Launched in 1999 and running into the first decade of 2000s, there was a local poetry/literature/art magazine called yawp that published a lot of Pittsburghers.
Sean D. Enright fondly thought of it when he opened his Poetry Lounge in Millvale, and he decided to bring back an issue of the ’zine to promote the place with work by local poets and artists.
Then somebody shared the news online, and submissions started coming in from afar, as well, much to Enright’s delight.
He’s published a bunch of them in the revived printed yawp that he’ll be releasing Friday at Poetry Lounge as part of the celebration of National Poetry Month.
The Artist Bios section describes 55 contributors, including Enright, the editor.
“Myself and Eric Bliman started yawp together in 1999,” he explains. “I designed the books and edited the artistic submissions and short stories, as well as produced and directed the yawp Carnival Poetica, where we raised funds for subsequent pressings. Eric left Pittsburgh in late ’00s to study poetry and is now a professor at Penn State Harrisburg.
“I printed one issue in 2010, but it was really Poetry Lounge opening that got me more involved in the community again, and producing a newer version of yawp just made sense as a marketing tool,” Enright said. “It quickly became more than that as you can see from the submissions we received.”
Some of the many notable contributors include slam poet Sara Rose, academic poet Jim Daniels, activist Toy Slaughter, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, and David Rullo, who was in the first edition, too. The point, Enright says, was to have representation from a wide range of styles — “just this open, very broad spectrum of writing.” That’s not something they see many other publications doing.
“I wanted people to understand what poetry is,” he says.
Issue 7 of the ’zine — its name is taken from a Walt Whitman poem published therein — will be celebrated starting at 7 p.m. Friday night with the return of yawp Carnival Poetica, a multidisciplinary poetic extravaganza featuring, according to the event’s Facebook page, Kevin “The Nerve” Wenner, Chiina Bloodier, Pete Bush & Friends, K-Harly, Lumberjag with Rick Bach, Sarah Rose, Bingo Quixote, Leslie Anne McIlroy, Mark Dignam, and The Old Cob! There’s a $10 cover charge.
Copies of yawp will be available for $15 there, as well as at City Books on the North Side and other independent book stores starting Friday. It’s only in print, on purpose. Says Enright, “there seems to be this whole nostalgia for the ’90s, which to me, seems like yesterday.”
The next issue is planned for October, and submissions — of “photos and artwork, poems, short stories, haikus and any/all written prose” — are welcome from anywhere. It’s going to be, Enright says, even more colorful and “even more spectacular.”
Watch for yawp’s coming Instagram. Meanwhile, Poetry Lounge is located at 313 North Ave., Millvale, PA 15209.
Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.
