What Is a Broadside in Poetry?
Quick answer: A broadside in poetry is a single printed sheet carrying one poem, from street ballads to fine letterpress prints. Its history, uses, and how to make one.
A broadside in poetry is a single sheet of paper, usually printed on one side only, carrying one poem designed to be read at a glance and often to be hung on a wall. Historically, broadsides were the cheap street print of their day: ballads, news verses and scandal sheets hawked for a penny in early modern Britain. Today the word usually means something closer to the opposite, a limited edition art print of a single poem, often set by hand on a letterpress and signed by the poet.
One word, two eras, and the gap between them tells a story about how poetry travels. The old broadside was disposable, loud and everywhere; the new broadside is precious, quiet and scarce. Both, though, share the same core idea: a poem freed from the book, standing alone on paper, meeting readers who never went looking for it. If you write short poems, the broadside is worth knowing about, because it remains one of the loveliest ways a single poem gets published.
The Street Broadside: Poetry as News
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, broadside ballads were the tabloids, pop charts and true-crime podcasts of Britain rolled into one sheet. Printers set topical verses in cheap type, added a woodcut that may or may not have matched the story, and sent hawkers out to sing them in streets, fairs and markets. A note above the text often named a familiar tune, 'to the tune of Greensleeves' or similar, because these poems were meant to be sung, not studied. Executions were reliable bestsellers; so were disasters, monstrous births, love laments and political insults.
Because broadsides were ephemeral, most vanished the way newspapers do. We can still read thousands only because collectors saved them. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, bound well over a thousand ballad sheets into volumes now kept at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford has digitised its vast holdings so anyone can browse them free online. Reading them is humbling for a modern poet: verse once moved through cities at the speed of gossip.
How Broadsides Spread Poems Before Books Were Cheap
Printed books were expensive objects for centuries, but a single sheet cost a penny or less, which put poetry within reach of servants, apprentices and farm labourers. Even people who could not read could learn a ballad by ear from the seller's performance and carry it home in memory. The broadside was therefore a distribution technology as much as a format: it moved words across class lines that books rarely crossed.
This history explains why so much of the folk ballad tradition survives in broadside versions, and why scholars comb these sheets for early texts of songs later collected from oral singers. It also explains the form's lasting association with protest. A poem that costs a penny, fits in a pocket and can be pasted on a tavern wall is a naturally political object, and governments of the period periodically tried to license or suppress the trade.
Broadside Press and the Black Arts Movement
The word gained a second life in Detroit in 1965, when the poet and librarian Dudley Randall founded Broadside Press. Randall began by printing single poems as broadsides, an affordable way to put Black poetry directly into readers' hands; his own 'Ballad of Birmingham', about the 1963 church bombing, was among the first in the series. The press grew into one of the defining institutions of the Black Arts Movement.
Its list is remarkable. Broadside Press published Etheridge Knight's first collection, brought out work by Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and Audre Lorde, and became a publishing home for Gwendolyn Brooks after she left her mainstream publisher. The choice of the broadside format was itself an argument: poetry as something cheap to print, easy to share and rooted in community rather than in New York publishing houses. When poets talk about broadsides as a democratic form, this chapter is a large part of what they mean.
The Modern Fine-Press Broadside
Walk into a poetry reading with a book table today and you may find the third kind of broadside: a letterpress print of one poem, produced by a small studio in an edition of fifty or a hundred, often signed by the poet and sometimes by the printer or illustrator. These are collaborations. A printer chooses paper, typeface, ink colour and spacing, and those choices interpret the poem the way a composer interprets a lyric.
The format imposes a useful discipline: the poem must fit one sheet and read well at arm's length, so short lyrics, single stanzas and poems with strong visual shape suit it best. Fine-press broadsides are frequently made to mark an occasion, a festival, a poet's visit, a fundraiser, and they occupy a sweet spot between publication and artwork. For many poets, seeing one poem given a whole sheet of beautiful paper is more moving than seeing a whole book.
Broadside, Chapbook, Pamphlet: What Is the Difference?
The small-press world uses these words precisely, and mixing them up in a submission letter is a small tell. The quick distinctions:
Getting Your Own Poem onto a Broadside
There are more routes than you might expect. Some literary journals and presses issue broadsides of prizewinning or featured poems; some letterpress studios and university book-arts programmes invite poets to collaborate; community print shops in many cities run open workshops where you can set your own poem in metal or wood type. Watch the acknowledgements pages of poets you admire and you will start noticing broadside credits.
If you make your own, keep the design honest and simple: one short poem, one typeface family, generous margins, and paper heavy enough to frame. A broadside also makes a fine gift and a memorable way to mark a milestone, a first publication, a wedding poem, a contest win. A poem strong enough to stand alone on a wall is usually a poem strong enough to stand alone in front of judges, too.
What poets can take from this
- Study free digitised collections of broadside ballads online; they are a masterclass in writing verse for a wide audience.
- If a poem is under twenty lines and has a strong closing image, shortlist it as broadside material.
- At readings and book fairs, buy a broadside instead of a bookmark; you will learn design by living with it.
- When submitting to presses that make broadsides, mention which single poem you think suits the format and why.
- Set margins generously in your own designs; crowding kills a broadside faster than any font choice.
- Frame behind glass with acid-free backing if you want a letterpress broadside to outlive you.
Try it yourself
Write a poem that could be sold on a street corner in 1750: report a real event from your town this week in ballad quatrains, give it a long dramatic title, and add a tune direction at the top the way the old broadside printers did.
Questions
Is a broadside the same as a broadside ballad?
Not quite. The broadside is the printed sheet; the broadside ballad is the kind of topical, singable poem that dominated those sheets from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Modern broadsides carry lyric poems of every kind, so the terms overlap historically but not today.
How big is a broadside?
There is no fixed size. Historical broadsides were printed on whatever large sheets the shop stocked, while modern letterpress broadsides commonly run from roughly notebook size up to poster size. What defines the form is a single sheet, usually one-sided, not particular dimensions.
Where can I see historical broadsides?
The Bodleian Library in Oxford has digitised a huge collection of broadside ballads that anyone can browse online, and the Pepys collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge is the other famous archive. Many national libraries and university special collections hold sheets you can request in person.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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