Poetry Lasts Longer: History of Rainflowers.org, the original Stockton poetry events website that is no longer.
As web designer, poet, self-publisher, and dreamer of a global community, Donald R. Anderson created a geocities website sometime around 2004 for people to see the self-published, co-edited anthology titled Darwin's Children (2001-2) that a group of poets that met at Manny's next to the school for adults, and read at Open Mic (Microphone) poetry readings at the coffee house The Caffeine Den, went together in on publishing. Joe Brundidge was the host of the Open Mic that Donald first started going to regularly, and he networked with four other editors and six non-editing poet or art contributors, collaborating to publish the anthology in a quantity of around 200 copies which they distributed at The Caffeine Den, The Harding Way News stand, other small book stores and coffee shops. Shortly after the printing, when Jean Claude Crhi and Donald R. Anderson had been alternating as hosts for the Open Mic at The Caffeine Den, sometimes called Slam-or-Stage (S.O.S.) and the songwriter's workshop with Scott Tomingo co-hosting that was occasionally called The Breakfast Club (no relation to either the movie or the pre-Madonna band), Donald met Nikki Quismondo (later to become Nikki Anderson) and began to collaborate with other sets of poets and artists in sequels and periodicals. Then that was when Donald continued with other anthologies and eventually in mid-2005 the periodical newsletter PoetsEspresso, (Poet's Espresso,) which has had co-editors such as Nikki Quismondo (who later married Donald to become Nikki Anderson) and for most of its existence has been printed in varying quantities and papers and print qualities over the years every two months, more or less, and always has been regular paper sheets folded in half and stapled in the middle, zine-style, changing editors in 2010. Since then there have been many other print publishing projects, including comb-bound anthologies, then paperback and hardcover books. |
Donald R. Anderson, who at the time would go by the pen name Maliger and an email of Donald Remedy, working on poetry at The Caffeine Den around 2002 to 2005.
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