Inspiration, Community, and Gratitude in Times of Crisis: The 9th Annual OS NaPoMo 30/30/30
A message about this year’s series, with intros from our curators Melissa Eleftherion Carr, Sarah Rosenthal & Valerie Witte, LAMARKS (Lisa Ann Markuson) and Constantine Jones
In the last few weeks, we’ve done the challenging work of assessing what it means to be an organization like ours in a time like this. What labor could we ask of ourselves, all volunteers with paying jobs, some with children now at home, many facing immune deficiencies, and mental health challenges? Where I landed, inspired by and in conversation with our wonderful community, you can find here, in a public statement aptly named, “In Solidarity and Possibility.”
In addition to asking ourselves what was the right course of action for the OS’s many print publications, projects, and events, shipping, distribution, production, and so on, we also knew that one of our longest-standing traditions, the *ninth* annual daily online Poetry Month Celebration known as our “30/30/30” was coming up.
Was it still appropriate to move forward with this series? Would it be too much to ask of our curators, the many contributors? Would our audience still welcome this content…