An excerpt from an interview in SAPLING

Sapling: Word For/Word is an online journal of poetry, prose, and other good stuff. Tell us a bit of your story—how did the journal come to be, and what should people know about you?

Jonathan Minton: I started Word For/Word in 2000 while I was a doctoral candidate in the University at Buffalo's Poetics Program. I had the classic 1950s “little magazine” in mind as a model – magazines such as Cid Corman’s Origin. I had originally planned to publish a print magazine that would have, at the insistence of my co-editor, an online supplement. The first issue had a narrow, specialized focus. I was at the time mostly interested in publishing writers who shared a common background with either UB’s Poetics Program or with Language Poetry. This changed after the third issue. I abandoned the print-model altogether when I realized that being online was expanding the scope of what I had originally planned. And beginning with issue three, I started featuring guest editors who have introduced me to visual poetry, Chilean sound poetry, electronic poetry, post-avant poetries, and a wealth of established and emerging forms of writing. Word For/Word has become a curiously hybrid creature.  And happily so.

Sapling is published by Black Lawrence Press and focuses on the small press industry.

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