Chapbook Project Check In Sheet #1
After you complete the readings listed in the previous post (“Researching Form: On Chapbooks …”) you should answer the following questions in regards to our group project. Please return via email the following questionnaire by Sunday, October 9th at 8 am.
For a Word document version of this questionnaire, please click: afam-chapbook-project-check-in-1-sheet
1) In your own words, what is a chapbook? How does it differ from a zine or magazine?
2) How does the form of the chapbook as we might use it in this class respond / engage the themes and concerns of a black literary-artistic tradition? Put differently: What does the form of the chapbook offer black writers/artists/thinkers? How is it a form well suited to the concerns, needs, and commitments of this tradition? To answer these three questions (all versions of the same question), you should check out the works on the syllabus that we haven’t gotten to in addition to the ones we have read.
3) Chapbooks are often focused around a particular theme. What theme might work for our chapbook? In particular what theme might get at both the course material and class discussion but also some aspect of our contemporary moment? You should answer this question four times: a) in a 2-4 sentence paragraph b) in a single sentence c) in a 3-5 word clause d) in 1 or 2 words.
4) In what ways do the particular form of the chapbook well suited to explore the theme you have just proposed? In what ways is the particular form of the chapbook not perfectly suited to address this theme?
5) Chapbooks are short. There are 14 people in our class (including me). If everyone contributed 2 one page pieces, we’d be at 26-28 pages plus title page, table of contents, and some sort of introduction, and now we are between 30-35 pages. Logistically then it’s not likely that we will be able to do more than two pages per person. For a collection of poems that does not seem hard to imagine, but remember, we still have to meet the project requirements that ask us to include our academic work as well. How do you imagine / propose we incorporate our academic work into the chapbook?
6) Chapbooks as well as zines have a history of being made by hand. Even when they are printed by press, they are done so usually in limited circulation with an attention to the craft of the actual object of the book (not just its content). This being said in an ideal world how might our chapbook honor this aspect of the chapbook form? How should we produce the chapbook; with what material? How big should it be? Can we do a combination of handcrafted and digital reproduction?
7) In class, we all agreed that we wanted to have some sort of performative component to the project at the end of semester. Please describe your ideal picture of what such a performative/public presentation of this chapbook would look like.
8) So officially we have a budget of zero for this project. There are several things that we can probably acquire for free or next to nothing, but in the even that we might need to draw upon our collective means, please tell me what you might be able to contribute. Some things to consider. I will give as 2 people, so we can have a count of 15 people, which means if everyone gives one dollar, we have a budget of $15. If everyone gives, $5, we have a budget $75. If everyone gives a $10, then we’d have a budget of $150. If everyone gives $20, we’d have a budget $300.00. Please note: $20 is the maximum I would be okay with letting people contribute, at least out of pocket (if you want to hold a fundraiser then that would be different). Given this information, what would you feel comfortable potentially contributing to this project __________.