Some Of Us Press

Bruce Andrews and Lee Lally at Trinity College, c. 1970
Photo courtesy of Michael Lally

Beltway Poetry Quarterly has released a special issue celebrating Some Of Us Press. 

Some Of Us Press is one of the best representations of the Small Press Movement of the 1970s. The idea was radical: that the mainstream publishing industry was too conservative, and that writers whose voices would never be accepted by the big houses could bypass them entirely, and simply publish one another. The best of the small presses were experimental, flexible, and varied in their publications. SOUP, for example, published poets who were writing new work that was deeply personal, or pushed free verse to new places. Poems in the series were often political, anti-war, feminist, or openly gay. Some of the writers were immigrants or the children of immigrants, and redefining of what it meant to be American. All are filled with an exuberant sense of possibility.

Michael Lally reading at Folio Books, January 1977. In background:
Doug Lang, Terence Winch, Lynne Dreyer. Photo by Peter Barry Chouka.

Excerpts from thirteen books are included in the issue. Featured authors: Bruce Andrews, Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos, Lynne Dreyer, Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb, Robert Hershon, Beth Joselow, Lee Lally, Michael Lally, Leonard Randolph, Simon Schuchat, Terence Winch, and Ed Zahniser. 

With an introduction by Michael Lally, a preface by Kim Roberts, and a full press bibliography, the issue also features an array of visuals (book covers, photos from readings, flyers) and historical notes at the end of some of the author's pages that give a flavor of the passion and expansiveness of the 1970s literary scene. 

Read the issue: http://www.beltwaypoetry.com/some-of-us-press-issue/