DIRT: plantable poetry
Dialect is seeking to launch a new publishing imprint and we need your help!
Dialect is embarking on a new and exciting venture that builds on our foundation of courses, workshops and mentoring. It was always the plan to move into publishing and we need your support to help us make that first step.
Dialect is partnering with poet Alice Willitts to release DIRT:
ecopoetry collaborations that literally go back to the earth.
DIRT is an idea for a press that publishes collaborative poems inspired by climate science. DIRT will commission diverse pairs of poets and develop carbon-neutral publications printed on plantable paper.
Why is planting the poems a good idea? Following in the footsteps of artists who make work that vanishes back into the place it came from, we want to send exceptional poems back into the earth we’re writing about. Our dream is to print on paper impregnated with poppy seeds that will grow and multiply from each planted poem.
We have launched a Kickstarter to help us raise the funds to do the necessary R&D, go through the full cycle of producing a collaborative piece and explore carbon neutral publication. If successful, this will enable us to commission pairs of poets from the autumn to fully launch the series.
If you like the sound of DIRT, please consider supporting us with a small donation to our Kickstarter (which also contains more detail about the project). It’s an all-or-nothing crowdfunder - if we don’t hit our £1200 target, we lose everything - so every single penny really does matter.
If you like the idea but are strapped for cash, we understand! Please consider sharing the project with your friends to help spread the word. Every little message of support, RT and share does make a difference, trust us.
We are super excited about DIRT and think it's a brilliant way for Dialect to go at the beginning of our publishing journey. It complements rather than competes with the work of our friends and partners. Nobody else is doing anything like this.
We already have the backing of some amazing contemporary poets including Fiona Benson, Steven J Fowler, Pascale Petit, Sophie Herxheimer, Mina Gorji, Heidi Williamson and Marvin Thompson - DIRT says so much about the collaborative, environmentally aware and communal vibe we are seeking to develop. The experimental nature of DIRT has so much potential to speak from a position of strength, as a network of rural writers, in startling and compelling ways that might just provoke thought and inspire action on the climate emergency.
Thanks so much for reading this far and to our supporters for all the help and encouragement. Dialect wouldn't be doing this without you.
SUPPORT OUR KICKSTARTER HERE
JLM Morton & Alice Willitts: two poets collaborate to make the DIRT dream a reality. Yes, we know we have the same hair.
