Some nights are magic. The show is spot-on; the audience sings along; the crowd catches the poet's energy and gives it back a hundredfold. Afterward we spill onto the street, still buzzing: “Did you hear that? Did you see–“
But if you're not there, you miss it and you miss out. You also miss the chance to buy a chapbook, or a print; yes, children, back in the olden days before every last thought in a poet's head could go out on the Internet, we used to chop down trees and grind soot into ink and sell people physical copies of our work.
The You Shoulda Been There subscription series is a chance to grab what you missed. Poets, send us your backlist: we are looking specifically for finished chapbooks and for prints, hand-sold at shows over the past few decades. We are not looking for small press books or for anything you could get on Jeff's Giant River of Commerce; we want your hand-bound darlings.
If you want to submit something unpublished, you can; our curation team is looking at the same things an audience member would be thinking about at the merch table. Is this object unique? Is it appealing, to the mind and to the senses? Is it worth my second-drink money? Would it make a good gift for my beloved?
If you have physical copies of your books or prints, mail them to us at:
The Reading Room CLE
4687 E 88th Street
Cleveland, Ohio 44125
If you have a digital copy of your work, e-mail it to us at [email protected]. Word documents or PDFs are preferred. If your file is large, cloud sharing or website links are fine.
Please include a cover letter telling us who you are, what you do, and how, when and where you have distributed this work. If the fabrication is complex or nonintuitive, please describe it in your cover letter. There is no reading fee; if your work is selected for our series, The Reading Room CLE will purchase copies based on the cost of shipping and fabrication, the number of preorders, and each poet's promotional agreement.