Boomerang! A Contributors' Journal

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THE HISTORY

In 1996, just before I graduated from the Writers' Workshop, my friend and workshop classmate Ben Mosher and I started Boomerang! A Contributors' Journal. We modeled our magazine on a publication called ROOMS, a 81/2x11 spiral bound journal put together by a group of Bay Area women poets and book artists. Like ROOMS we Xeroxed rather than retyped poems and asked contributors to select their own poems. Unlike most journals whose editors and staff select work from a pile of submissions, we wanted to invite poets to contribute whatever poems they were excited about to our publication. We also asked poets to contribute to the cost of binding and shipping.

The first issue was little more than a glorified worksheet. We had a two part mission:

  • to publish recent poems by poets we admire for a small interested audience
  • to provide a place for work that was unlikely to be published in other journals because it was too long or required a visual element that made it unprintable in traditional print publications

After three issues I took on the job of running the magazine alone. Eventually, I bought my own spiral binder and color printer and advanced two rungs up the low-tech ladder. The mission remained the same although very few poets included anything visual in their work.

WHO'S IN IT, WHY IT'S SMALL, AND WHY I DO IT

Over the years I have solicited work from poets I've read in journals or heard at readings and the Boomerang! community has grown to include poets from all over the country and from many different academic and non-academic backgrounds. More than forty poets have appeared in the journal, most several times. My print run has increased from an initial 25 copies to a current print run of fifty. Boomerang! is archived at: The New York Public Library, SUNY Buffalo Library, Poet's House and St. Marks Poetry Project.

Although I was once graciously offered help by a small press to galley-bind the magazine and increase the print run to 100-300, I refused. There are advantages to such a limited print run. The small size allows me to collate, bind and schlep the journal to the post office without help. (I remember binding the magazine at 8 months pregnant late into the night, barely able to get close enough to the binder to lower the hole punch.) Also, the small publication size renders Boomerang! below the radar of permissions and other copyright issues. Poets lend me their poems, and I encourage them to republish these poems for wider audiences if they like.

Boomerang! has a charming ephemerality to it. Poets often contribute work that is in-progress or rough around the edges. At the same time, people actually read the poems in the magazine, and though some might say it looks like a fifth-grader's school project, I know that it is valued and enjoyed by its contributors.

Although it is sometimes difficult dealing with brilliant poets-poets who forget to include $5, can't seem to Xerox their own work, can't collate properly and have to be reminded twenty times to send poems-I have loved making Boomerang! I would not have wanted to judge the poems of my peers, to select and whittle down (although I'm glad that other editors do this job). I've been honored to read and publish these wonderful poems.


FREQUENCY

I try to publish three issues of Boomerang! a year but have always fallen short of this goal. I've averaged just over two issues a year.

TO CONTRIBUTE WORK

At this time I am not accepting unsolicited work.


TO BUY BACK ISSUES

To order a back issue or find out more about Boomerang! please email me
Only issues 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 are currently available.