I think, most of us would agree that poetry is actually the
evidence of life, written in words and lines with an inherent desire to
communicate with the infinity and the eternity. According to Yevgeny
Yevtushenko, Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers. Yes we also do
believe this from within the very fiber of our inner self. This was also our
goal from the start of our journey as the monthly web journal named Our Poetry
Archive to breakdown all the frontiers and to reach all with the creative excellences
of poets around the world through a single platform. We also know, as put down
by one of the most popular poetess of recent time Rita Dove, “Poetry is
language at its most distilled and most powerful”. We at Our Poetry Archive always try to keep
this standard with each publication. And to make this a reality we need poets,
real poets and poetesses to maintain a high standard. And who is the poet? The
poet is the magician, only who can make the invisible visible by exploring his
or her inner self; vibrating the tune of his time. This magic is the ultimate
manifestation of art and culture, which becomes the tradition and literary
heritage one day. Thus poetry is equally important for our social progression
as well. Perhaps keeping it in mind one
of the most beloved poet of all time Percy Byshe Shelley, once wrote: “Poets
are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. I wonder how prophetic his utterance was! We
at Our Poetry Archive always try to give due honor to these unacknowledged
legislators of the world through our various projects. So keeping it in mind, this
year we have decided to bring out an Anthology of Contemporary Women’s poetry. As
we do believe women have the rights to bring out their creative brilliance and
to make the world listen to their inner voices as well. So here we are, with
these inner voices of women excellence from various part of the world, bringing
in numerous literary traditions and heritages into this single collection of
poetry.
To our surprise as well as joy we got tremendous responses
from all over the world for this Anthology. To keep the literary standard up to
the expected mark of our esteemed readers we had to select the best
contributions from all the submissions. This doesn’t mean that all the
submissions that have not been included in this Anthology are bad, but they
were not at par with the rest of the entries that have been selected for the
publication. So we would certainly encourage them to try and develop their
poetical skill and literary merit every time. As renowned poet Robert Frost
once said: “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession,” – we do also
believe one has to attain this condition through rigorous practices with utmost
devotion.
Actually this is also the time of confusion as well. Who is
the real poet? Nowadays people do think poetry is the only medium that can be
easily ventured upon. So, almost everyone is writing poetry overnight. Now, one
can argue that it is better to try out with poetry than to spend the time doing
nothing creative. Yes we hope everyone would agree with this argument. We have
nothing against it. Although this is not bad for society as a whole, yet this
trend is not good for literature either. Then what to do? This is the ultimate
question for the literary fraternity of the world. Should we consider this
trend will actually bring mediocrity in literature? Or can we believe that with
the passing of time this trend will be phased out eventually. These are the
questions of this time. We don’t have any clear-cut answers either. We can only
encourage others to uplift their literary taste for the benefit of the
literature as a whole. Yes that can be done, and even over the internet. Our
Poetry Archive is only trying to do this since its inauguration in web
publishing with the introduction of more and more new poets of highest literary
caliber around the world. We believe with this continuous process of
uninterrupted endeavor to bring out poems of highest literary merit can
eventually uplift the overall taste of the readers and upcoming poets as well.
And to our relief we have got the encouragement blessings and supports of many
renowned poets and poetesses from different parts of the world to make Our
Poetry Archive one of the rearguards of the literary frontier of the present
time. Even for this Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry we got these
supports as well. Poetess Claudia Piccinno of Italy, Poetess Maria Miraglia,
poetess Alicia Kuberska of Poland, poetess Deborah Brooks Langford of USA, poetess
Anca Mihaela Bruma, poetess Stacia Reynolds to name a few, have extended their
unconditional support to make this massive Anthology possible. We are really
grateful to all of them. We are also grateful to all the contributors of this
Anthology as well.
From The Editorial Desk
OPA
A
WORLD WIDE WRITERS’ WEB
PRESENTATION!
PUBLISHED
BY
OPA
OUR
POETRY ARCHIVE
ONLINE MONTHLY POETRY JOURNAL
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