Hi Friends,
Every month, Tupelo Press, a non-profit 501(c)(3) literary press, enlists several poets to challenge themselves by writing a poem a day for that entire month. I am one of the 9 volunteer poets for the month of January. As such, I am also tasked with trying to raise money for the press. My specific goal is to raise $600 by the end of January, which averages out to about $20 a day, and I know that I can reach my goal.
Why am I doing this? I have long admired Tupelo’s quality books, and I have even tried to get my own work published there. But more recently, my pal Amy McCann won a poetry prize with Tupelo for her first book, in a contest judged by Paisley Rekdal (who, as I think everyone knows, is a bad-ass poet). So I’m doing this partly because I think that Amy’s prize is well-deserved, and I want to continue to support Tupelo Press.
I will post my daily January poems on this-here blog, and also on my Facebook page, and they will also appear on the Tupelo site. Meantime, I will be posting (here) various links to TP’s site, both for general information about the press, and more specifically for how you can contribute to my efforts.
I am looking forward to this challenge, and it will be a challenge: my life is in a state of upheaval right now, and I know that at least one of my poems will be written on a train somewhere in the Northeast corridor. And as I always aim a critical eye toward my own work, this will not be easy—I have no desire to just churn out words for the sake of fulfilling the basic goal of writing a poem a day. I wouldn’t do such a thing to myself, and certainly not to you, O Lovely Reader. I want these 31 poems to be bad-ass, too, and I will work hard to make that happen, and at the end of January I’ll have, at least, maybe a chapbook.
Meantime, I do hope that you will consider supporting Tupelo Press (and me) with your generous donation. I’m not asking anyone to use their rent money or anything like that, but every dollar counts. You’ll see this on one of the links, but please make sure that you specify who (that’s me, Mike Dockins) you are supporting with your donation. (If you don’t know me, and what I’m all about, I will be posting (here) a bio and a few links to some of my previously-published poems, not to mention a rather dashing photograph. Please know that not a penny of your contribution lands in my own pocket, and yet your support will encourage me on as though my pockets gleamed heavy with coins.
Thanks so much. I love you—you know that, right? Rock and/or roll.
Yours always,
Mike Dockins
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