I can relate to heart break, I've been in relationships, they've ended, sometimes sadly, sometimes not. But that doesn't meant I want to read about relationships, functional or not. Romance in fiction generally bores me to tears, and I frequently try to avoid it. I mean, it's not like the concept of romance is a complete anathema to me, I've read stuff that I've enjoyed, but I generally find it trite and banal.

I'm sure all of this makes me seem like a horrible person (or at least a horrible person to be in a relationship with), but it's not like I ignore the idea of romance in my own life. I guess I just find most portrayals of it to not connect with either my experience or my ideas concerning the topic.

Layout-wise I found the fonts that changed for each piece somewhat jarring. I personally prefer zines to have a more consistent design style throughout, though I can understand why people might feel otherwise. Some of the margins are too close to the edge of the page, but I did think the cover was pretty good.

So yeah, this zine has some poems and short stories about heart break. They're fine I guess but, as I've said many times in the past, poetry isn't something I'm really a fan of reading, and I find it pretty impossible to judge its quality. If you're into catharsis and heart break maybe you'll like this zine, but I can't say it did much for me (which is perhaps more of a failing of my own interests and views than the zine in question).

Poems WIthout Words

By Mark Bilokur

Okay, so poetry (the written kind) isn't really something I get. I mean, I understand why people write it, but it's never really been something I've enjoyed that much. My eyes tend to glaze over while reading it, and I remember one time I was over a hundred pages into an epic poem by Aleksandr Pushkin (which one exactly I can no longer remember) when I realized that I had actually read it before. Over a hundred pages before I realized that. I'm amazing.

That's not to say I dislike poetry. There's some I enjoy, and I'm a pretty big fan of hip hop (which can be spoken word poetry with backing music), but overall it's not something I seek out.

Visual poetry is probably about the same for me. I can go "oh this looks cool", but at the same time I don't "get it". A lot of the art in this zine (people with hands for heads, burning skeletons, etc.) is pretty awesome, but I'm left with the feeling that there's something that I'm missing. Still, sometimes just looking at nice art is fine, and I enjoyed looking through this zine, even if I didn't really understand what the creator meant by the art.

Meet Me In the Middle

By Gordon B. Isnor & Christopher C. Yorke

While reading this small zine of poetry two thoughts entered my head.

First: Poetry is weird, and usually it doesn’t really appeal to me very much (at least in written form, I have more time for it as spoken word).

Second: The repetition and word choice throughout these poems made me think that a computer wrote them.

To my surprise, I discovered on the last page of this zine that a computer did write these poems!

You can check out the website here It’s a pretty simple thing that takes in words and phrases and spits them out again in a random order. I think if someone spent time inputting a lot of different phrases they could probably create some neat stuff, but I didn’t do that.

Instead I quickly plugged in most of the words of this review in small chunks, and managed to make some poems of my own, which I think are better (or at least less obscene) than the ones in this zine.

on the last page
that a computer did
I discovered
entered my head
The repetition

To my surprise
and word choice
and usually
of poetry
I discovered

First:
time for it as spoken word
throughout these poems
in the middle
and usually

And finally, the especially poignant:

write these poems
While reading this
Second
First:
it doesn’t really appeal

Poetry!

Suspended Like a Star

I was attracted to this zine by the plastic cover, and the way the words were printed on it.

Inside I found a poem. Or a series of poems. About a boy. And the author's relationship with him. And how it seemed to have been terrible, but at the time they might not have known this. And how they wanted to get out, but that was harder than they thought.

The text is typewritten, and placed on top of black and white images and photographs.

Apparently some combination of all these things meant that the poetry actually registered in my mind (perhaps it was those references to the postal service), and that I enjoyed this zine. Hurray!

Every Reason #4

Edited by Keith

You know, the only way to get better at writing (or anything) is to do it every day. Do it all the time and you will improve. I've really been slacking on that front, but I feel like I've turned a corner and am doing zine stuff again (I've already posted more reviews than last month!).

Thus the importance of zines like this, which provide amateur writers with somewhere that they can submit their work to. I'm pretty much stealing this idea from the introduction where the editor says that he sees the zine as social work and wants it to promote writing and give more people the opportunity to read work (and to have writers have their work read). And yeah, what's the point of making a zine if nobody's going to read it?

Mostly though, the content of this zine didn't really leave much of an impact on me. There's a bunch of poems, which generally go in one ear and out the other when I read them. I did like the first one, though mostly because after a mention of Bukowski in the introduction I heard it like this piece in my mind.

Other than that I didn't really dig anything in this anthology. I feel as though I can't even critique the writing quality as the styles and story content aren't things that really interest me. The characters in the fiction pieces act in ways that I don't really understand, and clearly have different goals and thoughts than I do. So yeah, this is pretty much a non-review as I think all I can say is "not my thing".

