Futures: On Emerging and Youth

I have had many careers in my lifetime, from waitress to library page to editor. But one of my favorites has been teacher. As I step out of the classroom (somewhat—I still cannot resist advising a group of brilliant thinkers and creators in Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts at the University of Michigan), I still think about the young writers who are creating poems for the first time or the fortieth time, leaving it all on the page, pushing one another. And I’m excited for this opportunity to highlight a community of youth writers by publishing an excerpt from Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of  Poetry from a Chicagoland High School. As Penguin Workshop editor Rachel Sonis says in her letter to the readers: within this anthology is a “blueprint for the future.” I truly believe that these young poets have the potential to shape our literary landscape and that it is our responsibility—as editors, writers, and teachers—to encourage them and make space for them.

Similarly, I’m delighted to present some of the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows and Finalists in these pages. There are names I’m familiar with and some I’d never had the pleasure of reading before, but each of these poets is stretching their language and voice. Their poems are full of nuance and layered vulnerability. Steven Espada Dawson’s “Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart” exemplifies mournful confrontation, while Tamara Panici’s “I Do Not Want to Say This Country Is Not My Home” showcases complex strength and pain. Just as with the poets from Respect the Mic, when I read these poems, I see the paths and journeys that lead us into the future.

I must admit, as excited as I am about these young writers, I cannot agree that the cutoff for emerging writers is thirty-two. As a delayed reader who morphed into a nontraditional student, working and caretaking my way through community college, undergraduate, and graduate school, I have seen brilliant writers sitting alongside me well into their forties or sixties. I’m not even sure what “emerging” means at times. Is it one book? Two? “A history of publication” as many job applications put it? I want to celebrate young writers and I want to celebrate debut authors, and it’s OK if they’re not the same thing. So while we honor the work of these amazing poets, we also respect those who built the communities we’re in, and we must interrogate the idea that “emerging” must happen at any certain age.

This is just the start of my editorship (my first issue!), and I hope to continue these conversations around expectations. Because irrespective of age or emerging status, I am wowed by the poets in this issue who are 
lending their perspectives, their voices, and their craft to shape poetry now and into the future. They are each cutting a path, and I look forward to following wherever their poetry leads.