I have always liked zines. Lovingly crafted, independently made booklets (sort of like magazines, but not really), they may be one-offs or produced in small runs (like, on a photocopy machine or home printer). Sometimes they contain poetry, maybe comics, drawings, collages, erasure poems - whatever strikes the creator’s fancy.
When I saw a post promoting a come-as-you-are zine-making workshop, I was IN!!
The mini-workshop was part of a series hosted by the indie press Sarabande Books. Check out this unique boutique publisher with an impressive literary list.
If you’d like to participate in a future zine lunch series (or watch recordings of past workshops), here’s the link.
I had no idea what to expect and arrived at the Zoom room a little out of breath and totally unprepared.
Today’s host was the poet Karisma Price, author of the collection, I’m Always So Serious (published by Sarabande). [BTW, it looks like Sarabande is thinking about starting a Substack - good idea! Do it!
Being new to zine-making, I had to duck out and follow a provided link to a short video explaining ‘How to Fold Your Paper’ - which, I did, but incorrectly the first time, so my zine wound up half the size it should have been. I’ve since tried again and have roughed out a plan for Zine 002 (folded correctly)- watch for that in the next couple of days.
Because I was a little behind from the get-go, I scrambled to catch up, trying to listen to the prompts (this was a ghost-themed zine - Karisma provided some great ideas and examples and then turned us loose to create).
Karissa was working with the idea of a version of New Orleans that no longer exists - and, a parade route. I immediately thought of ghosts from my childhood here in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. Banff Avenue was the location for the fabulous Indian Days Parade back in the day, in which I participated a couple of times and watched a few more.
When I’m in Banff now, yes, the Cascade Mountain at the end of the street is still there as I remember her, but the Italian restaurant with its white linen tablecloths and spaghetti Bolognese, the Lux Theatre on the main drag (where you could get a Saturday afternoon matinee, a small pop and a chocolate bar for $1.00 - we were outraged when it went up to $1.10), and the Bakery (oh, the BEST cinnamon buns and Long Johns - chocolate-filled pastries that were sticky and delicious) - they are now all gone.
My horse, Ace (the one who was old but still fast enough to outrun that mother black bear when I got between her and her cubs), gone. So many things gone - and, yet - still Banff. Some buildings still there. Banff Avenue still disappears into Cascade’s skirts where she sits, silent, down there at the end.
Of course, when I think of those great years in Banff as a kid, my father was there. He’s gone… those mountains remain.
And, thinking of Dad - Art. Memory. Time.
[Here, I digress to say I read a great piece by (oh dear - I thought it was Mary Tabor of the Only Connect Substack,
but now I can’t find it!!) about Nabokov and his memoir… I then downloaded said memoir [Speak, Memory] and was struck by his writing about our lifetimes being a mere sliver of light between vast swaths of eternal darkness and how we tend to worry more about the darkness that’s heading our way at the end rather than the darkness that preceded our arrival… All that to say, I was thinking about the passage of time, Dad’s demise, and Nabokov when I did the spread above.]
At this point, we were pretty much at the end of the hour, so things took a minimalist turn and I tried to capture that eternal contradiction between the desire to go home/return to childhood and the knowledge one can’t. You know, that whole ‘the only constant is change’ thing.
This brought me to the end of the zine-making session and the back cover and a whole heap of cut-out leftovers from that collage project you’ve been watching me struggle with over the past few days.
While they were handy and served a purpose today, they don’t really go with whatever vibe was developing earlier (even if it wasn’t entirely consistent from start to finish). So, yes, I’ll probably rip those off and do something different.
However, I was pleased that I managed to write a whole book in a condensed lunch break and that I now know how to fold a zine.
As I said, after the class I did try again and have done background washes for the various pages in the new - correctly-folded - zine. I’ve also roughed in the text (in pencil) and will see what else I might add over the weekend.
That’s it for tonight - see you soon!