By Claire Massey
It’s a great honor to join the editorial team of The Pen Woman as your new poetry page editor. Former editor Karen McAferty Morris contributed much to our enjoyment of poetry by introducing us to the many talented poets we are fortunate to have within the ranks of our membership. I look forward to discovering and sharing your literary works of art.
More than ever, we need poems that portray the resilience of the human spirit, the tragedy and joy of the human condition; eco-poems that inspire us to protect nature while celebrating its beauty; poems of mystery and miracles; poems that convey the sudden, powerful truths that reveal themselves during the routine moments of our everyday lives.
Poetry hones the practice of deliberate and meditative attention to the transcendent moment, experience or insight. It moves us beyond the boundaries of linear, concrete thinking and opens us to the personal and collective, intuitive intellect. Through poems, we share the sense of wonder and the quest for understanding ourselves and the world.
As Billy Collins urges in his wonderful poem, “Envoy,” tell your poems, “It’s time to decamp, venture outside and talk to as many strangers as you can.” I am eager to hear what you have to say!
About Claire Massey
A member of the National League of American Pen Women since 2017, Claire Massey was the former Poet Laureate for the Pensacola Branch, Florida. Her poems and prose have garnered awards from the Pen Women Florida State Association competitions and the National Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. She served as a selection editor for the 2019 and 2021 print editions of The Emerald Coast Review. In 2021, she designed and presented a virtual workshop on flash forms of prose for the Florida association. Her creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in more than 30 journals of the literary and visual arts. She is currently at work on a collection of her poems and stories titled “Driver Side Window.”
To tell the truth, it is truly wonderful that Claire Massey has taken a position of poetry editor because I think she will make a valuable contribution to this field. I absolutely agree with her that poems perform a really significant function in our world. They affect people’s personalities to a huge extent, expanding our mind and helping us think outside the box. For me, writing poems is the best way to express feelings and enrich your inner world. It is so cool that The Pen Woman is looking for such original and not banal poems which reflect and raise such important issues because, in my opinion, such poems are necessary for the world. They are the best way to think about important things and delve into them because poems are able to arouse the deepest feelings in people. I really like people who are not afraid of proving themselves through the verses and manifesting a creative approach because only they can get us closer to the art, helping us look at the reality from a different angle.
Congratulations!! Claire. Looking forward to brilliant poetry curated by you.
CONGRATULATIONS, CLAIRE.
I’VE BEEN A MEMBER SINCE THE EARLY 1990s. LOVE IT
I’M WITH THE BAYOU CITY BRANCH ALTHOUGH I LIVE IN MO. LIVED IN NY FOR YRS AND WAS A L.I. MEMBER. ANYWAY I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR EXPERTISE.
GOD BLESS.
Congratulations and thank you for taking on this role.
Marlene
Atlanta Pen Women
Welcome, Claire. Karen was telling me a bit about you at the Biennial. Looking forward to meeting you in person some day. Always wonderful to meet a poet and poetry lover!
Congratulations Claire! The Pen Woman magazine is such an important part of our organization….so glad you’re on the team.