Pocketry

Tag: origins

  • It’s Raw

    It’s Raw

    Pocketry publishes work from aspiring and emerging poets who haven’t yet been published in a literary journal. The poems between the pages of a Pocketry Almanack come from poets who are still learning their craft. They are writing and editing. Sending out their stuff to journals and getting rejected. But they keep trying because they want to share their words with the rest of the world.

    As a result, the poems published in a Pocketry Alamanack vary wildly in quality and subject matter from the ordinary to the sublime (and who’s to say ordinary cannot be sublime if done well?). Our aim is to showcase the poems and poets who aren’t getting any exposure. Everyone’s voice deserves to be heard.

  • A Pocketry Portmanteau

    A Pocketry Portmanteau

    What’s in a name? As Shakespeare once famously said, ‘A rose by any other name would sell as sweet.’ But would a pocket-sized, poetry almanack with a different name be as good? One certainly hopes so as I’ve just had to change the name of this web site and the almanack.

    My original name for this site was Pocket Poetry. It fit the size of the almanack (super tiny) and it’s content (poetry) perfectly. It had a nice ring to it and even alliterated. I went ahead full steam and created the website, bought the domain name and set up the Instagram account. And after I’d done all that hard work I remembered that the Australian publisher Ginninderra Press has an imprint of chapbooks called Pocket Poets. I felt a little foolish.

    I toyed with the idea of keeping the name Pocket Poetry (It was soooo good! And I’d done all that hard work.) but it just didn’t sit right. I felt like I was treading on Ginninderra Press’ toes and I didn’t want to do that. Surely I could come up with something else?

    Armed with a dictionary and the excellent Rhyme Zone site I went a word hunting. Some of the ideas were Portable Poetry, Pint-Sized Poetry, Petite Poetry. None were really working. I’d half decided to go with portable as it was the best of the bunch. And then I was talking to my husband about it and instead of saying pocket poetry I said pocketry. Pocketry. Hmmm, that’s got a nice ring to is, doesn’t it? And it’s not too close to Pocket Poets. The Pocketry Almanack. Why, yes. I think that will do nicely.

    After some tense moments making sure Ginninderra Press were on board with the new name and purchasing the domain, it was all systems go.

    So that’s the story of how I went from Pocket Poetry to Pocketry which is a smush of the two words or to use the fancy name, a portmanteau. Or in this case a poetry portmanteau.

  • Creating a Prototype

    Creating a Prototype

    Before opening the Pocketry Almanack for submissions, I had to create a prototype of the journal to discover exactly what was needed from contributors.

    First I had to figure out how to create an instant book and then how to create a template that could edited, printed and reproduced easily. In keeping with the instant book theme, I was looking for something that could be printed and assembled quickly.

    Once that was done came the fun part of playing with fonts and figuring out the style of the little booklets. The word Almanack conjures up olden days so I went with a font style similar to what was around in the 1700s.

    To get a feel for the end product I found some of my short poems and use the Pocketry logo for the back page.

    I then printed it out and assembled it. The whole process only took a couple of days of solid work. I was a woman obsessed!

  • All About Almanacks

    All About Almanacks

    An almanack is an annual calendar with important data and statistics such as tides and planetary movements. It can also be handbook of important information. The Pocketry Almanack doesn’t quite fit either definition but the word almanack conjures up printing presses and hand distributed leaflets. It’s this tactile world I wanted to re-create with this publication. I suppose we could call the Pocketry Almanack a handbook which contains work from authors engaged in the pastime of poetry. Or just love the word and use it anyway.

    The idea for the Pocketry Almanack came from a few different places. Last year independent Australian publisher Ginninderra Press started The Crow, a new literary journal for poets in South Australia. If they can do it, so can I! The Kickstarter for Fiddler’s Green: A Peculiar Parish Magazine #7 was posted on Instagram by @ninthwavedeisgns. Sadly I didn’t get to back it in time but I loved the fiddler’s fare and tweaked it for the almanack. The What Editors Want podcast interview with Tony White of Piece of Paper Press inspired the one page format of the pamphlet. How To Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book by Esther K. Smith the artistic director of Purgatory Pie Press taught me how to make an instant book from a sheet of A4 paper. The word almanack came from the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett but I only looked up the definition after I’d created the web site and it was too late to change it (not that I really wanted to anyway). The elaborate and fanciful language was inspired by Russell who for many years was the MC of the Canberra Repertory’s Old Time Musical Hall.

    The Pocketry Almanack draws inspiration from many sources including but not limited to: drinking tea in fine bone china cups with roses painted on them; sitting in an overstuffed, red leather armchair while reading books in a wood panelled study; sitting next to the coachman as he drives a team of horses along the cobbled streets and lamplighters doing their rounds as dusk begins to fall.

    Welcome!

  • In the Beginning

    In the Beginning

    The Pocketry Almanack grew out of a frustration with getting published in Australian literary journals. It’s incredibly difficult to get a foot in the door with the major poetry journals as they are already swamped with submissions and the standard is incredibly high. It’s even harder to get feedback so you never know if your poem is rejected because it isn’t good enough or doesn’t fit the journal or the editor just doesn’t like that particular style of poetry.

    The idea was to create a new poetry journal for emerging and aspiring poets to submit their work and receive feedback. In order to submit to the journal you would have to be unpublished and the aim was to provide feedback for new poets so they could improve their writing and know what standard they are.

    Originally the journal was going to be digital and come out several times a year but somehow it morphed into an irregular print almanack with no fixed publication dates. Not surprising really given the founder of Pocketry, Indrani Perera, is a maker with a passion for bookbinding.