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

Broadsides poetry broadsided press art literature grassroots vectors

"The Space Traveler and Wandering":
(click for larger view)
poem by Benjamin Grossberg,
art by Jennifer Bevill

Get the Broadsided file
to print & post
(320kb PDF file)

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

Writing & Art By...

• Landon Godfrey & Jim Benning
• Ryan Browne & Douglas Culhane
• Suzanne Helfman & Gabriel Travis
• November: SWITCHEROO!
• Gretchen Henderson & Elizabeth Terhune
• Jari Thymian & Kate Baird
• Amy MacLennan & Lochlann Jain
• Dan Rosenberg and Ira Joel Haber
• April: SWITCHEROO!

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.

THE PLAN

On the first of every month, a new Broadsided literary/visual collaboration will be posted here for you to download.

What's more, Vectors (this could be you!) will post them in cafes, hallways, and elsewhere. See where Vectors are posting and add your town.

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.

• In Pictures! A gallery of Broadsided Out and About. Send us your pics.
• New Vectors in Budapest, Dallas, and St. Augustine (FL). Broadside your town.
• Check it Out: We're pointing you toward HOW Journal and failbetter.

• 6/1/09: In Livingston Parish, Dreamng of Li Po, poem by Allison Pelegring, art by Cheryl Gross. (view it) (get it - 444kb pdf)
• 6/1/09: War Rug, poem by Francesco Levato, design by Elizabeth Bradfield. (view it) (get it - 116kb pdf)
• 5/1/09: Advice to Women on the Graveyard Shift, Karen Weyant & Alesia F. Norling. (view it) (get it - 472kb pdf)
• 5/1/09: Snowshoe to Otter Creek, Stacie Cassarino & Caleb Brown. (view it) (get it - 300kb pdf)