Unbeknownst! Chapter One

By Bernadette Bentley
www.bernadettebentley.net

This zine came in a bag with a free badge/button and a bonus minizine! Woo! And then the minizine had a url for exclusive downloadable online content! (ie. a song). Neato, I would totally do that if I had any musical talent.

The bigger zine is a comic book that starts off fairly confusingly, with several pages of mixed up text and perhaps it's supposed to represent a dream of some sort. It doesn't seem to have much of a connection to the rest of the comic, except for perhaps a themeatic connection around the concept of being lost.

Once the actual comic kicks in it actually gets kind of interesting. It's an autobio comic about being broke and poor, yet an on the verge of becoming a successful artist. Yeah, there's a lot of those, and most of them are frequently about being poor and depressed, and yet it's sort of nice to read these things when you yourself are poor and depressed. It's seeing that you are not alone in your life, and that other people have been where you are and gone on to other things.

Being treated poorly because you are trying to follow your dreams, or even because you are just trying to make a living isn't very nice, but it happens all the time. The experiences Bently recounts here remind me of Hard Work by Polly Toynbee, a fairly interesting book about working in the shittiest low paying jobs around. Woo!

And then there's a bit about self identity and a recurring dream. The whole thing seems very much like the first chapter of a longer work, and I'm hoping that there's a plan and that Bently knows where the comic is going.



The minizine is filled with artwork and poetry. The exclusive download is a musical version of one of the poems, it's not really my sort of thing (accoustic guitar-y thing), but it seems pretty good and I think it works a lot better as a song than as a poem!

Piston Quaker

This is a pretty hapazard group zine which contains poetry, collage, drawings, photographs, and several somewhat hard to read pages of anarchist propaganda.

Now maybe that's just not what I was expecting when I picked up this zine to read, but the small font size and huge blocks of text about solidarity was a bit intimidating to read. However I was amused by a certain segment that seemed to be fairly apt considering what is going on in Egypt and other countries right now:

"But time and again, having rid themselves of tyranny, people have allowed another to replace it. Afraid to use their new found freedom, they hold up their wrists up to some new jailer."

Some of the art is pretty good, some of it is more like doodles, but the lack of a coherent theme damages the overall book.

Alice at R’lyeh

By Murray Ewing
murrayewing.co.uk

I’m a big fan of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (though sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons I’m a fan is because nerds are supposed to be fans). I’ve seen stage adaptations, gone to museum exhibits, and even dressed up as a character on a couple of occasions.

I’m also a fan of things inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. I’ve never actually read any of his stuff, but I’ve enjoyed lots of things created by who have. Like this song by The Mountain Goats or this awesome silent film



I’m sure I’ll get around to reading some of his stuff someday, though I’ve heard it’s kind of racist.

I was excited when I discovered this zine that combined these two worlds. I thought it might be like that Jeeves and Wooster meet the gods of the abyss story that Alan Moore wrote for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: the Black Dossier.
However, I was a bit disappointed when I opened this up and discovered that it was just a poem (in fact this is really more of a self-published poetry chapbook than a zine). This does actually fit with the source material. The nonsense poems Lewis Carroll wrote for the Alice books are one of the defining features, and Jaberwocky is the only poem I can recite from memory. (Well, I can do Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat too, but it’s only four lines long.)

Lovecraft was also a fairly prolific writer of poetry, and the work here does seem to combine aspects of his poetry (or at least I assume so, not having read any) and Carroll’s. The poem uses a fairly simple rhyming couplet scheme, and while sometimes the rhymes seem a little forced they generally work alright. However, the metre doesn’t work as well and I found myself stumbling over reading some of the lines as they vary in syllable length and create awkward rhythms. (Repeating the word “rudimentary” twice in one line seems kind of inexcusable.)

It’s not as good as Alan Moore’s Lovecraft inspired fanfiction, but it was never going to be, and at the least it makes an amusing little curiosity to have next to your Alice or Lovecraft works.

Also holy shit, how much have I just written about poetry? Clearly the way to get me to do that is to write narrative poems about monsters. No surprise really.

no. 1 Fake

By Adam Lurchinstal
Facebook group

I'm not really the firest person you would ask to review a poetry zine. I guess it's my reading style, but most of it just goes in one ear and out the other. I finish a piece, and I can probably tell you almost nothing about it. I'm not really sure why.

So this is a zine filled with poems. The words were printed out from a computer, then cut out in lines, words, or paragraphs, and pasted over collage and art filled backgrounds. Some of them are hard to read (there's one that has a block of text cut diagonally multiple times and pasted down so they pieces don't line up that I gave up on), but overall the design is pretty nice.

