When Meg Withers and I (Joell Hallowell) began the exciting and/or arduous challenge of creating the poetry/photo anthology Shadowed:Unheard Voices, we had no idea where the process would take us. 34 poets, 50 photos, 153 poems, and eight years later, the book finally lives in the world. But as gorgeous and satisfying as the final product is, we were sorry to see this collaborative process come to an end. As of today, we begin a new chapter. With the help of writers everywhere, Shadowed lives on.
How it Works
Once a month, we will post a new photograph (see image at top of page) and invite writers to respond. We hope the images will inspire speculating, dreaming, imagining, and conjuring that result in compelling poetry to share with the world.
Using our CONTACT FORM below, please send us your best, short (maximum of 75 words) poetic responses to the photographs. In this first stage, Meg and I will jury the submissions, but we hope to invite guest jurors to help us in the future. For now, the photos will be taken from our personal collections of old photographs, but we also invite you to send us your own appropriate photos: images of women from 1850-1950.
Although we encourage both male and female poets to contribute, we will continue to include only photographs of women, in line with our initial premise: it is women who are most often lost to history, women whose stories have gone untold.
All poems and photos will remain the property of the contributors. We will post selected poems when we have a good batch to share and those pieces will remain in our archives until the poet asks us to remove them.
Please pass this on to your friends, family, colleagues, and students. To find out more about us, click on the left sidebar to find ABOUT. If you haven’t seen the book yet, explore our video and website to fully understand the conceptual impetus of the project, and consider purchasing a copy of Shadowed to help fund this project.
Find the photo-of-the-month at the top of this page (for a more up-close and personal look, click on the photo). And now—let the poetry begin.
Project: Shadowed 