After writing fourteen #tiny summer poems, I realised I had the perfect contents for mini zines. The poems are collected here in the order they were written. For the zines I tried to find pieces that were loosely connected. Once the zines were folded, it was possible to find a theme or thread that created a narrative in the few pages that I had.
At first I printed out A4 sheets of poems in Word style columns, then I tried using text boxes and different fonts to get a looser look with Canva. But really using a typewriter is the best way to get a grungy, handmade look. There aren’t as many options for organising the text, but the size of the type and the uneven inky results are a huge positive in my eyes.
Printed A4 sheet chopped and folded
I used a variety of different folds. Simple one page zines (with a simple cut in the centre of the page), three styles of accordian fold and also one with a simple cover. The tiny poems suited the very small books. Each page is A8 size, 1/16 of the A4 sheet. But the A7 size is very easy to fold and had more leeway for adding a creative background using a printer.
I’d like to try printing out an art sheet, then adding a typewritten text of poems before folding accordion style.
I think initially the goal was to simply have a paper copy of the poems that I had made myself. But when I made them without paying much attention to where the poems would sit on the pages, I realised I had something more interesting. Especially once I started using the typewriter because the orientation of the paper in the typewriter meant I couldn’t lay out the text the “right” way up. I was faced with pages of upside down text and the poems were chopped up across folds and pages.
This was way more interesting and gave me pages with new poems, new connections and pieces missing.
It was possible to create a new story and new threads. I drew symbols, lines, dots. I added subtitles with stamped letters and created a beginning and an end.
Fold a tab on the page and chop the A4 sheet into strips, glue them together to create one long accordion folding book. This one has a simple cover glued onto the back page.
Tiny zines and accordion books