Except I did. In December and January, and truth be known, I started months before that in order to meet my February 1st deadline for "Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry," a blog whose contents I curate for the Cuyahoga County Public Library. It's here:
https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center/Poetry/Read-Write-30-Days-of-Poetry.aspx
Seven years ago, I suggested the project to the library's "Writer's Center Specialist," Laurie Kincer. Laurie, an excellent poet in her own right, is a champion of support for writers in our area, and she has done yeowoman's work every year since to make "Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry" happen every year since.
Initially, I knew we could easily find 30 excellent poets to feature in Northeast Ohio, but I would never have guessed we could so easily find 30 Northeast Ohio poets every year for seven years, 209 to be exact. (If you do the math, you see I goofed and published one poet twice.) And we are pretty strict in our choice, requiring that poets have published a book or chapbook, not self-published. (In a few cases, the poet may not have a book but has enough journal publications to be considered for listing in Poets and Writers Directory). Oh, and they have to live in Cuyahoga or a contiguous county (or in a few cases, to at least work there). In one case, the poet no longer lives or works here, but was born and raised here and went on to become the first Poet Laureate of the State. We weren't trying to be exclusive, but we wanted readers to know that this poem-writing activity was going on right here, right now, that all the best poets in the world are not out on Cape Cod or in New York City or sitting on the docks of San Francisco. I will be the first to say that some of my favorite poets are in all those places. But a lot of my fav's are here at home, too.
We started with 400 people signing up right away the first year to receive the poems by email, and by the end of the first year, we had 900. Now, I am told, we have 3,918 readers. And I do mean readers: the library can't tell that the poems are read, but it can get a pretty clear estimate of how many of the emails get opened, and it is a very very high percentage. And the very best part for me is that these readers are not all literary academics and other poets, which is, face it, who a lot of poetry's readership is. I know this because there aren't that many poets and literary academics in Northeast Ohio. But I also know because we get comments on the site and emails in my box from readers who are not all poets and academics. People respond to the poetry prompt that's there by writing and posting their own poems, and they write sweet notes to the poets.
Here are some of them:
I am half Ukrainian. Thank you for sharing, Bill [Arthrell]. My hope, as well.
So many years captured in three short lines.
What an exquisite poem! I love the embedded rhymes. The imagery persists long after we’re done reading, “affixed like/gold dust on/an illuminated/manuscript.”
i am in love all over again, in spite of the pandemic. Thank you friend! Love
"...the fistfights, my ghetto ballet" love this line, love this poem.
This is beautiful, thank you Marcus.
This poem is appropriate for today. Please tell us who does the beautiful art work for us.
Just wow.
What fun to see your poetry on the library website. I love Buzzards. On each rereading, it grows better and better.
This took me back. I'd forgotten how good a pop-sickle could be in summer's heat...and what those neighborhood stores were like. Thank you.
I just love the speech lines through this poem, and the rhythms created by the list of names. So engaging!
Someone asked where the artwork came from. It's stock, Laurie answered, and in fact, some of the stock images have been great fits.
We get complaints, too. One person complained that I shouldn't have chosen so many poems about death, given what we are facing now. I didn't argue the point--though I do disagree with it. Instead I pointed out that I had a February 1st deadline and chose these poems in a very different climate. In return, my correspondent sent me a poem she had just written for her grandchildren! An acrostic! I LOVE acrostics! I wrote back.
Every morning I email the poet of the day to remind them that their poem is up. And I read their poem again. And feel how fortunate I am to be here in Northeast Ohio, the land of great libraries, and surrounded by this great company of poets and this great great company of readers of poetry.
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