In college I started a poetry zine with a roommate in Denton, TX. It eventually found a name that I still admire: Haggard and Halloo Publications. Or H&H for short. The project went through many iterations over the next decade as we focused on our 25 print issues. We published poetry, prose and art we felt was important and new from a core group of writers. Eventually I moved everything to an online forum that became a community of writers. I enjoyed the creativity and it was a big part of my life.
A friend of mine who I’ve known since 6th grade taught me how to build a website and basic html. I can’t give enough credit to Josh J. who worked 12 years, for free, behind the scenes to bring H&H to life.
The website was hacked many times by kids in the middle east. It wouldn’t be surprising to visit the site and see a scrolling triumph in Arabic staking my landing page for themselves. It was beyond my web skills so I found a former hacker named Warren C. to help. Right as we were working out new security features the website was hacked again. This time it was really bad and they took the entire site down (versus a redirect or throwing up a new page) and erased the infrastructure. Warren was able to salvage the text and put the site back in the most basic way.
Warren said it would take more time than he had to rebuild it so I put the task on the wobbly shelf.
Around this time I became a father and started a business. I put the poetry publication aside, indefinitely, and focused on those two things. 14 years later I’ve begun to phase out the commercial portion of my business and my children are both double digit, independent dependents.
I’ve been working with the same group of artists for about 30 years. Some have laid down their guitars, paint brushes and pens, but most of them continue to create. I’ve decided it’s a good time to relaunch my online poetry publication in hopes of supporting old and new voices.
My friends are writing more and releasing complete works and this inspires me. This weekend I redesigned the website, cleaned some cobwebs from the digital trap door the website had become and will officially relaunch this fall.
I doubt I’ll go back to print issues, but will certainly start posting new material on H&H. There’s a sort of resurgence in online poetry with the traction Substack has gained. I’m also in charge of the Charles Potts Poetry Award and have access to lots of new writing that didn’t quite make the cut to win the award. There’s some very good poetry there. My new found access to emerging voices coupled with my friends becoming more disciplined and focused on the written word is a gift.
You can find these new projects at the links below.
Haggard and Halloo Publications
-TC