Volume 18, Issue 1 – Summer 2024

Welcome to the Summer 2024 issue of Wordgathering. “Issue 67” marks the beginning of the 18th volume of the journal.

This issue of Wordgathering is dedicated to the incomparable, funny, and badass crip poet, Kathi Wolfe. May her memory be for a blessing and a revolution, and may she rest in power and peace.

A Message from Sarah Browning and Sheila Black

On June 22, 2024, the world lost a poet and activist of power and beauty, Kathi Wolfe. Kathi was a lifelong advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and for accessibility and visibility for people with disabilities.

Kathi was awarded the 2024 Poetry Award by the William Meredith Foundation for her collection of poems, The Porpoise In The Pink Alcove (Forest Woods Media Productions). Her other collections include Love and Kumquats and The Uppity Blind Girl Poems (both from BrickHouse Books). Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times, and many other publications, including Wordgathering. Kathi was a longtime contributor to DC’s LGBTQ+ paper, The Washington Blade. She won a 2023 Dateline Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and was a member of the Coordinating Committee for the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival in 2008. Kathi wrote fierce and funny poems that we are lucky we still have to move, educate, and delight us.

Kathi used everything at her disposal – language, literature, laughter, sarcasm, friendship, romance – to build a better world. In honor of Kathi’s life and work – especially for Disabled and Queer communities – we invite you to submit poems, short essays, reflections and tributes for the Winter 2024-2025 issue of Wordgathering that will pay tribute to Kathi and to her legacy of justice and love.

Anyone and everyone who has been influenced by Kathi’s writing, legacy, and other work is welcomed to send testimonials, reflections, and myriad creative expressions to wordgathering@syr.edu by November 1, 2024, with the email subject line “Celebrating Kathi Wolfe.” These works will be considered for the special section, “Honoring and Celebrating Kathi Wolfe,” to be published in the Winter 2024-2025 issue of Wordgathering. If submitting prose, please share only one piece with a maximum length of 1000 words. Poetry submissions should be a maximum of two poems with a maximum length of 75 lines per poem. Multimedia and arts submissions should be a maximum of two entries. Each submission is expected to follow the journal’s accessibility and formatting guidelines (file formats information can be found here). If you have any questions, please reach out to us at wordgathering@syr.edu. Please feel free to share our Call for Contributions: Honoring and Celebrating Kathi Wolfe.

Below is a poem of Kathi’s, “To Do List,” read by yours truly. “To Do List” was published in Love and Kumquats: New and Selected Poems (BrickHouse Books, 2019) and is reproduced here with permission.

“To Do List” by Kathi Wolfe

Listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener

Make coffee.
Sort socks.
Walk
around the universe
and back.
Meet and greet
the human condition.
Pack picnic lunch
for your ghost.
Reshape the moonlight Sonata.
Go to therapy –
play Monopoly
with sorrow,
musical chairs
with grief.
Write a poem
that sends
all the other poems
to the nearest bar
for a drink.
As an afterthought,
eat fire.

As Editor-in-Chief, I am grateful for ongoing and outstanding collaborative support from my esteemed colleagues at Syracuse University, Patrick Williams and Steve Kuusisto. Thanks, too, to Dr. Kate Deibel for behind-the-scenes creative labors to ensure and advance Wordgathering‘s accessibility and engagement.

Immense gratitude goes, as always, to our exemplary editorial team: Assistant Editor, Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri; Flash Memoir Editor, Dan Simpson; Gatherer’s Blog Editor, Ona Gritz; Prose Editor, Sean J. Mahoney; Poetry Editor, Emily K. Michael; and Assistant Book Reviews Editor, Kate Champlin. And thanks, forever and always, to our Special Guest Editor (2020-2023), Kenny Fries.

This issue’s Gatherer’s Blog was written by Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri. Rachael neurodivergently unpacks her bold, iconoclastic, MadCripQueer approaches in the behind-the-scenes creation of her Micro Mutant (Memoir) postcards, several of which have been published in Wordgathering—including in this issue. There is no Reading Loop in this issue. If all goes as planned, we will publish a Reading Loop in the next issue.

P. F. Anderson, Julia Betancourt, Sheila Black, Kate Champlin, Vala and Josie Chu McAllister, Ona Gritz, Anne Kaier, Michael Northen, A. C. Riffer, Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri and I provided book reviews for Issue 67. There are 18 book reviews in this issue! Yowsa! If you would like to join our book reviewers team, please write to me at wordgathering@syr.edu. Unfortunately, at the present time, we do not have funds to compensate any of our contributors–including reviewers.

“Mental Health” by Phillip Muldoon, Raymond Luczak’s “EARS of SHAME ’78,” and “A Jar of Seashells” by Nancy Scott were audio recorded by me. Other poems were audio recorded by the poets themselves.

We hope that you enjoy this new issue and thank you for your ongoing commitment, interest, and support.

—Diane R. Wiener, Editor-in-Chief

Underlined content throughout Wordgathering is hyperlinked (each underlined element is a clickable link), leading to further aspects of the content shared. Any questions about accessibility can be addressed by emailing us at: wordgathering@syr.edu.

Please note that the opinions and perspectives shared by our contributors (in their published work or elsewhere) do not necessarily align with or reflect the opinions and perspectives held by the members of the journal’s editorial and administrative team.