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The no. of times now I've seen the ludicrous take that in order to give black & brown poets journal space, white poets should not be submitting their work. 
This aggravates me on numerous levels.
1. It's just honestly dumb as fuck imo & annoys me to have to explain how.
This aggravates me on numerous levels.1. It's just honestly dumb as fuck imo & annoys me to have to explain how.
2. Our call for more black & brown poets is ABOUT BLACK & BROWN POETS; wanting so see more of their work, wanting to welcome them, embrace them, let them know their work deserves every chance of being in the running, being seriously considered, being developed & published.
3. Making a specific call to black & brown poets is about trying to remedy the fact THEY ARE UNDERREPRESENTED in our submissions & in publishing across the board. I don't have the data to speculate exact causes why but we all know its the combined effects of society-wide systemic
racism & institutional failure to support, nurture, develop, empower, signpost & provide access to routes into publishing. There are multi-layered barriers & obstacles at play but the result is we don't get, by default, as many submissions from black & brown poets as we should.
We are finding WE HAVE TO loudly encourage & make that call to invite those submissions. Please help us with this; tag your black & brown writer friends, contacts, networks, workshops, groups.
4. When a white writer acts like they're doing a poet like me a favour by not subbing,
4. When a white writer acts like they're doing a poet like me a favour by not subbing,
I can't help that a part of me thinks FUCK YOU my friend. I don't need you to step out of the running as if that is some noble, selfless favour upon me. Some sacrifice for me. It's not. Your work might be shit in comparison & get rejected. So relax. You do you & I'll do me.
5. It's not about you, I cannot stress this enough. So stop making it about you with virtue-signally, pious gestures of supposed allyship. Just don't. Don't tweet to tell us you're not subbing because of this. Don't contact me to tell me you're doing black & brown poets this
kindness. Either sub or don't. Keep the mealy-mouthed performative allyship commentary to yourself. I beg you.
6. We give EVERY piece of work we receive due consideration and attention. Every single one. I know not all magazines do, some of them are a closed loop
6. We give EVERY piece of work we receive due consideration and attention. Every single one. I know not all magazines do, some of them are a closed loop
and pay no mind to open subs, they commission friends, big names and so on. Not us. We rely on our open subs & we read each poem two or three times & we comment on THE POEMS and decide based on what we make of the writing itself.
7. Black and brown writers face further disadvantage once they're in the sub box at most mags, journals, agents, publishers. We know all the ways this happens, how implicit (and less implicit) biases operate to mean our work is often pigeon-holed, dismissed, seen as niche,
how our names, our schools, bios, signal who we are, and who we are is subject to preconceived narratives and falsehoods and biases. It's fucking tiring. There's a double bind or being unfairly devalued on the one hand or tokenised on the other. We have to always 2nd guess
how or work is received, why it's cast aside, to what end it has been accepted. We're tired of it but these are the anxieties that underpin our creative lives because of the FACT of racism and marginalisation. So there's that and it's too much to get into but this silly idea I've
been discussing doesn't resolve or change any of these issues, imo, it just feels patronising, like it's still centring the white writer in their magnanimity rather than the black & brown writers we want to simply encourage to feel like YES they should sub & see more work from.
Excuse the typos, it's the weekend so guys I'm not gonna delete and redo, you get the gist.
