New zine a tribute to the small things people love about Richmond

“Like most things in my life,” poet Mathias Svalina said of The Oregon Hill Review, “it started as a joke.”

Contrary to the “ironic gravitas” of its title, he envisioned The Oregon Hill Review as a DIY literary zine focused on small, forgettable, beloved things.

And then “the joke turned into, ‘Oh, yeah, I should just do that,’” Svalina said. He describes the first volume as “a collection of little love letters to Richmond.”

The publication of the zine is Svalina's latest contribution to the area's arts scene. He is also known for his dream delivery service, and a series of neighborhood walking tours where he makes up facts about things he sees on Richmond's streets.

For The Oregon Hill Review, it was important to Svalina that the publication include works from “a mix of people who’ve made a life in the writing world and people who might be trying to do this for the first time.”

He sent a call for submissions to about 30 friends and acquaintances and asked them to pass it on, especially to people “who don’t consider themselves writers or artists already, who might take it as an encouragement to try.” The prompt was to write about something in Richmond that you love. 

The goal of this prompt was not only to celebrate Richmond, but also to create a useful document. “Many of my friends have been having a sort of slow-motion panic attack for the last six months or so,” Svalina observed. He wanted to collect poems and stories that would “ground in the objects and sense details of the local,” a way to find calm in times of distress. 

Exploring Richmond provides that grounding effect for Svalina.

“It always makes me feel better to bike around town, and think, 'Wow, I love this city.' For all its faults. And the things I love about it are rarely the things that are promoted,” he said.

Poems in The Oregon Hill Review celebrate vanity plates, walking the dog, summoning spring, a single brick, and graffiti that puts into words the thing you most needed to say. 

Printed on Studio 23’s risograph printer in teal on highlighter-green paper, the cover features an upside-down image of a neighborhood skyline.

“I love the intimacy of the technology of the book and the zine," Svalina said. "I love the sense of closing out the world. Being able to feel the tactile experience of the making, being able to feel the maker in the object.”

At a reading to celebrate the zine’s release, held at Shop 23, ink from the cover tinted readers’ fingers turquoise.

One contributor, eagerly paging through to find their poem, shared that it was their first time seeing their poetry published. The first reader of the evening confided that it was his first time performing a poem in ten years. The second reader hadn’t read in twenty. 

Other contributors teach or study in creative writing programs, or organize poetry events of their own.

The poems share a wry and playful but fierce affection for the places and people of Richmond. The commemorate moments that never make the news, but are vitally important to the people they happen to. Several feature great blue herons, flowering vines, and ghosts. They explore complicated kinds of love, whether for an invasive plant or a haunted home. 

To receive Volume One of The Oregon Hill Review, Svalina asks for a donation to the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project (RRFP), an organization that provides practical and financial assistance to people in need of abortion care, as well as sharing educational material about reproductive justice. After sending a proof of donation (he suggests $5-10) to mathias.svalina@gmail.com, he'll send a copy.

“My idea was, if people donate and then send me the proof of donation, they’ll be on the site,” Svalina said, learning more about the organization and its mission than they would if he simply collected funds and donated them himself. 

Ideas for future volumes range beyond poetry and short fiction. Svalina envisions “a collection of idiosyncratic maps of the town, or a collection of instructions that are not allowed to use street names or cardinal directions or right or left.”

Svalina's interest in dreams shows in one ambitious idea for a future issue: “I really want to try to get everybody who lives in Richmond to write down a dream they have in a single night.”

Svalina hesitates to accept the title of editor.

“I’m just a bystander. A hapless witness and/or victim of The Oregon Hill Review,” he said.

He added that future issues could be edited (or prompted, or provoked) by other people.

“If I do set up any rules to do with editors for The Oregon Hill Review, it will be that it has to be offline and it has to monetarily benefit some organization in Richmond,” he said.

Abiding by those guidelines, anyone with an idea and a desktop printer could bring Volume Two into the world.