I don't know how many poets we have in our community here but I wanted to extend an invitation from over on reddit - cromlygames is working on some kind of light hearted solarpunk poetry book and is looking for contributors! They're a mod over there and a dev on the Fully Automated TTRPG team and this isn't their first book project so I think anything they put together is going to be cool!

https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1vf6qn3/i_want_to_compile_a_happycozyfunny_poetry/

It's an idea I can't shake. I love poetry, but I'm pretty miserable at the moment. I can't handle the angst of https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/features/young-poets-on-climate-change-the-power-of-being-a-young-writer/

So, be the change you want.

I want to put together a set of light hearted poetry about places and characters (like Pam Ayres "who are you calling vermin"), but set in a recognisable solarpunk world. Poems that might be called 'Overheard at the library', 'Ballad of Bike Bridge', 'The Agrivoltichian's holiday', 'Lawnmower's reincarnation'. ect.

Examples of the tone I'm hoping for:

Poetry about people and situations. Funny Snapshots.

Pam Ayres: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYeVhBUhITI Allan Alhberg: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/talk-us-through-it-charlotte/

Grace Nichols: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/cat-rap/ Roger McGough https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/funicular-railway/

Poetry about places and hopeful feelings: Matt Goodfellow: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/meet-at-the-horizon/

Andrew Fusek-Peters and Polly Peters: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/the-nighthawks-after-edward-hopper/

Laura Mucha: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/albatross/

Rough plan. Small paper book, 34 lines to a page. Submissions close end of Jan 2027. Send to [email protected] sbj: 'solarpunk poetry book submission' Plan A is all typset and made available for download, local print on demand (as we have done for Fully Automated RPG). Plan B is using laTex to set out as a foldable, bindable zine, and personally doing a limited print run for participants (postage from uk is going to suck).

What I need:

1. share this to likely people, there's a world out there beyond reddit.

I should probably set a dedicated website or something for this. Never done that before. If you can help, please reply here :)

if submitting, somewhere between 3-9 English language poems, ideally 6 with varied topics. This is to get variety so many different people can be accepted. 2.1) Ideally no poem longer than 100 lines, be kind to your editor.

2.2) Poems rated PG at worst. I want to be able to give a copy of this to my 12 year old niece.

1. if submitting, include a very short blurb. This may or may not be your real name, I don't really care. PLEASE include explicit permission for me to share your email address with other editors (UK GDPR). 3.1) If you are interested/willing to workshop poems with other entrants, please state so. I'd like to be able to link some like-minded people up together.
2. if not submitting, but interested in getting a copy at the end, shoot me an email saying so.