by the Read Write Poem Staff

You found us! We’re very excited to introduce this new online poetry community, and we’re so happy that you are joining us for our inaugural post. Please feel free to poke around and look in the medicine cabinets and stuff. This will help you figure out what we’re all doing here and how we hope to accomplish it.

Before we start reading, writing and poeming together, we must introduce ourselves. So let’s go around the room and state our names, then say a little bit about ourselves and why we’re here.

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Dana Guthrie Martin
My vision for Read Write Poem is to create a community where all poets — from beginners to emerging poets to established writers (as well as all those out there who don’t write poetry but do appreciate it and enjoy discussing it) — can come together to share their work in a space that feels comfortable and welcoming.

I dedicate most of my waking hours to writing and reading poetry, and I know how important it is to break out of that self-imposed solitude and have discussions with other poets about writing, as well as to have a way to share my work — above and beyond sending it out for publication and having it critiqued in workshops. I hope to see this community grow and thrive, and I feel certain we will all be tremendously enriched by being part of it.

Carolee Sherwood
My life was full. I had a favorite coffee shop where the nice lady knew me. I had “Grey’s Anatomy.” I had my cats and my dogs and my husband and my kids (in that order). And I had a poetry community that felt right and motivated me to write more.

But then that community disbanded, and sadness spread across the land. I had a longing that nothing seemed to satisfy. And then the ashes began to smolder and a little flame caught the tiniest crumpled poem. It ignited Read Write Poem. I am here to celebrate this fire, to write, to work and play with fellow poets, and to learn what I can about poetry and the poetic voice inside me.

Jill Crammond Wickham
I am a poet, artist and mother living in upstate New York with two children, seven cats, and a husband. I have discovered a common thread that, as a working, writing, mothering woman, surprised and delighted me: Motherhood has inspired me to be more creative. Amidst all the chaos of raising two children and running a teaching art studio, I have become a better writer.

I am more open to flights of fancy, more open to running after wild trains of thought and hopping on board. Despite my cries of “not enough time, not enough quiet,” the frantic, non-stop chatter pace has driven me to write more — not less, and to become a woman who writes in the moment — be the moment a stolen half hour or a one-handed drive to the grocery store.

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OK. Now it’s your turn. Leave your introduction in the comments. Enjoy your mixing and mingling in anticipation of our first Read Write Prompt (Nov. 14, midnight EST) and our first Get Your Poem On (Nov. 19, midnight EST).

As you socialize, be sure to seek out our prompt specialists: Christine, The Prompt Queen (visit her at Mariacristina), and Tom, a.k.a. “Dr. Tom” (visit him at Fallen Verses). They will help fill this community with knowledge, kindness and fun!