Call for Submissions - Newcastle Zine Review 2009

Before 2009 is over, I wish to make a Newcastle Zine Review.

This will be a fuller version of what I did in August, featuring 2 sentence reviews of locally-made zines and small press things, with the odd photocopy or thumbnail pic of some of them. I'll print 200 or so copies and leave them out around toon over the next month.

Considering the v.brief timing (which is essential to me actually doing it, because I start my hated job again in January), this will not try to be a very comprehensive or beautiful thing but it will, I hope, be good in at least 3 ways:

1. It will include contacts and snippets of locally available zines, made available to random strangers who may try to get them, or even make their own.

2. It will put on paper some kind of ephemeral history, the non-published Newcastle, the zines that are out there then disappear. I would like to be able to add to this underground history in future, by discovering people's zine collections or being told about this and that.

3. It will be a call out to a DIY community. In a sense it will be an opener to a 2010 Newcastle Zine Review, produced in about a year's time, for which people can write articles on DIY events, send me their zines for review or write their own, etc...

There's probably a 4th good thing about it, that it puts me off the looming work-based existence that so destroys my spirit. And I like cutting and pasting and looking back on things, too.

CONTENTS

Well, I start today so we'll see, but I anticipate:

1. The basic reviews and pics of zines and small press comics that went in the first one.

2. An account of my own zines, advertising the no-cost availability of some of them.

3. Reviews of a few DIY events of the year, probably: DIY Aye, Story Zine, the tribulations of local free festivals, Unsuitable Passport Photos, the Star & Shadow volunteer cinema.

4. I'll also invite a couple of people to write, although it's probably too brief notice, about things they've done and been involved in, like the pink-papered Feminist zines or CJ's house gigs.

5. Advertise one or two DIY things, like Wor Diary & Paper Jam & anything else I can find quickly!

If anyone wants to contribute something - anything - just email it to me, oldglen at gmail dot communism

Squeezing the last drip out of 2009's goodness - the world of zines is what kept me going this year.

Pythagoras Zine cut n pasted

Just a piece of idle frippery, really, but it brings my zine total for the year up to 12.
Plus 4 collaboration/contributions and 4 participatory events.

Which probably means I'm suffering from some sort of psychosis.

Photos suitable for Christmas Cards.

My house.

Winter Wonderland

Tree Snots

Even the phone lines had snow on.

Hardgoing underfoot.

Durham

My Street.

The people who deliver my great aunt Joan's newspapers.

Word on the Street.

Someone on Eastenders is shouting.

Here's some more pictures, of Wor Diary & the Christmas Zine.

Happy Mithras Day

The snow is still falling outside, and on the road it's hardened into ice.
Beautiful snow, almost unreal, like icing sugar.

Last night I finished and printed 100 copies of my Christmas Zine. I stapled and numbered them, and then in the evening I took them out on the bus. A pissed man sat in the seat behind me, and grabbed my neck. His hand felt horrible, and the sense of it on my neck lingered all evening.




Anyway, I dropped some zines off around the ouseburn - the Cumberland, the Cluny and the Star & Shadow. It was too cold to wait for a bus, so i walked into town, to the Dance for Peace & Solidarity, where I asked if it was okay to try flog some Wor Diaries.

I found Alice & Helen with a stall of feminist zines and they let me dump my stack with them and go and listen to the music. We sold some, I got drunk and danced a lot.

On the way home, the snow had settled and taken over the place. I was throwing snowballs all the way up Westgate Road and Brighton Grove. Then I had to get out of bed and vomit. Sorry.

Today we planned to go out to the hills and stay over, but by the time I woke up it was too late to walk, and the roads ain't open. So I've had a wonderful weak day at home with TV, posting zines etc..

I might still get the Newcastle Review Zine done before the year is out, and I've got a mini zine about Pythagoras to print, plus reprints of the Story zine we did at the Star & Shadow.
I'll keep you posted.