Nashville Is Reads

Big news. I'm pleased to announce the partnership of Publishing Genius and Peter Cole/Keyhole Magazine to bring to the world (via Music City), Nashville Is Reads. Now unsuspecting people in Nashville can read the same poems as Charm City passersby find in Baltimore Is Reads, except even hotter and with BBQ sauce instead of Old Bay.

The new site will go live with this summer's issue of the outdoor journal.

From the first issue of BIR (it seems so long ago, but it was Fall/Winter 2006):

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?

I'm not really sure I'm all that interested in trying to "mark a counterpoint to the blitzkrief of advertisements" anymore. Mostly I just want to confuse people who don't normally read poems. I look forward to working with Peter to take the Is Reads way of life into the new century.