From the people who brought you bad poetry before even SPD did,
NOÖ Journal needs your help with a one-time fundraiser of radical poetry:

Some candid fiscal background from Mike: I started NOÖ Journal with my friend Kyle Peterson in 2004/2005. At the time, we were both in community college, and I had a respectable amount of extra money coming in from scholarships that went above and beyond the costs needed for community college. This money allowed us to conceive of NOÖ as a free print magazine, a reality that's remained ever since.

Now, in 2009, I live in Massachusetts and I no longer have any extra scholarship money. So the cost of printing the journal has become sort of intense. But I'm still committed to the idea of a free literary magazine distributed at coffeeshops and bookstores across the country, because I think the "literary scene" has an unfortunate economic insularity that makes entrance into this scene difficult for people who don't live in major cities or people don't understand why that literary journal at B&N is $12 when they could buy a book for $12, or people who haven't dipped into the whirpool of the internet literary community. I also think that print artifacts allows for a whole other dimension of reader interaction that reading online doesn't allow for, which we can sweepingly call the "shelf-in-your-bathroom effect."

We are working on institutional funding (grants, etc.) but those take time to implement. In the meantime, we would like to reach out to our reading community and ask them for help. If you have read and enjoyed NOÖ, please consider donating a small amount to help us with printing costs and keep the print aspect of the venue alive. You can donate whatever amount you want; we suggest, ala Radiohead, an amount you would consider fair for a journal like this if you saw an issue in a zine/journal rack. Here's what you'll get with your donation:

1) A lifetime subscription to NOÖ and acknowledgment in the acknowledgment section
2) Your own occasional poem, written by me or a guest star, under any paraemters you specify
3) An optional video-taped performance of that poem that makes your kindness and generosity known to all who frequent the YouTube.

The BAD POETRY fundraiser is fun, and we plan to bring it back, but we are tweaking it for now to offer RAD POETRY and a promise that we will try to write you a genuinely good poem, because we want people to know that this is a serious fundraiser and we would be sincerely thankful for any help.

To donate online, click below, and optionally include in your note any relevant poem requests (poem subject, dedication, form, etc.)


Thank you for helping free literature!