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Our
heart wanders lost in
the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in
the castle of doubt.
But there's music in
us.
---Jack
Gilbert, from
Refusing Heaven
December
2009
Dear Friend and
Reader,
Many have asked,
where's Poetry
Flash? Meaning our
print publication. The
answer is finally here,
and it's really
exciting. I am thrilled
to announce a new print
Poetry Flash,
beginning now with a
double issue:
winter/spring 2010. The
gentle redesign features
longer reviews than our
online selections,
interviews, articles,
photos, poems, news and
selected event
highlights.
For two years, we
have faced changes and
challenges of every
kind. The economic
climate has slowed us.
But slowed is not the
same as stopped. We are
moving, with imagination
and innovation, into the
future. Subscribers,
please take heart--we
have clarified, renewed,
and resumed our
publication schedule.
Thank you especially for
your patience and
support.
Our mission is to
build community through
literature, to make
literary activity as
accessible as possible.
Since 1972, Poetry
Flash accomplished
that by publishing a
print review and
literary calendar, and
then by presenting
readings and other
events. What we do now
must be a dynamic mix of
the print and
electronic. As that
innovative thinker
Buckminster Fuller said,
"In order to change an
existing paradigm...You
create a new model, and
make the old one
obsolete." This new
print issue will be
mailed this winter. It
will be distributed in
bookstores, art centers,
and schools as a "free
paper" unless mailed by
subscription, and it
will continue to explore
contemporary poetics and
creative writing. We
have been holding back
on this
announcement--and on
asking for your
support--until you could
have it in your hands.
But we can't wait any
longer. It's time to
show off the "new
model."
If you haven't seen
it, our comprehensive
Poetry Flash
literary calendar for
California and the West
is presently published
at www.poetryflash.org.
Now at over 19,000
visits per month and
updated nearly daily,
new online features have
been added. We have
reconfigured the web
site to feature and post
many more reviews,
profiles, poems, calls
for submissions, and
expanded the online
print archives, to work
in tandem with the print
edition.
At home, we have
carried our mission
forward by presenting a
nationally recognized
reading series for over
three decades, now at
Moe's Books in Berkeley,
and Diesel, A Bookstore,
in Oakland, hosting
almost fifty readings
each year. Our free
Watershed Environmental
Poetry Festival will
take place in early fall
2010, October 2, at
Berkeley's Civic Center
Park, featuring Alison
Hawthorne Deming,
contributors to Camille
Dungy's Black
Nature anthology,
and much more. And the
29th annual Northern
California Book Awards
will be held at the San
Francisco Main Library
on April 18, 2010.
Sponsoring these awards
with our collaborative
partners celebrates (and
recommends) work by
northern California
authors.
We have dreamed and
planned, not knowing
what would happen or
when, experiencing the
very problems that all
newspapers and magazines
currently face. New
contributions from the
San Francisco Foundation
and individual donors
have finally pried open
the door. Now, with your
help, we can keep that
door open, to renew and
sustain that precious
and most primary part of
our mission, our shared
publishing adventure,
again.
We need your support
to match these new grant
awards, and to build our
print momentum. We are
grateful that the
National Endowment for
the Arts has just
announced an award to
Poetry Flash that
will give us an
important portion of the
funds we need. (Each
issue of Poetry Flash
costs about $12,000 to
publish.) Please join us
in this exciting venture
by sending a check
today, or visit
poetryflash.org and
click on Donate.
[tax-deductible
donation, 501(c)3,
federal tax
#94-3096270]
In gratitude,
Joyce Jenkins,
Editor/Publisher,
Poetry Flash
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