All our Tuesday Poems

For over a year now we've been publishing poems by local writers every Tuesday (you can see them all on the archive page). Each poet recommends the next in a chain that has led us through some of the most fascinating corners of the Northwest poetry scene.

We wanted to take one week out of our schedule to look back, in appreciation to the poets who have shared their work with us, and in hopes that you might discover a piece or two that speaks to you that you may have missed the first time.

Next week, we'll be back with the start of our Fall chain, but in the meantime, here's a retrospective.

Our first poet was Kelli Russel Agodon (she also wrote for us about poetry going viral). After her: Kathleen Flenniken, Anastacia Renee Tolbert, Michelle Peñaloza, Arlene Kim, and Don Mee Choi.

EJ Koh was next — we're presenting her, Robert Lashley, and Sherman Alexie at the Elliott Bay Book Company on November 11th, so please save the date. Then: Claudia Castro Luna, Jourdan Imani Keith, Felicia Gonzalez, Emily Bedard, Erin Malone, and Christine Deavel.

We spent the month of December celebrating the life of Madeline DeFrees by running five of her poems: "Matinal", "Phobias Incorporated", "Grandmother Grant", "In the locker room", and "Going Back to the Convent".

We opened 2016 with Sarah Mangold, and Amaranth Borsuk. We did a brave thing, then, breaking our tradition of publishing only women with three short poems by Maged Zaher.

Deborah Woodard rebalanced our gender ratio, followed by Samar Abulhassan, Meredith Clark, Melanie Noel, Jessie Knoles, Ashley E Booth, and Sierra Golden.

We were thrilled to run a lovely piece by an unknown local writer we think has a great future: Sherman Alexie, followed by Jane Wong, Quenton Baker, Alex Gallo-Brown, and Bill Carty.

Kristen Steenbeeke ended April for us, and Rebecca Hoogs led us into May, along with Rachel Kessler (who also did a bang-up job covering all of AWP Los Angeles for us).

JM Miller was next, followed by afrose fatima ahmed, Michael Schmeltzer, Sonya Vatomsky, Meghan McClure, and Rick Barot.

We then turned to Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Billie Swift, Martha Kreiner, and Laura Da’.

Clare Johnson provided us with poetry illustrated with images on Post-it notes, and following her was Matthew Schnirman, Julene Tripp Weaver, Suzanne E Edison, Paul E Nelson, and John Olson.

Finally, last week, we ended our first cycle with work from Priscilla Long, who has two new books out this month.

So, that's a lot. In these works you'll find humor, beauty, playfulness, anger, sarcasm, frustration, desire, love, bravery, and exhilaration. We couldn't be happier about our Tuesday Poem series, and are so pleased to be able to offer it to you.

Please do spend today browsing them, and we'll see you next Tuesday with new poets and new work.