Resources for Activist Poets

A week ago at WorldCon, I moderated a panel entitled “The Poet as Activist: On Seeing and Saving the Natural World.” This proved to be an interesting topic and we discussed many of the ways a poet or a writer can work in hospitals, schools, or with nature centers to help as educators or to bring awareness of issues to the public. My fellow panelist, Rie Sheridan Rose, assembled an excellent list of resources for people interested in this topic and I wanted to share them here.

The first items on the list are markets that show a particular interest in nature poetry:

http://www.astropoetica.com/guidelines.html — explores astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, planetary science, and/or archaeoastronomy

http://www.flycatcherjournal.org/submission-guidelines.php — strives to explore what it means—or what it might mean—to be native to this earth and its particular places.

The following is more of a market for activist poetry:

http://catamaranliteraryreader.com/contact/ — especially interested in include diversity, environmentalism, artistic spirit, personal freedom, and innovation.

Here are some market lists where you can find more poetry markets. Even if a market isn’t searching specifically for “activist” poetry, they may still be interested in the topic of your poem:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pbonline.html — Poetry Markets willing to take electronic submissions.

http://www.ralan.com/ — genre markets

http://www.newpages.com/npguides/altmags.htm — The NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines

http://www.sfpoetry.com/markets.html — The Science Fiction Poetry Association maintains a list of speculative poetry markets

Finally, Rie provided a list of discussion guides:

http://ric.libguides.com/content.php?pid=188242&sid=2637406 — Poets as activists/Poetry as activism

http://ric.libguides.com/content.php?pid=188242&sid=1730378 — Nature in poetry

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lorde/activism.htm — Audre Lorde on Poetry and Activism

Hope you find this guide useful. If there was something we mentioned on the panel and I neglected to mention it here, feel free to bring it to my attention in comments and I’ll try to add it to the list above. As always, I’m happy to answer questions about the topic.