Lucy Biederman: Can you talk a little bit about the DC poetry community? Why does Beltway publish DC-area writers exclusively?

Kim Roberts: The greater DC poetry community is incredibly rich and complex and diverse.  I started Beltway Poetry in order to learn more about this community, and meet more writers.  But I was hoping that the journal could actually help build community not just for myself but for others too.

LB: BPQ is not only a journal but an awesome resource for writers–its DC poetry news section and resource bank are the pretty much most extensive publications of their kind. How do you maintain them? How do you see them contributing to the community?

KR: Because of my local focus, I knew from the start that I wanted to include the kind of links that would allow area writers to find one another more easily.  The Resource Bank grew slowly, and I keep adding to it.  The hardest list to keep up-to-date is the list of reading series, which change from season to season.  I try to check all my links at least once a year (twice would be ideal, but I don’t always have enough help to keep up with the work!).  I maintain them with the help of student interns and other volunteers.  I am always looking for more help.  I know the Poetry News section is very popular–it gets a lot of hits, especially on the first day of each month, when a new listing goes up.

LB: How has the DC poetry community–or even poetry in general–been changed by the Internet?

KR: I love print culture dearly, but the internet has several factors in its favor: it is low cost, easy to use, and I don’t need to do much work to distribute new issues.  That has allowed me to keep the magazine free.  Web journals generally have much larger subscriber numbers than print journals for that reason.  But there are disadvantages too: we tend to read differently online than we do with a book.  We are more impatient, and want our online reading to be shorter and easier to grasp in a single sitting.

LB: Why is BPQ an online journal? Was that a difficult decision to make in 2000, when you founded it?

KR: Beltway Poetry appears online because a friend, Kathy Keler, asked me to add a poetry component to her website, washingtonart.  Kathy is a painter and graphic designer who I’d collaborated with in the past. I had not thought about publishing a journal prior to her suggestion.  Kathy designed the site, developed its format, made its logo, and taught me some basics of html so I could create the web pages.  Without her prodding, the journal would never exist.

In January 2010, we will be celebrating ten years of publishing online.  I’m amazed it’s lasted that long!  I’m planning several things to celebrate the anniversary.  The Winter issue will be a tribute to the 14 guest editors who have generously given their time and expertise since the journal’s founding.  These 14 have served as an informal group of advisors to the journal, bringing in new authors, helping me become a better editor, giving the journal new direction.

In addition, we will enter the realm of print!  In January, Plan B Press will publish an anthology I edited, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC.  The anthology will include about 100 poems, all from current or former residents of the area, written from 1950 to the present.  I am in the final stages of putting the book together now, and it’s very exciting.  There’s such a great range of urban poems!

Finally, I am planning a series of readings throughout the year.  I hope to schedule one reading per month throughout 2010, to highlight Beltway Poetry authors.