In April, Dead [Women] Poets Society once again gathered together in Sheffield and hosted a seance to communicate with the other side...
… In the form of a zine making workshop.
D[W]PS try to not only resurrect the words of dead women and non-binary poets, but in true seance style, open up a form of conversation between the living and dead. Communing with spirits can take a variety of forms, but we have mostly done this through carving out spaces for poetry performances up and down the country. Poets who still reside in the fleshy world of the living are invited to explore how they have been influenced poets who have passed onto the spirit world.
This workshop was a little different to our other “seances”, but spending an evening making zines seems to be the perfect way to continue our adventures in conversing with the dead. This event was open to the public, and held in Sheffield’s friendly local bookshop, Red Haus Books.
The basic premise was this:
We would each choose a poem by dead woman/ non binary poet, photocopy it, cut it up, cut some other bits up from magazines/other cool material (with maybe some drawings? And maybe some printing?!) and stick it all together to create one funky little zine.
Everyone’s finished zine could then be photocopied a bunch of times to be distributed between friends, between strangers, across the city, and beyond.
Nice ? Yes ! 100% nice !
But really, the evening grew into something waaaaay more than this premise, it had a real energy I still can’t quite put my finger on...
As we collectively explored the words of these women and non binary poets together, the workshop became a space of collaboration, solidarity and contemplation. It was magic. It is the power of DIY publishing bay-bee!
The zines that were produced were out of this world! Some people who came along ended up constructing their own poems out of newspaper clippings, while others made multiple zines.
In the end, 100s of copies of zines were made that evening! See some of them here…
Big thanks to everyone who came, it was a dreamy time. You all better be keeping your eyes peeled for our next event !
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