PORT TOWNSEND — Zines — small, folded and stapled books — can mix type and pictures, graphics and handwriting. They can be about art projects, local endeavors and personal stories – “there are no real boundaries to the form,” said Conner Bouchard-Roberts of Port Townsend., the newly appointed Port Townsend poet laureate.
Among his many roles: teaching an “Intro to Zine Making” course starting Monday.
It’s to be a three-session course, costing $130, meeting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. this coming Monday, Oct. 16 and Oct. 23 at Northwind Art School at Fort Worden State Park.
The first evening, Bouchard-Roberts said, will be about cultivating ideas and gathering inspirations. The second session will go into curation of content, writing and designing. The final class will focus on “creation, printing, assembly and celebration,” he notes.
“I’ll bring a bunch of examples, so you’ll see what they can look like. You’ll get a sense of what the possibilities are,” Bouchard-Roberts added. More about “Intro to Zine Making” is found on the Courses page at https://northwindart.org.
Bouchard-Roberts is an independent publisher at Winter texts in Port Townsend; he’s also a bookseller with the new Winter texts shop upstairs at Aldrich’s market, 940 Lawrence St. And as of a few weeks ago, he’s the city of Port Townsend’s first poet laureate, appointed to serve in 2024.
Poet laureate
The parameters and plans for this brand-new role are a little like a zine. They’re wide open. Bouchard-Roberts will begin in January and serve all year with the possibility of renewal for 2025.
“During the year the Poet Laureate will receive an honorarium of $1,200, provide publicly accessible events, write poems about a theme integral to the City, work with the Port Townsend Public Library on educational programing, and create a special project for the City,” according to the official press release.
“To invent a role: It’s going to be an exciting thing,” Bouchard-Roberts said in an interview.
To his mind, a poet laureate adds poetry to civic space, where it’s not usually found.
Bouchard-Roberts already hosts Mixed Metaphor, a somewhat monthly gathering upstairs at Aldrich’s.
The next one on Oct. 27 will feature former Washington state poet laureate Claudia Castro Luna, Ghanaian poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley and boat builder-poet Matthew Nienow.
The event, which Bouchard-Roberts calls a reading, conversation and bookshop hang, will start at 6 p.m. Admission is free for all ages.
Bouchard-Roberts’ appointment follows the naming of a Clallam County poet laureate earlier this year: Jaiden Dokken was chosen for the role this past March.
Dokken, whose term runs through March 2025, hosts poetry and art events through the North Olympic Library System. A multidisciplinary artist, they will also teach an Introduction to Printmaking class at Northwind Art School on Nov. 19; information is found at NorthwindArt.org.
Bouchard-Roberts, for his part, looks forward to guiding people as they turn their ideas into zines. This format, he said, is a way to try out ideas and build community.
“All you need is a printer and a stapler,” he said.
“To immediately get to publication without any interim steps, is really, really powerful. If we get like 100 more zines coming out around town, that’ll be awesome. That’ll be good for everybody.”
Conner Bouchard-Roberts, the newly appointed Port Townsend poet laureate, is about to teach an Intro to Zine Making class starting Monday at Northwind Art School at Fort Worden. (Diane Urbani de la Paz)
