''Samizdat'' was an international poetry magazine published in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

from 1998 until 2004 and edited by the poet

Robert Archambeau Robert Archambeau (18 April 1933 – 25 April 2022) was a Canadian ceramic artist and potter. He also had an academic career in post-secondary art studies. Personal history Born in Toledo, Ohio, United States, in 1933, he immigrated to Cana ...

. It was noted for its unusual format, being printed on large newsprint pages. Contributors included

Adam Zagajewski Adam Zagajewski (21 June 1945 – 21 March 2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the 2017 ...

as well as

Clayton Eshleman Clayton Eshleman (June 1, 1935 – January 29 or 30, 2021) was an American poet, translator and editor, noted in particular for his translations of César Vallejo and his studies of cave painting and the Paleolithic imagination. Eshleman's work ha ...

Pierre Joris Pierre Joris (July 14, 1946 – February 26, 2025) was a Luxembourgish- American poet, essayist, translator, and anthologist. He moved between Europe, North Africa, and the United States for fifty-five years, publishing over eighty books of poet ...

Jerome Rothenberg Jerome Rothenberg (December 11, 1931 – April 21, 2024) was an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Rothenberg co-founded the method of ethnopoetics with Dennis T ...

, Michael Heller, Stephen Collis, C.S. Giscombe, and others associated with experimental poetry. Eclectic and xenophilic in nature, the journal published work on or by Irish experimental poets, Eritrean poets, and new translations of poetry by

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; born Paul Antschel; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a German-speaking Romanian poet, Holocaust survivor, and literary translation, literary translator. He adopted his pen name (an anagram of the Romanian spelling Ancel ...

. Special issues were devoted to Scandinavian poetry, the work of John Matthias, and the collaboration between Joris and Rothenberg. The journal was named after the Russian underground literary movement. The Russian word "samizdat" translates literally as "self-published"; the word was chosen to reflect the journal's refusal of institutional funding.

References

Poetry magazines published in the United States Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1998 Magazines disestablished in 2004 Magazines published in Chicago {{US-poetry-mag-stub