San Diego Poetry Together Challenge

San Diego Poetry Together Challenge

ABOUT THE SAN DIEGO

POETRY TOGETHER CHALLENGE

The San Diego Poetry Together Challenge: A Poetic Response to Pandemic Project was founded in May 2020 by Ron Salisbury, who is serving as the City of San Diego's 1st Poet Laureate. Salisbury established the project as a way to engage, document, and encourage a public appreciation of poetry as well as acknowledge the important role creativity could play during the state shelter-inplace order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project called for San Diego poets and writers to share their poems or spoken words and the response was overwhelming. Over 170 San Diegan poets submitted poems. Of the works submitted, Salisbury selected six works to be published on the City's website. The project culminated with the collection contained here which represents the entirety of the submitted poems. These works were submitted in response to two prompts, one on dreams, and the other on waiting. The works archive a collective experience, a month of local resilience, creativity, and loss - a San Diego poetic testimony to the global pandemic.

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FOREWORD BY RON SALISBURY

SAN DIEGO'S FIRST POET LAUREATE

We all write poetry for different reason, how we write our poetry is as varied. Some of us have an idea or feeling that we want to express. And some of us write to find out what we are feeling. In almost all instances, we are surprised with the results, some in small ways and some in large. That is because poetry is the shortest distance from our unconscious to the page of any of the written arts.

Poetry relieves some of the pressures we experience in these times. Poems may not cure anything, but poetry allows us to go on. Each in their own way, these poems from "Poetry Together Challenge," surprise us. Each in their own way, these poems reveal to us, the readers, the little key hole to the inside the poet has found. It is no surprise to me, the impact I experience seeing all these poems in one place. Good job poets of San Diego, keep writing.

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A WORD BY JONATHON GLUS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

COMMISSION FOR ARTS AND CULTURE

COVID-19 has landed us all in a place we never expected, in some ways an entirely foreign place where our very ability to move about in our normal lives is hampered. So many questions. Is movement a right or a privilege? When does individual right give way to the collective safety? What does it mean for family and for isolation? Is there a new normal we all will have to find post-pandemic?

We are so fortunate to have Ron Salisbury as our inaugural poet laureate for the City of San Diego. Ron's lived experiences and his deep commitment to teaching poetry, mentoring poets and raising poetry as a shared conversation among us all is the genus of this book of poetry informed by this unique time in the life of San Diego.

Please enjoy.

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PROMPT 1

DREAMS: DURING THESE DAYS OF SECLUSION, THE NIGHTS ARE SOMETIMES CALM AND SOMETIMES NOT. IT MAY BE

CRAMPED WITH EVERYONE HERE, OR SOMEWHAT LONELY WITH ONLY YOU. AND THE DREAMS WE HAVE ARE SOMETIMES FINE

AND SOMETIMES NOT. WHAT ARE YOUR DREAMS LIKE IN THESE TIMES?

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