How I made a poetry zine

A quick post in connection with my previous post about making a zine, since a few of you have asked. I searched ‘how to make a zine’ on the internet and found this handy post by Niina Pollari and Nitsuh Abebe on the KickStarter News Archive. I also messaged Sophie Herxheimer and she pointed me to her lovely YouTube tutorial ‘Make a Zine with Sophie’. I recommend watching both of these two short films.

Although it’s working backwards, I think it helps to understand how to fold and cut a zine before you start. Once you know how to do this, you can decide about the content of your zine and how it will fit into the zine’s design. That said, I had already written my poems, and decided that I wanted six of them, since the poems relate to the story of a six-year-old child separated from her father at the US border. A zine seemed like a possible way of making a mini-book or pamphlet, somewhere to put my sequence of six poems in response to Pauline Scott-Garrett’s artwork engaging with Donald Trump’s 2018 zero-tolerance immigration policy.

This layout explainer by Niina Pollari and Nitsuh Abebe (as referenced above) was super helpful:

The equipment I own is nothing fancy – a basic Windows laptop and a basic printer. I wanted my zine to have a cover with title and my name, plus an image by Pauline. On the back, I wanted an explanation of my aims in writing the sequence, plus links to Pauline’s work and exhibition. That left with me with five pages to fit in my six poems. In Word, I opened a document in landscape, A4 size. I inserted a text box for each page and typed the poems in font size 9, Garamond. Because you’re inserting a text box, it’s possible to rotate each box and move it around the page to fit the design of the zine. However, I couldn’t work out how to make exact measurements so that each poem fitted correctly on each page. I had to do this by eye, using trial and error, and I didn’t do a bad job to be honest, but the finished design looked rather haphazard which is why I sent my document over to Mike Pugh at SerenArts Gallery in Bradford on Avon and Mike (with access to more sophisticated software and reprographics than me) was able to position all of my text and front cover image more elegantly.

Once I had my text and image printed by Mike, I was able to create my poetry zines by folding and cutting them into shape.

Making my zines has been a really satisfying process. I’ve learned a lot! Not least of all, the absolute necessity of careful proofreading. I’ve sent some copies out to friends with typos (thanks Izzy Thompson for spotting two howlers!) so I will now need to make careful corrections by hand (using scissors and glue!) before I take copies of my zine to the gallery in Bath for Pauline Scott-Garrett’s exhibition ‘Borderland’ (collage and intaglio print) which will be on show at the Walcot Chapel, 29 October – 2 November 2024. I’ve explained more about the exhibition in my previous post.

I hope this post is helpful to someone. As always, I’m grateful to readers – and thanks to those of you who’ve been in touch about this project.