Alternative Field invites you to submit your poetry for consideration for publication in our bodies. period: a poetry anthology on menstruation. our bodies. period is an anthology highlighting the stories of those who have experienced menstruation.
We ask you…
How does your spirit respond to how your body responds to this world it creates of stain, fluctuation, and (mal)functions of ovulation? Who determines how you respond, how you navigate:move around finding yourself in a veneer of illness, diagnoses, treatments, discoveries, joys, and the eventual determination of what a uterus is “supposed to” do—through choice or otherwise.
In “The Poetry of Periods,” Gaby Garcia writes, “Why was the body made? How does it torture? People of all genders with uteri are reminded on a monthly, and sometimes entirely unpredictable, basis that our bodies contain a world of pain.
Poetry has always been about the body and has always sprung forth in particularly explosive ways from bodies that remain scrutinized and objectified on a public and personal scale. As blood stains our jeans and our bedsheets, menstruation can easily flower into an eerie metaphor: the internal plane of existence that we can suddenly see externally expressed. No wonder so many of us end up as writers.”
We invite you to write poetry in the many forms and structures we find poems. We invite you to share your thoughts, your pain, your gratitude, your journey, and/or your peace with and for your menses. We invite you to submit your work, no more than five pieces, for publication consideration. Do you have favorite tips, salves, and wisdom you’d like to share? We welcome them with your poetry.
Each day, an estimated 300 million people worldwide menstruate. Being able to manage menstruation safely, hygienically, with confidence, and with dignity is critical for their health, education, human rights, economic development, and overall gender equality. Before the COVID-19 pandemic started, more than 500 million menstruating people worldwide did not have what they needed to manage their menstruation.
Constant motion, preparing to bleed, bleeding, or going through the cycle of hormonal shifts, eggs releasing, always something and many times, nothing. With this comes a need for education, awareness, support, and acceptance. In conjunction with this call and the publication, we also plan to host a workshop and a mutual aid effort. Stay tuned.
Together, we can #EndPeriodStigma. May 28th Is Menstrual Hygiene Day
IMPORTANT INFO:
Deadline: Please submit up to 5 poems, with or without including tips, salves, and/or shared wisdom no later than June 21, 2022
Submit your work here.
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