Social: Earth Day Poetry Zines with the Feelin’ on the Fifth Zine Club

Celebrate Earth Day and National Poetry Month by creating a double-themed zine with a group of other zinesters. Hang out, chat, listen to music, and get your DIY publishing craft on. Once you finish your zine, receive help photocopying it to make enough copies to pass out to your friends and family. 

Create your original zine from a provided template of nature-themed poetry and visuals, or design a zine from scratch using a new supply of stickers that showcase beautiful plants, flowers, landscapes, leaves and insects. We'll also have the usual supplies (paper, collage ephemera, markers, colored pencils, stickers, stamps and scissors), including a fresh selection of magazines to cut up and plenty of environmental poetry to populate the pages of your zine. As usual, feel free to bring your own lines of verse or graphic design elements to incorporate into your zine. 

The supported format is an eight-page zine created from a single sheet of paper. Three sizes of paper will be available: letter sized (8.5" x 11"), legal sized (8.5" x 14") and tabloid sized (11" x 17"). 

This workshop is led by a Magazines and Newspapers Center librarian.  

2026 Feelin’ on the Fifth Zine Club Dates and Themes: 

Thur., Feb 12, 2026, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 

• Love is a drug! In celebration of Valentine’s Day, make a zine reflecting on the different types of love people can experience. We’ll provide text and images on this theme for collaging into your creation, including the Greek variations on love. 

Thur., April 9, 2026, 5:00-7:00 p.m. (note earlier time)  

• April is national poetry month and Earth Day is April 22nd! Bring some lines of your own verse or by your favorite poet to cut and paste into a zine. Try to format your selection to fit into a 4” x 2.5” single page or 4” x 5” double page spread if using letter sized paper for your zine. We’ll provide some environmental poetry to incorporate into your zine as well. 

Thur., June 11, 2026, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 

• Summer Stride kick-off! What do you plan to learn, see, do and explore this summer? 

Thur., Aug. 13, 2026, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 

• Summer Stride wrap-up! What epic adventures in learning did you experience this summer? 

Thur., Oct. 8, 2026, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 

• Oh, the horror! In 2023, U.S. consumers spent $840.6M on jack-o-lanterns during the Halloween season (according to Finder.com). Why dish out the big bucks when you can make a scary zine with us for free?  

Thur., Dec. 10, 2026, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 

• New year, new you? Looking ahead, express your 2027 goals in image and text. Looking back, what was your favorite moment of 2026 and how will you continue that good juju into the new year? Manifest! 

What is a zine?  

Zines are cheaply made printed forms of expression on any subject. They are like mini-magazines or home-made comic books about favorite bands, funny stories, sub-cultures, personal collections, comix anthologies, diary entries, pathetic report cards, chain restaurants, and anything else.  

Zines can be by one person or many. They can be any size: half page, rolled up, quarter sized...  

Zines are read by anyone willing to take a look, from concert-goers and the mail man to people on the train. They are sold at bookstores, thumbed through at zine libraries, exchanged at comic conventions, and mailed off to strangers.  

Zines are not a new idea. They have been around under different names (chapbooks, pamphlets, flyers). People with independent ideas have been getting their word out since there were printing presses.  

It’s a great feeling to hold copies of your zine in your hand. Go ahead, there is no wrong way. 

--Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson, Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics, page 12 

Resources 

What is a zine? [Website] 

How to Make A Zine [PDF] 

Zines! [SFPL-created reading list]

SFPL Little Magazines Collection [Website]