Welcome to Fat Poets Speak, the blog which will feature discussions and poems and the thoughts of fat poets, especially pertaining to the Fat Poets Speak series of books of poems. There are two books, thus far: Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society, and the one that is due to come out in early 2014: Fat Poets Speak: Living and Loving Fatly. (Vol. I is currently available from Pearlsong Press, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.)
Fat Poets Speak began at the 2006 NAAFA Convention in suburban Boston. I gave a workshop on writing poetry that would empower fat people. Mary Ray Worley, two of whose poems are featured in Fat Poets Speak 2 (Living and Loving Fatly), conceived the idea of our forming a society of fat poets who would write and exchange and comment on each others' poems. There is nothing like an online society of poets (of any weight) to make you smile and dance and curse and exult when you read their poems and when you write your own, which they read :) So many wonderful poems were produced that I felt we simply had to compile a book of them (anthology). So, with much work and support from Peggy Elam, the Director and CEO of Pearlsong Press, our publishers, we wrought. Edited. Commented. Argued. Smiled. The first volume, Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society, came out on May 6, 2009, No-Diet Day.
The second volume of Fat Poets Speak (often referred to by us as Fat Poets Speak 2), Living and Loving Fatly, is set to come out early in 2014. It simply amazed me, when I read the poems submitted, how the poets who had poems featured in the first volume, had matured and grown into their voices. And each with her own voice, her own kinds of imagery, her own concerns, her own unique vision and talent. We were even more united in our fat pride, yet we were even more individual in our loves, likes, thoughts and the places we had reached in our individual journeys and life wanderings. If Fat Poets Speak 1 was a chorus of fat women's voices finding sound and strength, Fat Poets Speak 2 is a smorgasbord of poems from fat women living their days and lives with gusto and passion.
We welcome you to our blog.
Frannie Zellman on behalf of the Poets
No comments:
Post a Comment