— Martin Achatz, Passages North Poetry Editor
Thanks to the “Republican Journal” newspaper in my hometown of Belfast, Maine, for publishing my early poem “Summers at Swan Lake” in its pages.
Much 
gratitude goes to Judy Kaber, the city’s poet laureate, for requesting the poem after she found it in one of my books in the independent bookstore Left Bank Books in Belfast.
You have to love a small city large enough to celebrate poetry and poets, independent bookstores and readers. I know I do!
For years I’ve been threatening to write poems to go with my photos, but it’s been really tough to mesh the two because I take wildlife photos and I don’t write wildlife poems 
(some feature wild life, but that’s another creature altogether). I’ve finally done it, though, and “Great Egret” won first place in the City of Orlando Words and Wonders Poetry Contest. Will it be another seven years before I write a second one? Time will tell …
Many thanks to SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami) and editor Caridad Moro-Gronlier for featuring my pantoum “Cocoa Beach” (from the 
new “Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing” anthology) as the magazine’s poem of the day on Nov. 13.
SWWIM is featuring poems from “Grabbed” in conjunction with the Miami Book Fair, which is virtual and starts tomorrow with events featuring today’s finest writers including “Grabbed” editors Richard Blanco, Elisa Albo, Caridad Moro-Gronlier and Nikki Moustaki over eight inspiring days.
I could not be more excited that my poems “Cocoa Beach” and “Sweet Sixteen” are included in a #MeToo anthology of poetry and prose — Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing — recently published by Beacon Press.
The anthology features well-known writers such as Jericho Brown, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner in Poetry, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove alongside many exciting, newer voices, all of whom were asked to describe what being “grabbed” means to them. Memoirist Joyce Maynard wrote the foreword, and Anita Hill contributed the afterword.
The book can be ordered now from IndieBound or Amazon. Many thanks to the publisher and editors, especially Caridad Moro, for their hard work
Photo by Judy Watson Tracy
