chapbooks

Chapbooks, by definition, are  small paperback booklets that typically contain works of poems or fiction. For our class, our personal Chapbooks had to have a minimum of twenty poems (max of twenty-five), a bio and dedication, title page, and a table of contents (that includes numbering the pages). The amount of work in a chapbook is not always twenty to twenty-five, that was just the requirement for our class. Chapbooks are supposed to have a theme, or poetic narrative, throughout the entire book. The process for picking this poetic narrative varies from person to person, but there are a few standard ways to find it. 

One way is to gather work that consistently makes you feel a certain way, and create a theme off of that feeling. Another approach might be to simply pick a theme and stick with it; then you watch as the theme gets shifted through and refined as you select or cull which pieces fit it. Going off of the first option, you might spread all of the work that you are considering for the chapbook out in front of you and order or stack the pieces by what ever methods you want. You could see which stack has the most work and go with what theme is present. 

After you have picked the pieces you wish to put in the chapbook, you have to decide what order you want the work to be read in. This will be your poetic narrative. When doing this part of the chapbook process, it’s helpful to think of how the pieces feel, and what feeling you would like you readers to end with. 

Some ways to decide the order is to put it chronologically, following the date of when each piece was written or following the date of when the piece’s topic happened. Anther way to order your chapbook would be with the poetic narrative in mind. This way will take you readers on a journey through the pieces, so you have to keep in mind what you want your readers to feel as they travel through the beginning, middle, and end of your chapbook. What feeling do you want to leave them with once they get done reading? 

Moving past the content of the chapbook, we come to its presentation. Would your chat be digital, printed, or both? Which ever format you decide, the presentation also includes fonts, font sizes, colors, formatting the pieces/pieces’ titles on the page, designing the cover/title page, filling out the table of contents, adding pictures (if your want to include them), and the overall colors, consistency, and binding of your chapbook.  

Chapbooks can be full of your own persona work or you could collaborate with friends to make a chapbook that includes a mixture of authors. The process for creating chapbooks can seem extensive sometimes, but if you fully commit and follow the steps then this experience is bound to make something you will be proud of. Have fun creating!