The Official Story Behind My Fanzine, Cops Hate Poetry>Act One

I’ve been waiting patiently for exhibition postcards to arrive in the mail for the past couple of weeks now for an art show that I’m part of and still they haven’t arrived, but that hasn’t doused my spirits just yet.

This isn’t any old art show though; no it’s one that displays current publications, affectionately known as “fanzines,” rubber stamps and works by Mexican American artist Enrique Chagoya. It will also display my old fanzine Cops Hate Poetry (CHP) in a 4X8 foot wall case, along with other relics associated with CHP.

It was a little over 19 years ago when I began research into and eventually launched my own fanzine, CHP. The research was conducted for several weeks in the evening at the Western Illinois University (WIU) library in Macomb, Illinois where I was attending at the time as a junior undergrad student.

I was getting more and more disillusioned with the way my writing was being chopped up, misquoted and taken out of context by the college newspaper I was writing for at the time, the Western Courier.

What drove me off the edge completely was a poem of mine that was published in the college literary magazine, Elements, Myth Of A Dream Omitted From A Good Humor Truck (http://themishegasmaster.blogspot.com/2005/09/botox-frankenstein-poetry-seriesmyth.html), but a crucial word was changed; that word was icicles, which was spelled deliberately as i-c-y-c-l-e-s to signify the passage of time.

Not only did I learn of their edit change after I received my complimentary copies of the journal, but they never even bother to seek me out and ask me if it was alright to change the spelling of the word! Instead of stewing about it, I took action and as I stated earlier, I began to explore the realities of underground publishing.

Right about that time, a local fanzine called Movement came out in the spring of 1986 and lasted for three issues. Issue 3 published some of my poetry, further inspiring me to pursue my fanzine endeavor. I continued onward my research efforts in the evening at the library, viewing the library’s extensive collection of underground newspaper collection on microfilm & soon began searching for a title for my fanzine.

A short time later, I stumbled upon a story from the San Francisco Oracle circa 1969. about a disgruntled cop who was harassing a poet for the kind of poetry he had written (and I think performed too). From there the creative juices flowed and bingo! The title became known what the fanzine is remembered today: Cops Hate Poetry.

The title was a statement to me however. The title Cops Hate Poetry was a metaphor for any form of authority that censored artists, musicians and others that were unclassifiable who chose to speak, perform, play, write or move in any sort of matter, but were not allowed to. In my fanzine, I gave those censored a safe place to land.

My early goal was to neither censor nor edit poetry, moreover I promised I would leave it as it and publish it the way it was sent to me. I published my first issue in September, 1986, the fall after I had left WIU as a four page publication, giving away nearly 65 percent of the issues, yet still I sold a number of them and later donated a few sets of them to a couple of libraries.

In the beginning, I placed them in local record shops, while getting an education in the art of consignment; i.e. the business gets part of the take, while you get the rest, usually it was 60 percent me and 40 percent them; plus I got to know many of the owners and store clerks that worked there as the issues went along, so did the expansion and that was just the beginning!!!

I’m still waiting for those postcards, but in the meantime, if you’re into seeing a really cool art show with rubber stamps, works by Mexican American artist Enrique Chagoya and Chicago-based zines that you can sit down and read, including a couple of my own, plus an eye-popping press kit, then go down to the Book & Paper Arts Center of Columbia College in Chicago on Friday, November 4 for the From Art To Zine opening reception, from 5:30-7:30pm, at 1104 South Wabash in the west loop (Chicago). The show itself runs until Saturday, December 17 & be sure to tell ‘em the MishegasMaster sent you!