Broadsided: Poetry, Prose, & Art on the Streets as Modern Broasdides

Broadsides poetry broadsided press art literature grassroots vectors

"Ghazal for the Woman from Vitez": (click for larger view)
poem by Susan Rich
& art by Undine Brod

Download the Broadsided file
(296kb PDF)

• What did the writer and artist think about their Broadsided experience? Collaborator's Q & A.

Writing & Art By...

• Jericho Brown & Kevin Morrow
• Aaron Plasek & Kate Baird
• Jon Ballard
• Molly Fisk
• Karen Llagas & Helen Beckman Kaplan
• Ilya Kaminsky & Elizabeth Terhune
• Karen Weyant & Alesia F. Norling

Before paperbacks and pocket books, before blogs, there were broadsides.

Every day, we walk past billboards for shops and car dealers, for churches and insurance, but our streets, our daily lives among each other, are missing something. They're missing thought. Dialogue. Opinion. Ideas.

Let's put words out there for people to snort at, sigh over, argue with, and read. Let's put up broadsides.

On the first of every month, a new Broadsided collaboration will be posted here for you to download, mull, and post.

HISTORY

Loosely defined as single sheets of paper printed on one side, broadsides were the most diverse form of brief, single-occasion publishing before the Civil War. Although broadsides were first introduced in England, they became a prime means of communication in the United States.

Announcements, advertisements, song lyrics, commentaries, cartoons, and poems were printed and posted in towns across the nation. Later, Harlem Renaissance, Concrete, and Beat writers claimed the broadside as a below-the-radar way to get their words out onto the streets.

We want to continue the tradition.

• WHERE IN THE WORLD?: Check out the Vector map to see where Broadsided's being posted and add your own pictures and stories.

• COMING SOON: The fourth Switcheroo.

• IN THE NEWS: Read about Broadsided on Prick of the Spindle.

• 7/1/08: Neighborhood Watch, Anjali Khosla and Douglas Culhane. (view it) (get it - 264kb pdf)
• 6/1/08: Under Construction, Leah Browning & Ira Joel Haber. (view it) (get it - 264kb pdf) • 5/1/08: Meditation on the Treason of His Body, Joe Wilkins & Alesia F. Norling. (view it) (get it - 196kb pdf)
• 4/1/08: Among Trees (or) The Heart is a Bee Hive Cindy St. John & Elizabeth Terhune. (view it) (get it - 256kb pdf)
• 3/1/08: Mayflies Roy Seeger & Helen Beckman Kaplan. (view it) (get it - 384kb pdf)