SCORE Magazine

SCORE Magazine celebrates – cerebrates – its twentieth year this fall. Born on Grant Ave., Berkeley, CA in 1983 as a venue for a visual poetry not found in other publications (before then editors Bill DiMichele, Laurie Schneider, and Crag Hill got wind of Karl Kempton’s KALDRON, the premier magazine of international visual poetry through the 1980s, David Cole’s MC, Julien Blaine’s DOC(K)S, and the many imprints emanating from J.W. Curry), it’s crawled, toddled, gone through puberty, young adulthood, and plopped right into middle-age it seems, not much shift in focus.

Its last three issues, however, indicate the mid-life crisis (er, rather, the end-of-life crisis; many thoughts of ceasing publication) has been put behind it. SCORE, for its first fifteen issues printed visual poems and scores for performance exclusively(Spencer Selby and Crag Hill whelped the last three of those issues together); much prose and lyric poetry was returned on that basis alone, with many regrets. Now it’s open to writing of all genres. The criteria? Hmm, I know it when I see it (when it seizes me).

Why continue to publish in-print after twenty years? Simply, I can’t get enough of the surprises that come to my mailbox or computer. I especially like to shout for the work of poets I have not read before, e.g. Carrie Hunter whose “Preponderance” will appear in SCORE 19, due around the corner of next year. The poem begins as a conventional lyric poem, one whose initial meaning could be paraphrased as the foreboding of death, an omnipresent dread:

the sound of the clock ticking
swish of endings – finality
what can barely be heard
in the background
what preponderates
what dominates and what
turns toward silence, tries to become it,
seeps into its edges.

The poem lulls, then erupts just past its midway point, grabbing my attention:

only maskless alone
only maskless in silence
sheepskin sleeping inside
barefoot alone naked inside
jewelry singing inside boxes
seeming seeming so still

Its meaning transformed, re-shaped, bearing but a trace of the initial meaning. I can’t get enough of such transformations. Sure beats the advertising circulars that bulge from our mailbox.

Keep ‘em coming, Carrie and others!

The most recent issue, SCORE 18, is beginning to make its way to contributors and subscribers. It’s contents: explosive reading from The Atlanta Poets Group (Tedd Mulholland, collaborations, Mark Prejsnar, James Sanders, dana lisa petersen, Zac Denton, JS. Van Buskirk, Tracey M. Gagne, )ohnLowther, Sandy Baldwin, & Randy Prunty), David Chirot, Joel Lewis, John M. Bennett & Scott Helmes, Derek White, Peter de Rous, Mike Basinski, Nick Piombino, G. Huth, Pete Lee, David McAleavey, Jessy Kendall, Lewis Lacook, Brouilles, Richard Erdmann, R. Sponaugle, Edward Mycue, Thomas Bell, Andrew Topel & John M. Bennett, Sam Hunter, Nathan Whiting, Guy Beining, Carlos Martinez Luis, Greg Evason, John M. Bennett & Scott Helmes, Carla Bertola, Ian Randall Wilson, Cyril A. Dostal, Sheila Murphy, William Woodruff, Christopher Strople, Randy Koch, and David Baratier

Contact SCORE:
c/o Crag Hill
1111 E. Fifth St.
Moscow, ID 83843 ($12 per issue/$15 for institutions)