“some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.” Charles Bukowski, War All the Time
Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry, announced this week that its core mission, in direct support of poets, is to remain committed to its programs that serve as an important source of financial support for poets, writers, and artists through contributor fees, honoraria, award prizes, and commissions.
“The poetry and publishing communities are facing unprecedented challenges due to COVID-19, and while we are uniquely positioned, we are still no exception. The economic downturn is causing a significant immediate impact and unknown long-term impact to the value of our endowment, our primary source of revenue to support publishing Poetry magazine and the organization’s mission and programs into perpetuity.
“Despite the financial pressures, we are maintaining our programs, staff, and doing what we are able, which includes focusing our support close to home through the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund. While we are not able to make new commitments at this time, we will continue to assess the impact, and community needs on balance with our mission.”
Angora Poets World Caffé
Copyright Angora Poets World Caffé
Zoom (link HERE) at 8 p.m. Paris time. Angora world caffé meets via Zoom, hosting participants from the four corners of the planet. Presentations in all languages including English, French, Arabic, Spanish – your language welcome.
According to Moe Seager, “Angora Poets has been meeting every Sunday for three years. Similar to The BeZine I include proven poets – young and old, published and not – who show a craftwork.” For more info and to connect with Moe, link HERE.
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“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
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Photograph of Central Park Lake (NYC) courtesy of Nkon21 under CC BY-SA 4.0
“The City Council has already shown an incredible commitment to ensuring the broader artistic economy is supported during this disastrous time,” said PEN America’s COO Dru Menaker. “But we’re alarmed that writers have not been explicitly included in calls for support . . . “
A citywide coalition of literary arts organizations sent a letter to the New York City Council insisting that council members consider writers and literary arts organizations as a vital part of the city’s artistic infrastructure in its upcoming budget. The letter asks that the council ensure writers and the organizations that support them are included in any relief package designed to revive the arts community amid the coronavirus crisis.
“In times of national crisis, we have long turned to writers for inspiration, understanding, comfort, and enlightenment. Writers who call New York City home have helped this country and the world make sense of global depression, war, and the societal impact of racism, inequity, and hatred,” the letter reads. “Our city cannot afford to let this literary legacy lapse by ignoring the needs of our writers at this critical juncture.”
The letter – addressed to council members Van Bramer, Gjonaj, Moya, Cumbo, and Borelli of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations – says that the impacts of the coronavirus crisis on the arts has been clear, and the City Council has already called on the mayor to ensure federal relief funds are directed in part to artists or arts organizations. But those calls have omitted novelists, nonfiction authors, poets, essayists, playwrights, translators, and other writers. Writers have lost significant income, facing canceled speaking engagements, declines in book sales, loss of teaching, and publishers failing to pay royalties and advances, creating acute financial need.
“The City Council has already shown an incredible commitment to ensuring the broader artistic economy is supported during this disastrous time,” said PEN America’s COO Dru Menaker. “But we’re alarmed that writers have not been explicitly included in calls for support. PEN America, as a literary organization but also as a membership organization representing nearly 3,000 writers across the city, believes that the City Council can do the right thing here. Writers, now more than ever, are essential to the life of the city. And their livelihoods are imperiled by the loss of part time and gig work that often keeps writers financially afloat.”
The letter calls on the city council to include writers as part of the artistic community, as well as the organizations that showcase and support them. That means an explicit mention of writers and writers’ organizations in any legislative language relative to supporting the arts. The letter calls on the Council to provide tax credits to city-based businesses to support literary arts organizations, relief for commercial rents, and a project that would remunerate writers to document the impacts of the pandemic on New York City.
“We hope our representatives in the Council will address the financial and health needs of those who provide the City with its essential services, including our first responders and healthcare professionals, and that they continue to fund programs that provide the sick, homeless, disabled, the undocumented, and marginalized communities and youth with the care and attention they need,” the letter says. “But as you contemplate ensuring how best to use relief funds to shore up the arts, we call upon you to recognize the vital role the literary community writers and the literary organization that showcase and support their work will play in bearing witness to these troubled times.”
This post is courtesy of PEN America.
PEN America runs the Writers Emergency Fund, designed to support writers who are most directly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Read more about that fund here.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.
Poetry rocks the world!
FEEL THE BERN
For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice
Maintain the movement.
“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“Journalists are putting their health, safety, and wellbeing of their loved ones on the line to uncover today’s most vital stories,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel.
PEN America announced its Local Heroes: Journalists Covering COVID-19, a digital honor roll to recognize journalists and news organizations for their role in keeping citizens informed and for sustaining democratic accountability amid the coronavirus crisis. As part of PEN America’s work leading up the World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the Local Heroes project is an online celebration of the work journalists are doing to provide life-or-death reporting at this precarious time.
“Journalists are putting their health, safety, and wellbeing of their loved ones on the line to uncover today’s most vital stories,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. “They’re doing so despite the incredible strain on the local journalism industry, which was facing crushing financial pressures and job cuts even before the pandemic set in and is now hard-hit by the economic standstill. While we’re used to spotlighting journalists for World Press Freedom Day in places like Azerbaijan, China and Turkey, this year we’re training our lens closer to home, on Austin, Chicago, Tulsa, and other U.S. cities where journalists are on the frontlines of a story that is dangerous in a different way.”
