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During the New Years holiday in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
in 2003, I noticed that my son Justin (who was visiting) was reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy O'Toole. He was 13 years old. Judging by his reading material (a book that has been one of my all time
favorites since I was a young man), I felt that he was now ready to read my own poetry. I have written poetry since 1974
and Justin had never read any of it. I wanted to share this love of words with him.
I began sending Justin a poetry email every day. One poem
a day. After a week or so, I also added my sisters and my mother to the mailing list. Within a couple of weeks I also began
adding friends of mine, as well as, other poets that I knew. As I saw it, they were victims of my poetry.
On April Fools Day, 2004, I made it official. Poetry Victims was born. I began stylizing the look of the emails, and actively
started calling for poems from other poets. I wanted Justin to be exposed to other poetry as well, not just
mine. I began doing submission drives on the Internet and looking for other poets
to feature.
Every day for the remainder of 2004,
I e-mailed an Issue of Poetry Victims. Each issue included commentary from me, one of my poems and a poem
by a guest poet. By the end of 2004, my mailing list had grown significantly. By 2005, I was sending
Poetry Victims to over 460 "victims"
in over 22 countries.
The toll of
Running an issue every day, along with the pressures of my life took over in 2005. The issues became less frequent ...
irregular issues became the norm.
In
2006,
after I moved back to Colorado, I was experiencing increasing difficulties with my e-mail provider, and
decided to change tactics. I decided to switch to a blog format. I spent the next year and a half loading previous issues
onto blogs and designing the layout of the blogs. Due to the sheer volume of the commentaries, I did not include them
on the blogs.
With the first issue of 2007
(guest poet Candy Tothill), I decided to also incorporate my photographs into Poetry Victims (after a good friend gave me the professional version
of Photoshop). In the second issue of 2007, I began
featuring guest photographers and guest artists, the first being my friends Anna Maly and Amy Kohut. I continued to send the issues out by e-mail, but also had the blog versions as a back up. By the end of the year, I stopped releasing the e-mails completely, using only the blogs.
This year I set up a group listing on Google Groups, with the sole purpose of being able to notify members when a new issue
was online (since I no longer do the emails). On average, I am able to squeeze out one issue per week now.
This year Sketchbook (where I publish poetry and articles
in every issue) also began listing me as a Contributing
Editor and running a section with a link to Poetry Victims. I have also created 'button' links to Unlikely 2.0, as well as, AMP (Artists Meeting Place) where a significant number of my photographs are on display in galleries. AMP also lists Poetry Victims in a special section inviting AMP members to submit Art. Currently,
the majority of Guest Artists are AMP members.
This year I also began creating other blogs of interest; ZZ Baggins Photography, americana photographic, Frank Talk Blog and of course the ZZ Baggins 'Diary' (all of which have there own
slant). There is also; Green Tangerines (works
inspired by music) and Chicago Poetry Festival 1990 (In Attendance). I try to expand the blogs regularly, providing new links as
I come across things that catch my attention.
The (new) Poetry Victims currently goes out to over 914 people
(mostly poets, writers, artists, photographers,
editors and publishers of small press and online magazines) in
28 countries.
In August,
2011, my friend Nicole E. Turiano formerly joined me as my publishing partner and co-editor of Poetry Victims. Nicole is also
Editor-In-Chief of the newly born Stela, which I publish.
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