RESTARTING COMMON OR GARDEN POETS

Common or Garden Poets is an open-ended and ongoing Flying Islands Poetry Community initiative. It’s a conversation in poetry of any kind; and likewise in art, in photography -- in every case, in some way, concerning the garden, or perhaps the not-a-garden, perhaps the wilderness or urban space in which a garden needs to be imagined.

Common or Garden Poets began in 2022 but stalled because of a few technical glitches.

In restarting Common or Garden Poets, we pay tribute to two of the original contributors who have recently died -- Gail Hennessy and Jill McKeowen.

And, because gardens are somewhere, and because people belong to places, we acknowledge and pay our respects to the first peoples, wherever we are, of whatever country we're on. 

Welcome readers and welcome Common or Garden Poets!

To become a member contributor to Common or Garden Poets is pretty straightforward. A member invites you to contribute by writing you a poem. Once you have posted your poem to the blog, you are a member contributor. As a contributor, you don't have to post only new poems, but they do have to be new to the blog, and they have to be your original work. (We're not collecting garden poems from hither and yon, we're making them here.) Whenever you post you have an opportunity to invite a new friend into the garden. Alternatively you could respond to someone who's already in the garden. The idea is that the poems in the blog are in conversation with each other.

You could think of Common or Garden Poets as an 'expanding circle' of poets who share a common interest. We want our garden to be democratic, open and inviting. 

Once you have joined the common or garden poets you will be given the keys (allowing you to post directly) and you may contribute as often or as rarely as you like. You should always feel free to invite other poets or artists into the blog so that our garden grows with new voices. Each member contributor of Common or Garden Poets  thus has a kind of gatekeeping responsibility. So, please, we are only inviting into the garden those whom we can take seriously as poets and/or artists.  The poetasters are legion and united in their conviction that they are able to do what they are not able to do: to whit, to write a poem. 

Please follow the numbering system set up from the first post. That is -- when you post number your poem in the title line to show it is next in the series. This makes searching for work easier later on. You might like to include the date in the post itself as well. Feel free to combine text and image in whatever way suits. 

If you have any questions or doubts please just ask. And feel free to make suggestions!

 

kk

viii.24