There's a couple of pieces that actually managed to stick with me. One is a sort of question/response thing, with someone talking about certainty and life, while the other plays devil's advocate. The other was the first page of a longer piece featuring a dialogue between two people, one of whom asks the other for a cigarette. I thought it went on too long, but the first page was pretty good.

12 Poems

By CJ Reay

I don't really read a lot of poetry, and so can find it hard to judge on its own merits. I had high hopes for this zine upon opening it as the first page seemed nicely designed. A poem about getting old was surrounded by photos of the writer's grandparents in their youth (or at least people from that era). Unfortunately the rest of the poems don't follow the same pattern, and while they do combine images with words they are generally just the poem placed on top single images (sometimes repeated), that don't always seem to have a lot to do with the poem.

The poems themselves deal with consumerism, homelessness, poverty, travel, and modern society: the stuff zines of any sort deal with quite frequently. Two of them in particular stood out to me. The first (none of them are named) is about waking in an airport and seeing fearful people wearing surgical masks to protect themselves from swine flu. Airports are weird places, because they're all pretty much the same, and I liked the picture of the paranoid, scared people this poem painted, along with the images of escalators in the background.

The other poem I liked is quite short, and I'll just reprint it here:

I don't like long poems.
I have a short attention span.
Stop talking shit.
Finished.

Kunsthæfte nr. 8

By Jesper Fabricius

Okay, I guess this is another art book thing, as it has an ISBN and everything, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a zine.

So this is the "visual poetry" zine I mentioned a few entries back. Sure the cover calls it "space poetry", but as it's not actually about meteors or astronauts I'm more comfortable with the term I just invented.

Inside we are presented with full colour pages which present images, or parts of images in new forms. One of the earliest presents a square with a blue design, a horizontal rectangle with a hand, and a vertical rectangle with a different hand holding a bottle of soda that seems to be from an old advertisement. The images are presented more or less in a vertical line, and leave a lot to wonder about. Why these three images? What is the connection between them? Did the creator cut them out specifically, or just find them and combine them? Why do all of my reviews now consist of unanswerable questions?

The rest of the zine is similar, some of the pages have a few more pictures (pretty much all of them are small squares or rectangles), and a few have less (these ones present larger full page images, or at least the borders and outlines of them), but all of it made me wonder what the artist's intentions were.

I've never really been a big poetry fan, but this zine actually made me rethink the entire concept of poetry, both visual and written. I suppose when I'm presented with images I have to think about I realize that poetry is often trying to create the same thing, only with words, and that perhaps I should start reading poems in the same way that I "read" this: studying each image that is presented to me and wondering what the author's intent was. Though usually I'd probably rather make bad puns about "intense intents in tents".

Sins of Machines

By Cryptstine Maria
PO Box 893
Salem, MA
01970, USA

Steampunky stuff seems to be everywhere right now. In fact I was at a big steam punk event in London recently and had a pretty good time.

However, considering I was listening to a band that have a track called “OMG Techno Chicks” when I read this I was even less likely to really absorb the poetry that opens this zine. (Shush, no comments about my questionable taste in music.)

However, I did like one that I thought was the beginning of a piece of prose called “Chapter 3 Describes the Morsel of Flesh”. I enjoyed the word choice used in the piece, especially calling someone a “standard deviation” as an insult. That’s really great!

The zine is rounded out by an account of a fairly grisly Victorian murder that seems utterly ridiculous nowadays, though similar things are probably happening all the time. Humans!

The zine itself is held together with thread (something I can never be bothered to do), features a cover that was apparently coloured in with rose petals (!!!), and is filled with rose petals, and cut out rats and hearts that fell out of the envelope as I opened it. Confetti!

Phoenixii Issue 1

phoenixiizine@googlemail.com

I think I’ve mentioned before how poetry and song lyrics don’t really register with me. In university I was about two thirds of the way through the epic poem Ruslan and Lyudmilla by Alexander Pushkin before I realized I’d read it before. This is a poem several hundred pages long that I had studied in class and possible even written an essay about, yet I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Even now I don’t recall very much. There was a witch I think.

As you can probably tell by that intro, this zine features a bunch of poetry and song lyrics that I have completely forgotten. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy these forms of art, more that I find them hard to absorb in the written form. I’ve enjoyed listening to poets perform their work, and think that the rhythm and cadence in their voice while performing can play a major part in how a work is absorbed.

This zine does feature more than just poetry though, there’s also a rather depressing short story about loneliness, drug abuse, and raves. It’s not the most comforting of reading material, and the stilted way many of the characters talk kind of draws you out of it. Prose writers (including me) should read their dialogue out loud first. People don’t talk in grammatically correct sentences all the time.