Introduction
In July of 2000, I spent a very brief but happy period editing a weekly zine called Doggerel. The thing was sent out via email, a technique of publishing that enjoyed a brief vogue before blogs took over, and at one the undertaking point had some 1,400-plus subscribers, which seemed a lot to me then, but nowadays seems rather meager (after all, I am in the possession of a ventriloquist dummy who has managed to make himself a grand total of 1,800 MySpace friends). Nonetheless, I had a little digital poetry newsletter, it had a little audience, and regularly received letters and submissions, and that suited me. After all, I was publishing the most degraded nonsense I could write or find, and the fact that anybody at all was willing to read it rather delighted me. Doggerel (later to be called Doggerel Weekly) specialized in the fringes of poetry, as its name suggests. I printed bawdy songs, limericks, rhymed threats, tombstone epitaphs, toasts, and essays concerning the worst poets in his...