Guest Post: Janet Wong & Sylvia Vardell Take Us Behind the Scenes of their New Poetry Anthology

By Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell

Janet: More than a year ago, back in February 2020 (although it seems like 2010…) we had an open call for poems for HOP TO IT: Poems to Get You Moving (Pomelo Books, 2020). Our plan was to curate an anthology of 75 poems that encourage movement—short poems to help “get the wiggles out.”

We first thought about doing a movement-themed book at the end of 2015, after an energizing session on that topic for NCTE in Minneapolis. But then we decided to focus on the rea...