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Baltimore Is Reads is a unique quarterly journal with its pages published in various locations around the Baltimore community. The journal interacts with Baltimore's literary landscape literally -- on shop windows, park benches, telephone poles.
Abandoned buildings. Naturally, the primary objective of Baltimore Is Reads is to inspire readers with startling, prescient poetry, but the secondary goal is to mark a counterpoint to the blitzkrieg of advertisements that have become an unavoidable part of city life. While commercials and billboards are growing more and more sophisticated, even beautiful in their delivery, marketers are still asking their audience to change themselves. Baltimore Is Reads does not attempt that. Managing editor, Adam Robinson says, “Sure, it would be great if everyone who read one of our pages decided to start really caring about poetry, but I’m not asking for that. We’re just saying, ‘here, this is nice. I’m giving it to you’.” But there are other factors at work, too. The editors hope that the journal will inspire readers to consider how the writing makes them think about their specific environment, how the poem changes the perception of that ground on which the reader finds herself. What if someone happens upon a haiku about a brilliant, crisp sunset at lunchtime under dark clouds? How does the poem, duct taped to the side of a light post on a street rumbling with cars and their exhaust, change the piece? Baltimore Is Reads solicits submissions from both published poets and new writers. “Because of the nature of the journal,” Robinson says, “we have the opportunity to do two great things: treat people who never thought about poetry to a short, accessible poem while they’re waiting for the bus, say, or getting their hand stamped at a bar, and at the same time publish a person who never thought about writing before. That’s because our printing costs are pretty low. I got to publish my mother in Hampden, and Stacy Szymaszek on a building that was bulldozed a week later.” This web site documents the journal, and acts as a gathering site to read and see all the pages that are posted around Baltimore. Also, the "blog" lists similar public art projects that have informed the conceptualization and creation of Baltimore Is Reads.
editorial board 2006 |