Poet Lore Week: Liz Poliner Reflects on Poet Lore

This week on First Person Plural, in the run up to Saturday's birthday event at The Washington Historical Society, we're going to honor Poet Lore, The Writer's Center's own 120 year old poetry journal. Blog guests will include current editors, former editors, and folks published in the journal. Today, former editor Liz Poliner shares some memories of her time with the journal. In other Poet Lore news, co-Executive editor E. Ethelbert Miller was recently interviewed on Drunken Boat.

First, though, let me add that Writer's Center director & poet Charles Jensen is interviewed today on Art & Literature (on his debut The First Risk). And Chasing Moonlight: The True Story of the Field of Dreams' Doc Graham, was recently nominated for a Casey Award, given by Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine to the best baseball book of the year. Congratulations to authors Brett Friedlander and Robert Reising! You can read my First Person Plural interview with Friedlander here.

Now on to Liz Poliner:

I have very fond memories of my 3 years editing Poet Lore. Gerry Connelly brought me on when Phil Jason stepped down, and together Gerry and I endeavored to put together a really top rate literary magazine with the strongest poems we could get and more significant cover art than before. My fondest memories are of meeting Gerry at Thyme Square restaurant in Bethesda for our Poet Lore meetings. We'd eat heaping platefuls of delicious food as we got down to business. We were passionate about the magazine, the poems we selected, the look and feel of a given issue. We loved working with each other. Later, Gerry stepped down and Rick Cannon came on, and we, too, were passionate about the quality of Poet Lore. I'm sorry not to be able to make the anniversary party--I'm teaching in Roanoke, VA now and will be too far away to make it--but I send my best wishes for a very happy event. The Writer's Center should be so proud of this wonderful literary magazine!

Read Liz Poliner's bio here.