Watching for the Moon Above
The Poets Across Lines 2024 Zine, Community Poetry from Birmingham & Tucson
Featuring poems from the selected writers who participated in the 2024 Poets Across Lines program, Watching for the Moon Above: Poets Across Lines (Community Poetry from Birmingham & Tucson) is a digital zine made through the cross-regional community collaboration between Birmingham, AL and Tucson, AZ. Four poets showcase their work that centers around themes of housing, immigration, and the LGBTQIA+ experience. Designed, produced, and published by Pansy Press, Watching for the Moon Above: Poets Across Lines unveils the joys, challenges, and resilience of these community poets.
Excerpts from the zines:
my dreams have been more grotesque lately
snarling beasts nipping at my heels, bleeding me out
herding me to cold blue states far from home
Arlo Pate
I come from roots
That grow pecan
And sweet gum trees.
Kevin L. Tarver
My Spanish speaking people spin songs out of insults until they become the reason we skirt
past the “international” aisles of a grocery store.
Kevin Sanchez
But imagine:
You fall asleep at the loading dock,
The IHOP parking lot,
An empty industrial park.
RuthAnn
Pansy Press was conceived of as a space where poetry could grow & breathe in real time, and in real life. So often, poetry is relegated to spaces of academia — which are amazing, but often inaccessible or intimidating. Today, Pansy is mostly about poetry, but it’s also a little bit about every creative pursuit happening at the local level within the living & breathing community of active artists that founders Hannah & Jeff are a part of. It’s about the art that’s happening in your backyard, being created by people you know.
Program Highlights
[Arlo and Kevin] embody the qualities I sought for the Birmingham cohort: fearlessness and a commitment to elevating their craft.
Erika Wade, Program Mentor
RuthAnn and Kevin helped me learn more about my writing process and they also helped me connect to the literary community in Tucson in a new way.
Gabriel Dozal, Program Mentor
Watching for the Moon Above: Poets Across Lines is made possible with funding from the Poetry Foundation. The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives and works to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry.
