Tomorrow night, PageBoy publisher Thomas Walton celebrates the tenth issue of his magazine with a huge celebration at Hugo House featuring some twenty readers, musicians, filmmakers, and more. The tenth issue of PageBoy features a new form of poetry: The Seventeen, which Walton describes as “a poem or piece of writing consisting of no more and no less than seventeen words.” To discuss the event, Walton agreed to perform an interview entirely in Seventeens.

Why seventeen? Why not fifteen or twenty or eight or two hundred and sixty? Who decided this?

It's a bit arbitrary (though seventeen has poetic lineage in haiku). Aren't prime numbers somehow just sexier?

Has PageBoy’s growth progressed as anticipated, or has the magazine changed over time? Explain, please, if latter.

Yes, it's metamorphosed at least twice! Once when the staff assembled. Once when we started suggesting "assignments."

Can we expect ten more PageBoys? Even more? Does this project have an ending, in your mind?

Ten was the (somewhat unlikely) goal at the beginning. No end, necessarily, only further metamorphoses. Ideas welcome ...

Too many readers and performers at the event to list within constraints. Who should folks know about?

Ha! Yes, nearly thirty artists in different disciplines (poets, comedians, musicians, filmmakers) interpreting a single constraint. Fantastic!

Are publication and performance inextricably tied together? Does a magazine exist without an event to celebrate it?

Not necessarily, but who doesn't love a party? Re magazines: if a tree falls in the forest ...