Forklift, Ohio

Cincinnati Magazine recently ran an article on Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) and Eric Appleby’s Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety:

There is a cork sealing shut the most recent edition of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, an independent literary magazine based in Cincinnati. Why, you ask? It’s a wine-themed issue. Each section includes a pairing; there are genuine wine stains on the cover; and jammed through each of the 260 pages is that cork. The issue even comes with a corkscrew, providing the most tactile experience you’ll probably ever have opening a new publication. But then, each biannual issue is made by hand, and it’s that level of craftsmanship that has made Forklift: Ohio one of the more talked about literary magazines in the country.

It started small. Matt Hart and Eric Appleby founded the magazine back in 1994, when they were new in town. The duo had published a lit mag out of their dorm rooms at Ball State University (it was called Nausea Is the Square Root of Muncie), and they, along with fellow Ball State alum Tricia Suit, thought that reviving it under a new name might be a good way to get plugged into the local poetry scene. So they began soliciting poems from friends and fellow poets in the area, creating a local network of supporters and fans. Once each year or so, they’d throw the poems together and print a tabloid-sized collection, interspersed with images from cookbooks or safety manuals that Appleby collected...[Keep Reading]…