Samizdat was an international poetry magazine published in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 from 1998

1998 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Samizdat poetry magazine founded in Chicago .* Skanky Possum poetry magazine founded in Austin, Texas....

 until 2004

2004 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* April 1 — Foetry.com Web site is launched for the announced purpose of "Exposing fraudulent contests. Tracking the sycophants...

 and edited by the poet Robert Archambeau

Robert Archambeau (poet)

Robert Archambeau is a poet and literary critic, whose works include the books Citation Suite, Home and Variations, and Laureates and Heretics, and the edited collections Word Play Place: Essays on the Poetry of John Matthias, The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, and Letters of Blood:...

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

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist.In 1982 he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland, and resides in Kraków. His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 11 September attacks...

 as well as Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman is an American poet, translator, and editor.-Life:Eshleman has been translating since the early 1960s. He is the recipient of the National Book Award in 1979 for his co-translation of César Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry...

, Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946 and raised in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, is a poet and translator. He left Luxembourg at nineteen and since then has lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa and France...

, Jerome Rothenberg

Jerome Rothenberg

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known American poet, translator and anthologist who is noted for his work in ethnopoetics and poetry performance.-Early life and work:...

, Michael Heller

Michael Heller (poet)

Michael Heller , is an American poet, essayist and critic. Among his many books are Exigent Futures, In The Builded Place, Wordflow and Living Root: A Memoir. He wrote the libretto for the opera, Benjamin, based on the life of Walter Benjamin...

, 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 Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

.

Special issues were devoted to Scandinavian poetry, the work of John Matthias

John Matthias

John Matthias is an American poet. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1941 and attended the Ohio State University and Stanford University. At Stanford he studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters, but did not conform to Winters' stringent anti-modernist position...

, 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.