When a new issue of a literary magazine comes out, it’s not unusual to hold a reading. However, holding simultaneous readings in eight cities, spread out over a state that is larger than France, is a little less commonplace.
Yet that’s exactly what Borderlands, the Austin-based poetry journal, plans to do as they unveil issue #11 on Saturday, May 16, 7-9pm at Barnes & Noble Westlake. While issue editor Robert Lee hosts the local reading, affiliates will host concurrent readings at Barnes & Nobles across Texas, from El Paso to Houston, from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to San Antonio and Corpus Christi. The reading series will also double as a fundraiser for the 7-year-old literary magazine; according to Borderlands publicity coordinator and past editor Patrick Collins, 10% of all sales of Borderlands during the readings will benefit the journal.
Holding a statewide reading, though unusual, is certainly apropos for a journal that bills itself as a Texas poetry review. Since its beginnings in 1991, when a group of UT students decided to launch Borderlands as an artistic response to the Persian Gulf War, the journal has had a decidedly Texan slant. Lee says that half of the poets in the upcoming issue live in Texas, and in past issues, Texans such as San Antonio’s Naomi Shihab Nye and Austin’s Marlys West have been featured alongside notables such as William Stafford and William Virgil Davis.
The Austin reading, like the others across the state, will feature contributors to previous Borderlands as well as those featured in the new issue. While a number of academic poets have contributed to Borderlands over the years, including a sizable percentage of poets from UT’s writing programs, the magazine has also drawn from other poetry communities. Saturday’s Austin reading, for instance, includes poets Barton Allen and Susan Somers-Willett, who both completed work on their poetry MAs from UT’s graduate English program last week. However, Somers-Willett is also a prominent local performance poet who represented Austin in last year’s National Poetry Slam, and Jeff Knight, who will also read Saturday, has been one of Austin’s most prolific and victorious slammers over the past three years.
While Borderlands does carry the sort of serious, carefully crafted elements germane to university-based literary magazines, there’s also a refreshing element of highbrow irreverence in the journal. According to Lee, this latest issue of Borderlands “is a little more alternative, and a little edgier” than previous issues. “There’s more risks taken with images and sound, more focus on those elements carrying the narrative as opposed to elements borrowed from prose,” Lee said. “It wasn’t my intention to make this issue avant-garde, but I think every editor brings in personal biases, and I consciously chose poems that were original and things I hadn’t heard before.” The new issue also features an essay from Knight on the Magnetic Poetry phenomenon, which has sent many an American to the refrigerator in search of, not food, but the Muse.
Starting in June, Borderlands will become financially aligned with the Austin Writers’ League. While the arrangement allows Borderlands to continue its independence from official university involvement, placing it in the minority of notable American literary magazines, Collins sees the arrangement as necessary given the economy of small press journals. As he puts it, “Poetry needs institutions in order to get grants from governments and private organizations. Poetry sells now, but it doesn’t always sell, and doing a journal like this is too expensive without something to rely on.” And even with AWL’s involvement, it certainly doesn’t hurt Borderlands to stage the occasional fundraising reading. Or eight. –Phil West
This article appears in May 15 • 1998 and May 15 • 1998 (Cover).