From the outside, the process of organizing a collection of work should seem the same no matter the project. While it’s true that the steps remain similar, each time a book comes to life, the experience is different.
With my first collective, Pages Penned in Pandemic, the process for organization began with the idea to trace the early moments experiencing life during COVID all the way through to an imagined future. Along the way, we grouped poems by topic, which made the process easier to conceptualize. You can read more about that experience in "The Art of Collecting."
When it came time to begin organizing my latest collective, The Elpis Pages, I knew all the steps I needed to follow:
1.) Add accepted work to one document
2.) Print pages single-sided
3.) Group poems with similar theming
4.) Layout work
5.) Reformat into a new document with completed order
As the theme for this collective was based on womanhood, looking at the writing at the macro level assured all work touched on the same thing. However, digging into the minutia of each pieced allowed for the emergence of natural sub-topics.
There was writing to mothers, about mothers, for sisters and friends, emotional pieces regarding domestic abuse, sexual assault, abortion, and miscarriage. Additionally, there was work written with the intention of empowering women, others meant to praise or accept bodies in all their forms, mystical writings about witches and women from history who endured and persevered. Other work found inspiration from the ocean, while there were pieces exploring religion and its relationship to women, political topics, reflections on the lives lived, and the ones just beginning.
As I thought about womanhood in all forms and experiences, I found the best place to begin was in an ethereal realm. So much of being young feels like a dream. Though the middle portions took a longer time to form their own connections, I knew I wanted to end with hope.
This felt right, as I’d adopted the mantra: “Sometimes all we have is hope” throughout the course of working on this collective.
Once I knew the beginning and ending, it allowed me to begin puzzling through the exquisite writing I’d already accepted. But I’ll let you discover the secret connections between each piece of writing for yourself once you read The Elpis Pages.
While I know readers have a tendency to jump around in books of this nature, I’m hopeful there will be those who read this start to finish. I hope they fall in love with the attention to detail, those words that begin and end in similar places, the writing that cuts to bone because the words are vulnerable and authentic and maybe too relatable.
At the end of organizing this collective, I was left with the reminder that telling stories, admitting our wishes and faults, secrets and scars, connects each of us in ways we’ll never be able to explain. Perhaps it’s magic or desperation to feel understood in a world bent on diminishing the possibility to feel like more than a status update.
The day is fast approaching for this book to be shared with the world, and I cannot wait for it to find its forever home on shelves. All earnings from the print collective will be donated to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, an organization which helps protect access to safe, legal abortion and reproductive rights. Now more than ever, we must continue to speak up about the importance of women’s rights, and I’m honored to have the opportunity to help in this cause.
While you wait for the official release, you can add this book to your TBR on Goodreads! To learn more about this collective, the women who inspire me, original merch, and more, you can visit the project page. And for further updates as publication day nears, I hope you’ll follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