As part of the Local Heroes initiative, PEN America is profiling and elevating the work of journalists from Atlanta, Austin, Birmingham, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Raleigh-Durham, Tulsa, and more. Online interviews spotlight ways that journalists are combating misinformation, providing accountability over local and regional officials, and shielding civil liberties at a time when leaders are keen to exploit a crisis to curtail rights.
Alysia Harris and Anna Simonton of Scalawag Magazine in Atlanta, GA and Durham, NC say: When we publish a COVID-19 related story, we ask how can this empower people right now to protect their families, to advocate for their rights as workers, or organize with their neighbors for housing protections.”
Connor Sheets of AL.com in Birmingham, AL says: “One big concern is that many agencies, local governments, law enforcement agencies and other public entities are failing to respond to records requests, denying them on dubious grounds, or delaying response for extended periods of time, and blaming it all on the coronavirus.”
Between now and World Press Freedom Day in May, PEN America is accepting recommendations from across the country to say #ThankYouJournalists. The project will continue to profile reporters who work in for-profit and non-profit newsrooms, for community papers and online-only outlets, for broadcast and print outlets. PEN America is providing seven additional ways for Members and supporters to support strong accountability journalism at a moment of crisis. And this week, PEN America will launch a nationwide petition calling for federal relief funds for local reporting.
“Last year, PEN America brought World Press Freedom Day to the U.S. for the first time, fanning out across the country to hold discussions and events about the powerful role of local news,” said Katie Zanecchia, director of national outreach at PEN America. “A global pandemic forced us to change up those plans this year. But it’s also provided us a stark example of the crucial role journalists are playing during this emergency when their own industry and their own lives are in jeopardy.”
This feature is courtesy of PEN America.
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PEN America last year released Losing the News, a comprehensive national report looking at the bleak financial picture of local reporting across the country, but also proposing innovative new ways to transform local journalism. The organization is also leading a campaign on Capitol Hill to ensure the next coronavirus relief package includes funding for local press.
Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.
Poetry rocks the world!
FEEL THE BERN
For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice
Maintain the movement.
“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Collage courtesy of Aza24 under CC BY-SA 4.0 license. From right to left: Min Huifen playing the erhu, Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Canto I from the Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in the Grand adage from Nureyev’s staging of the Petipa/Minkus “The Kingdom of the Shades” for the Royal Ballet, London, 1963.
“In the months to come, the American economy will need the arts and culture sector to deliver on its unique mission and also to catalyze economic activity in other devastated industries such as restaurants, hotels, travel, and tourism. In March 2020, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the arts and culture workforce contributed $877.8 billion, or 4.5 percent, to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017. The arts sector is an economic engine that directly employs more than 5 million workers. Attendees at nonprofit arts events spend $31.47 per person, per event, (beyond the cost of admission) on items such as meals and parking—valuable commerce for local businesses and essential during times of economic recovery.”The Arts Sector and COVID-19 Relief April 2020 MORE
More than forty arts and cultural organizations calling on Congress and the Trump administration to direct a substantial portion of the COVID-19 fiscal stimulus relief to the artistic, literary, and cultural sectors. Such relief that will “sustain the arts sector’s unique capacity to support the U.S. economy, uplift the human spirit, and provide lifelong learning.”
In March 2020, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the arts and culture workforce contributed $877.8 billion, or 4.5 percent, to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2017. The arts sector is an economic engine that directly employs more than five million workers.
Included in the detailed statement are requests for “substantial additional dedicated COVID-19 relief funding administered by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services, as they uniquely address the operational needs of the cultural sector.”
The statement goes on to note that funding for the National Endowment for the Arts can go beyond the initial $75 million investment in the recently enacted CARES Act by dedicating new substantial resources in the following ways:
Make COVID-19 relief grant opportunities fully available to all eligible organizations as defined in the NEA’s authorization statute (as described in 20 U.S.C. §954). Limited resources necessitated restricting eligibility to prior grantees from the past four fiscal years. New resources could increase eligibility from approximately 3,700 nonprofit cultural organizations to more than 100,000 nonprofit cultural organizations nationwide.
Enable national non-profit organizations to sub-grant federal arts funds to support community-based arts and culture organizations, agencies, and artists across the country in order to assist the NEA in quickly and efficiently supporting the nation’s cultural infrastructure and workforce.
Expand waivers for public/private matching requirements to apply to all active FY 2019 and FY 2020 NEA grant awards, in addition to the new waivers included in the CARES Act. Allow current grantees that have a balance not yet drawn to re-allocate that funding for general operating support that helps to address COVID-19 economic losses.
“There is a specific and substantial contribution to economic recovery that can come from sustaining literary, arts and cultural organizations across the country,” said PEN America Washington director Thomas O. Melia. “This obliges policy-makers to include small and medium sized enterprises, especially non-profit organizations, as a focus of the next fiscal stimulus package.”
This post is courtesy of the PEN America, the arts sector coallition, and Wikipedia.
Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.
Poetry rocks the world!
FEEL THE BERN
For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice
Maintain the movement.
“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 