You may remember Jill James, the triumphant winner of last year's Poet Laureate Competition for the state of New Jersey. I still remember her poem clearly. She's a gifted writer, and thinks carefully about the impact of her writing on the world around her. She sent me this note today:
hi matt how r u?
im the poet laureate of New Jersey, hope u remember!
i read that the position was eliminated in 2002 due to anti semetic remarks, which is ironic since i am jewish....
i've decided to do a project involving new jersey. I'm printing postcards, each with a photo i took and one paragraph of this short story im writing, and then i'm gonna send them all to prisoners in the new jersey prison system. Each person will have to trade with someone else in prison in order to find out what happens in the story......i think this will be a cool way of getting people interested in writing.....plus, they get mail, which might be nice if they're lonely in jail.....I might do something similar with poems and nursing homes.
hope u like my project!
Jill James
I'm really excited about the project. Jill is going to send some of her work on the project and I'll post it here!
What would really make the prisoners excited about this project is if her short story was really an episode of Prison Break.
ReplyDeleteYou might not believe this (and it's almost embarrassing to mention), but I submitted a poem for this competition too...
ReplyDeleteI believe this... but did you use a pseudonym? Because I don't remember seeing your name on anything?
ReplyDeleteI think I'm Anonymous. You can call me Dr. Seuss, though.
ReplyDelete