Bettering American Poetry is a new anthology project forthcoming from Blazevox Press that I am really honored to be a part of.
Why another yearly anthology you ask? Here is an answer from the editors:
Our goal is to model a collaborative editorial venture that breaks with the anemic capitalizing tradition and goes ahead of institutional efforts that rank poems as the “best”. The “best” hides the subjective goals and values of the few determining what work should receive visibility and reward. The “best” implies that some voices should be prioritized over others. We wish to challenge the idea that a few gatekeepers should oversee the publishing order each year by actively defining and maintaining a hierarchy of voices, an order that replicates the status quo that tokenizes and marginalizes difference.
This is some important push-back work--the type of thing that reminds those of us considered "diverse" voices that we need not fit ourselves to the priorities of the literary establish as we seek to claim our space in the literary landscape.
The VIDA Lit website is hosting a series of interviews with anthology contributors. You can read my own interview here, but check out other contributors too, like Hanif Abdurraquib, Natalie Eilbert, and Cynthia Cruz.
Why another yearly anthology you ask? Here is an answer from the editors:
Our goal is to model a collaborative editorial venture that breaks with the anemic capitalizing tradition and goes ahead of institutional efforts that rank poems as the “best”. The “best” hides the subjective goals and values of the few determining what work should receive visibility and reward. The “best” implies that some voices should be prioritized over others. We wish to challenge the idea that a few gatekeepers should oversee the publishing order each year by actively defining and maintaining a hierarchy of voices, an order that replicates the status quo that tokenizes and marginalizes difference.
This is some important push-back work--the type of thing that reminds those of us considered "diverse" voices that we need not fit ourselves to the priorities of the literary establish as we seek to claim our space in the literary landscape.
The VIDA Lit website is hosting a series of interviews with anthology contributors. You can read my own interview here, but check out other contributors too, like Hanif Abdurraquib, Natalie Eilbert, and Cynthia Cruz.
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