One line of poetry can work like a spell, conjuring a memory for one person and pulling gospel from someone else. As Wisconsin Poet Laureate, I am employing poetry lines to connect the creativity of neighbors and the humanity of strangers. My project, A Line Meant will be a statewide poetry exchange for traditional Wisconsin residents, to include residents of Wisconsin prisons.
I spent much of last year building partnerships, scouting justice-impacted vendors and building a web app portal from scratch! We launched in November with the first 12 poetry line prompts, drawn from an anthology of Wisconsin writers titled Through This Door. Every poem shared receives a poem from elsewhere in the state. Once activated, participants will receive new poems for a season and have access to view pieces uploaded from across the state. At the end of the series, I will select from peer favorites to be published in a collection, alongside new works from me.
Of all my outreach over the past 20 years, supporting the tenacious creatives inside the “gated communities”of prison remains my most humbling and fulfilling work. We all have stories to tell, errors to atone and a poem (or twelve) pounding in our chests. I am giddy to witness the introductions of neighbors, exclusively via POEMS!
Find this month’s prompts here -> http://ALineMeant.org
ALM Collective Poems
Each month, I select about a dozen entries and randomly highlight one line of the poem. I combine and build those lines into a whole new poem. I love it here…
ALM Hot Damn Collective Poem (1).mp4
FB ALM Unfurl Collective Poem.mp4
FB ALM Ocean Collective Poem (1).mp4
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