Saturday, July 17, 2010

Evolution

A month or so ago I started scouting around for a Zine Team. Side Stream started as a little project in 2007 and after three and a half years, it's time to open it up to a bunch of new people to run it.

So I have put together a team.

Michael Botur will be the new editor of Side Stream and will be leading the new Side Stream team. He is a fabulous writer, an experienced editor of zines and an all round great guy with just the right kind of community focus and give-it-a-go.

Jason Morales will be our volunteer & events coordinator. Jason is an accomplished poet. He is involved in running events with Bright Yellow Beetle Records. Jason & I have known each other since I was 15.

Tim Donaldson will be our new type-setter & designer. Tim is a designer and he can make text look beautiful on a page. He lives in Tauranga, but visits Auckland often and the team will utilise technology to make everything happen.

I will oversee all of this, but between them, these three will be running Side Stream from September onwards and I'm more here for guidance.

All contact details and guidelines will stay the same, but Jason & Michael have already suggested some pretty cool evolutions for the coming months.

Hopefully with specific people in specific roles, Side Stream will be able to grow and develop into something much more than what it is currently.

Though from that first issue with 5 or so poems and no image, I feel good about what has come of it all so far. We go all over the place. Wonderful connections have been made. The latest Berlin issue is case and point. The Poetry Brothel is one of my favourite things to have done.

One of Jason's first points of call is to recruit more people to join the binding crew. We need a big enough pool to ensure that enough people will be available to bind each issue. When there's a good group it's lots of fun, you get to talking, it's mostly other poets, so it's a social thing as well as a great contribution.

If you are interested in being involved in that, please email us at sidestreamnz@gmail.com

Thanks to everyone for supporting this project all this time, for getting behind something grass roots, and here's to its ongoing success!

Miriam Barr