Octopus : 1c
#1c. What does it take to run Poems-for-All (time, money [not specifically], energy, people)?
It takes very little to do Poems-For-All. It will take as much time, energy, people and money as you want to feed it, but it will also work in a starker reality. I Choose to print many of the covers in color, for example, which is more expensive then, say, using a black and white copier to make the covers. So I suggest that doing something like PFA doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive.
money
As the PFA project has evolved, I have spent more on things like color printing. Color ink for our in-house Xerox is costly. Black and white printing, however, remains incredibly cheap even factoring in paper and ink costs.
people
One person, with a little practice, can easily make hundreds of booklets in an hour. Help, of course, speeds the pace. A production crew of three, for example, where one is cutting, another folding, the last putting in a staple and the process really hustles!
space
It certainly doesn't require a lot of production space. I often cut, fold and staple booklets on the counter at the bookstore or at the coffee shop. They can even be done while a passenger in a car.
time
The most luxurious of ingredients for creating PFA booklets is presently time. I have less of it as various obligations, like family and work, press in, demanding attention. And while this impacts the number of booklets made, it also impacts the large and growing list of pending publications. There continues to be a large backlist of poems-to-be-published.
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The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .
It takes very little to do Poems-For-All. It will take as much time, energy, people and money as you want to feed it, but it will also work in a starker reality. I Choose to print many of the covers in color, for example, which is more expensive then, say, using a black and white copier to make the covers. So I suggest that doing something like PFA doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive.
money
As the PFA project has evolved, I have spent more on things like color printing. Color ink for our in-house Xerox is costly. Black and white printing, however, remains incredibly cheap even factoring in paper and ink costs.
people
One person, with a little practice, can easily make hundreds of booklets in an hour. Help, of course, speeds the pace. A production crew of three, for example, where one is cutting, another folding, the last putting in a staple and the process really hustles!
space
It certainly doesn't require a lot of production space. I often cut, fold and staple booklets on the counter at the bookstore or at the coffee shop. They can even be done while a passenger in a car.
time
The most luxurious of ingredients for creating PFA booklets is presently time. I have less of it as various obligations, like family and work, press in, demanding attention. And while this impacts the number of booklets made, it also impacts the large and growing list of pending publications. There continues to be a large backlist of poems-to-be-published.
- - -
The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .
posted by Richard Hansen at
12:18 PM
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