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Your Friend, The Wanderer

Hello,

My name is Colette Arrand. Awhile back, me and Raquel Salas Rivera ran this website, The Wanderer, which was, if you’ll pardon the expletive, incredibly fucking good. At least it was for me. I’ve always had a pained relationship with poetry. I love the art, I hate the iniquity of how that art is distributed, and I often struggle with the ways in which I am complicit in that system. Editing this site eased a lot of that tension, and while the world got too overwhelming to continue working on it, I’ve thought about The Wanderer every day since it closed. 

I would like to re-open The Wanderer now.

I’d like to say that this isn’t in response to anything, but that’s bullshit—unless you’re one of those jawns who is like “plenty of time to finish my novel,” the art that’s being produced right now is scared, terrified, anxious, and pissed off, or at least it should be. I can’t participate with my poetry—I’ve tried, and it’s just not happening—but right now I can provide space and money, and I’d like to do so for as long as possible. 

Here’s how this is going to work—

Sending Your Work: Please send 3-5 poems to wandererpoems@gmail.com. Please be generous in your patience with my response time—I am one person, and even though I hope this doesn’t happen, the moment someone shares this on a “paid call for poetry” list, I am going to get slammed with poems by people who don’t understand what this website is doing.

Editorial: Please read the editorial statement on the front page. While I abhor playing the gatekeeper, I acknowledge that in relaunching this page that’s what I’m doing. As a one-editor project it’s possible that this will look like a “poets and poems Colette Arrand likes” club, and I will do my level best to make sure that isn’t the case. I would invite others to join, but it is my belief that editors should be paid for their labor, and I can’t sustain that.

Payment: $30+ upon publication, or sooner if necessary, to the author or a mutual aid project of their choosing. Why the little plus sign? The Wanderer has a Patreon and I just never used it. Whatever The Wanderer makes per month on Patreon will be divided up and paid out to the authors. If you would like to throw in, please do: https://www.patreon.com/wandererpoetry

Previous Submissions: With apologies, work that was previously submitted to The Wanderer will not be considered for publication at this time. I am incredibly sorry for that. Feel free to submit again. It’s been two years, you have new poems. 

How long will this last? In truth, I don’t know. I’m not big on budgeting, but the way I figure it I can go at least three months before I start stressing. But I love y’all and I hate that we’re apart, and if this means I get to feel connected to you in some way, fuck it, what’s money? 

When does this launch? Friday, April 3. 

If you’ve got questions, feel free to find me. I am very online.

xoxo,

Colette Arrand

5 years

SISTERHOOD by Scherezade Siobhan

Scherezade Siobhan is an Indo-Rroma social scientist, community catalyst and hack scribbler of two poetry collections: Bone, Tongue (Thought Catalog Books, 2015) and Father, Husband (Salopress, 2016); and one poetry pamphlet, to dhikr, i (Pyramid Editions, Forthcoming in 2017). She is the creator and curator of The Mira Project, a global, cross-cultural dialogue which uses expressive art and storytelling to dismantle gendered violence and street harassment. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Feministing, Berfrois, Rattle, DIAGRAM, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Word Riot among other digital and print publications, anthologies, exhibitions, art galleries and sometimes even in the bios of okcupid users. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee for writing, the winner of Berfrois Poetry Prize for 2016-17 and can be found squeeing about militant bunnies at www.zaharaesque.com or @zaharaesque on twitter/fb.

8 years