Sundress Publications Political Poetry Anthology

In September 2014, NPR writer and critic Juan Vidal wrote an essay whose titular question, "Where Have All the Poets Gone?" provided a platform for various musings regarding the political state of contemporary American poetics. According to Vidal, "For centuries, poets were the mouthpieces railing loudly against injustice. They gave voice to the hardships and evils facing people everywhere... What has happened?" He further suggested that poets writing today have failed to create work that carries the same "weight" as the poems written by their literary forefathers. Should American poets still be trying to write "Howl"? Are Neruda, Kerouac, Baraka, and the rest of the Beat Generation the only viable prototypes for political literary expression in American culture? How does the influx of identities, voices, and life experiences that are now expressed in mainstream American letters potentially create and communicate new political vision(s) -- vision that may sound or appear different from Ginsberg's poetic/political tour de force, but is no less necessary, compelling, challenging, or iconoclastic? What do we even mean when we talk about the weight of a political work? How is that weight both carried and expressed by poetry today? To address these questions, Sundress Publications is now accepting poetry submissions for a new anthology on the politics of identity, to showcase the substantial amount of political writing that is being done today.

Country of Publication

United States