Day Eight is developing a new interfaith poetry anthology reflecting on consolation and loss to bring together DC-area poets of faith, and to serve a reading public that may benefit from their wisdom, and experience. The poems will be selected by Susan Meehan and Robert Bettmann and the submission period will be open April 1st – May 15th, 2020.
Submissions are being accepted using a form on Submittable here.
Are you a poet of faith? Does your poetry reflect on faith texts? We want to include you!
The anthology will be published Summer 2020 through partnership between Day Eight, the Washington Council of Churches, and the Washington Interfaith Network, and with support from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Relevant details:
- Poets of all faiths living in the greater Washington, D.C. area are encouraged to apply
- Included poems may interpret or relate to faith texts from any tradition
- Included poets may be religiously affiliated or unaffiliated
- Selection will be made by Susan Meehan and Robert Bettmann in collaboration with the interfaith creative faith leadership council established for the project
- The submission period will be open April 1st – May 15th, 2020
Selected poets will be provided a free copy of the anthology and may be invited to read at a book launch to be scheduled.
About Susan Meehan
Anthology curator Susan Meehan grew up on Long Island’s North Shore during World War II. After graduating from Wellesley College, and completing graduate school in Politics at Boston University, she worked for the newly-elected Governor of Massachusetts before joining the federal government as a management intern. Following the riots in Washington, D.C. when Martin Luther King was killed, Susan was elected to the new Police Community Relations board created by President Nixon, and subsequently served two terms as an elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner. Meehan left Federal service to work for the DC government, including through appointment from Mayor Marion Barry as DC’s first citywide Patient Advocate for persons in drug or alcohol treatment. A longtime member of the Friends Meeting of Washington DC, she represents a Quaker point of view on the DC Council of Churches and is its Vice President. A lifelong poet, Susan entered and won the 2017 DC Poet Project, an open to all poetry competition. National book award winner Terrence Winch wrote about her first book, “Talking to the Night is populated with works that grab your attention with their clarity and fierce honesty.” Many of Meehan’s poems reflect on love, faith, and loss. About her third book, Goddesses Incognito (2018) Anne Becker wrote, “Meehan knows where the mythic, the deeper significance of human experience, hides under the familiar, the familial.”