Queer Poetry Anthology: Submissions and Inspiration

A message from Washington State Poet Laureate Arianne True:

Calling all queer poem writers of Washington State and adjacent tribal lands!

As part of my term as the Washington State Poet Laureate, I’m putting together an anthology of poems from queer writers of all stripes across the state. I want to hear from people trying out poetry for the first time, as well as regular writers and widely published poets. I want to include work by folks across spectrums of sexual orientation, gender, and sexuality in general (ace/aro family, I’m looking at you—send me work!), and from across the full breadth of our state.

Poems can be on any topic. This anthology takes the stance that all art made by queer artists is queer art, whether it draws explicit attention to an identity or not. Send me your love poems, the poem you wrote on the bus or in the park, poems where you wrestle with yourself, poems where you love existing, poems that take a metaphor and run with it, tribute poems, grief poems, ecstatic poems, sleepy poems, poems that barely know what they are or what they’re becoming, I want it all. Traditional and experimental work are both welcomed.

The final anthology will be published online and made available as a free resource. I’ll organize poems in a tagged and searchable format (like a database), making sure the tags are correct to the poem and its author. There is no payment available but chosen writers will appear in a publicized, widely available anthology and may get opportunities for readings and events following the anthology’s launch.

Call for submissions is open. Text, audio, and video submissions accepted. Submit by Friday, December 15, 2023.

Learn more and submit here!

Looking for some inspiration? Would you rather read than write poetry? Check out one of these books:

• Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Derek Sheffield – “A literary field guide of art, poetry, and natural history for 128 of the Beings that live in the thirteen bioregions that make up Cascadia.”
• Metabolics: Poems by Jessica Johnson – “A single speaker navigates identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension.”
• Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going: A Memoir-in-Poems by Jessica Jacobs – “A memoir-in-poems about coming of age in sultry Florida and a complex lesbian relationship grounded in the daily world.”
• Deaf Republic: Poems by Ilya Kaminsky – “At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea…confronts our time’s vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.”
• Magical Negro: Poems by Morgan Parker – “An archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs.”
• New Poets of Native Nations edited by Heid E. Erdrich – “This anthology gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry.”
• In the Pockets of Small Gods by Anis Mojgani – “Explores what we do with grief, long after the initial sadness has faded from our daily lives.”
• Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, illustrated by Ekua Holmes – “Presents a collection of 20 poems written in tribute to well-known poets from around the world.”
• Betrayal (online video) – “A very personal poem written by Anonymous and recited/performed by Nadirah McFadden, two women with intellectual disabilities.”
• Halal If You Hear Me edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo (ebook) – “The collected poems dispel the notion that there is one correct way to be a Muslim by holding space for multiple, intersecting identities.”
• Ganymede’s Dog by John Emil Vincent (ebook) – “Deeply infused with gay culture and mythology, this is a collection of smart, knowing, allusive, often ironic poems that ponder the boundaries of legend and the privileges of youth and beauty.”