I'll say something quick here.
I mean, the reason that I started a magazine was that--
I mean, it was probably the reason anyone
starts these things.
It's like you see things that no one else is going to take.
And of course, you have the temerity and the ego
to believe that you would have had better taste than anyone
else.
But I mean, also that you can get them read.
And this is the great thing about running an online journal
as opposed to a print journal.
I mean, I love print journals.
But I mean, my magazine would get 4 million hits a month,
I mean, internationally, whereas when I edited Black Warrior,
we had $30,000 budget for that.
It got read by probably 1,500 people, mostly in America.
And I mean, not every print magazine worth its salt
has a website.
But really, it's all about getting
in front of other readers and trying to put that work out
there and preferably having some kind of feedback.
That's why we publish people's email addresses
if they want us to is you can get comments,
you can get feedback from.
I think that's what most of us as writers
are probably looking for.
We want to be read and responded to, hopefully
not in negative ways.
In terms of publication and as it
relates to making something public,
the internet is a lot more public
in that way than a print journal.
I mean, you can know, you can analyze who's going,
they can respond to you--
all those sorts of things.
But-- Julia, did you want--
Yeah.
Well, I just want to reiterate what Claudia said last night
which is we are the public.
I actually never heard anyone--
I've heard the question 100,000 times--
how do we get this work out to the public?
And everybody gets really worried
that we are not really bringing our work out.
And I've never heard anyone say, you're the public,
in response to that.
It was liberating and not in a way
that I think it could be which is, OK, good, thank God,
we don't have to talk to anyone out there--
[LAUGHTER]
--which is a little bit no.
But also, it's that we are exempt from the world
and we aren't people that don't need to be educated anymore.
We already know everything or something.
So it seemed really important that she said that.
But the other thing I wanted to just bring up
about making work public is I started a bookstore forward
facing the gallery this year.
And one of the things that we're doing there
is very much poetry off the page.
It's very much about having screenings and events
and performances and all kinds of different kinds of events.
And so expanding the public for poetry
or for literature or archival literature in Denver
means trying to have art events that
bring in the film community or the visual arts community
and then sneaking a little poetry in there
or just bringing us together so we
get to know each other, which is a huge thing so
that those communities which really have a ton in common
don't ignore each other.
And sometimes we don't like each other,
but at least we get to know each other.
And that seems like a step in a direction that's
always fun and--
yeah.
You're Counterpath, right?
Yeah.
That's how small the community is.
Yeah, right.
[LAUGHTER]
There's a new one.
We all know who it is.
My wife and I had Paper Kite Press and Studio
for many years.
And it was an art gallery and a performance space.
And everything you're saying is absolutely true.
And we'll tell you from our experience
that the most successful events that we had consistently
were events that have involved more than one thing.
It was music and poetry, or it was an art thing and open mic.
I mean, this cross-pollination will more than
double the audience in the long term.
And I think you're totally right.
I just want to agree.
You're correct.
That is a great way to do it is we all have access
to all of these other communities
and it behooves us to try and get them together
and to put them together.
Something I heard about two weeks ago that has just
stuck with me and I keep thinking of it is it's
really difficult to have an original idea when
you're surrounded by people who have similar experiences.
You can react the same, you can talk to each other
about this thing that you saw.
But if all of your experiences are similar,
all of your reactions are going to be fairly similar also.
So I think it's vital to anybody invested in creative endeavors
to do that, to be plugging in with people who are not
radically diverse because you need
to be able to have some common ground but can extend you
and what you do.