Post by ekswitaj on Sept 12, 2008 0:39:12 GMT 2
Cento for an Anthology of Women Poets - Ann Fisher-Wirth, Ellen Goldstein, Ann Hostetler, D’Arcy Randall, Rosemary Starace & Lesley Wheeler.
INTRODUCTION
Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv (Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2008) is an anthology of contemporary women's poetry that documents the flourishing of a large electronic discussion group. However, the vibrant listserv named in the book's subtitle is not the only group with a stake in this publication. Letters to the World was edited collectively by a much smaller band of women from the listserv. This hybrid essay reflects upon the unusual process of editing Letters to the World: it begins and ends in a corporate voice, with an introduction and conclusion co-authored by some of the anthology's editors. The heart of this piece, however, is a collage of observations from members of the editorial team. While Letters owes much to feminist collectives of the 1980s, it also demonstrates how twenty-first-century technology has rearranged relations among poets, editors, and readers.
The poets whose work is collected in Letters to the World are all current or former members of the listserv titled “Discussion of Women's Poetry.” This online community, nicknamed “Wom-po,” was founded in 1997 by poet and scholar Annie Finch; its members call themselves “wompos” or “womponies.”When the editing collective started its work in late 2005, Wom-po included 600 poets, publishers, teachers, and readers who came together because they value poetry by women. It has since swelled to almost 800 members. The culture of the listserv is described in more detail in D'Arcy Randall's introduction to Letters and on the listserv home page (http://www.usm.maine.edu/wompo/). Wom-po is an inclusive group, democratic and feminist in spirit, and it is open to all interested parties - men as well as women. Its many daily posts can be passionate, political, scholarly, witty, emotionally moving, offensive, curious, and profoundly generous.
The anthology, referred to by participants as “the wompology,” arose from an impulse to gather sample poems from the diverse, geographically dispersed poets that comprise the Wom-po listserv. It also reflects our desire to document the vitality of Wom-po. Unlike most poetry anthologies, Letters does not manifest an individual editorial aesthetic. The 258 women and one man who submitted work to our anthology put their poems forward knowing the collection would represent their voices to other members of the community. The book we came to call Letters to the World makes a strong case for poetry as an instrument of connection in our splintered world.
The process began in November 2005 when Moira Richards, a poet and activist from South Africa, proposed to the Wom-po list a plan to collect one poem from every willing listserv member for a self-published book. She asked for volunteer editors, and the group we called “Team Editorial” began to coalesce. At the same time contributors started sending in their poems, which Moira collected on a temporary private blog so that list members could observe the manuscript's expansion. In December 2005, Eloise Klein Healy brought the project to the attention of Kate Gale, managing editor at Red Hen Press, who promptly joined the listserv and offered to publish the anthology. This intervention raised the book's profile and enlarged its potential audience, but also complicated the process of assembling it, requiring a new layer of administration for contracts and communications. We were also concerned about the impact on the editorial group's autonomy and our egalitarian vision of the book. As it turned out, Red Hen Press designed, published, and promoted the book, but did not seek to influence its content. The final product includes contributors who represent 19 countries on five continents, and, as the brief reflections below demonstrate, a wide variety of aesthetic, ethnic, and professional affiliations.
Read the rest of this essay here:
tinyurl.com/56geg5
(complete the 3 items of information and then download the free pdf file).
Otherwise, go to www.junctures.org/ and click on Issue 10: Group and scroll down to the second last entry on the page and click 'download this article'
This essay first published June 2008 in the "Group" issue of Junctures: A
Journal for Thematic Dialogue (an academic web and print
journal based in New Zealand).
INTRODUCTION
Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv (Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2008) is an anthology of contemporary women's poetry that documents the flourishing of a large electronic discussion group. However, the vibrant listserv named in the book's subtitle is not the only group with a stake in this publication. Letters to the World was edited collectively by a much smaller band of women from the listserv. This hybrid essay reflects upon the unusual process of editing Letters to the World: it begins and ends in a corporate voice, with an introduction and conclusion co-authored by some of the anthology's editors. The heart of this piece, however, is a collage of observations from members of the editorial team. While Letters owes much to feminist collectives of the 1980s, it also demonstrates how twenty-first-century technology has rearranged relations among poets, editors, and readers.
The poets whose work is collected in Letters to the World are all current or former members of the listserv titled “Discussion of Women's Poetry.” This online community, nicknamed “Wom-po,” was founded in 1997 by poet and scholar Annie Finch; its members call themselves “wompos” or “womponies.”When the editing collective started its work in late 2005, Wom-po included 600 poets, publishers, teachers, and readers who came together because they value poetry by women. It has since swelled to almost 800 members. The culture of the listserv is described in more detail in D'Arcy Randall's introduction to Letters and on the listserv home page (http://www.usm.maine.edu/wompo/). Wom-po is an inclusive group, democratic and feminist in spirit, and it is open to all interested parties - men as well as women. Its many daily posts can be passionate, political, scholarly, witty, emotionally moving, offensive, curious, and profoundly generous.
The anthology, referred to by participants as “the wompology,” arose from an impulse to gather sample poems from the diverse, geographically dispersed poets that comprise the Wom-po listserv. It also reflects our desire to document the vitality of Wom-po. Unlike most poetry anthologies, Letters does not manifest an individual editorial aesthetic. The 258 women and one man who submitted work to our anthology put their poems forward knowing the collection would represent their voices to other members of the community. The book we came to call Letters to the World makes a strong case for poetry as an instrument of connection in our splintered world.
The process began in November 2005 when Moira Richards, a poet and activist from South Africa, proposed to the Wom-po list a plan to collect one poem from every willing listserv member for a self-published book. She asked for volunteer editors, and the group we called “Team Editorial” began to coalesce. At the same time contributors started sending in their poems, which Moira collected on a temporary private blog so that list members could observe the manuscript's expansion. In December 2005, Eloise Klein Healy brought the project to the attention of Kate Gale, managing editor at Red Hen Press, who promptly joined the listserv and offered to publish the anthology. This intervention raised the book's profile and enlarged its potential audience, but also complicated the process of assembling it, requiring a new layer of administration for contracts and communications. We were also concerned about the impact on the editorial group's autonomy and our egalitarian vision of the book. As it turned out, Red Hen Press designed, published, and promoted the book, but did not seek to influence its content. The final product includes contributors who represent 19 countries on five continents, and, as the brief reflections below demonstrate, a wide variety of aesthetic, ethnic, and professional affiliations.
Read the rest of this essay here:
tinyurl.com/56geg5
(complete the 3 items of information and then download the free pdf file).
Otherwise, go to www.junctures.org/ and click on Issue 10: Group and scroll down to the second last entry on the page and click 'download this article'
This essay first published June 2008 in the "Group" issue of Junctures: A
Journal for Thematic Dialogue (an academic web and print
journal based in New Zealand).