Annette Magid (SUNY Erie Community College)

Poetry is a perfect medium to explore all of the key issues planned for the 57th Annual NeMLA Convention. The focus of this year’s convention is "(R)GENERATION," which is identified on the NeMLA website as “engaging in explorations of our society, interdisciplinary elaborations of cultures and cultural legacies, as well as the re-examination of our histories,” terms which lend themselves well to the emotional expressions within poetry. For the past five years, the Closet Poets sessions have enjoyed many scholars who research and write papers for conferences as well as write poetry.

Perhaps those poems are jotted on note pads, in the margins of your papers or in dedicated personal journals. This session is seeking those scholars whose poetry often remains unpublished due to the heavier responsibility of publishing scholarly journal articles, monographs and genre-specific books which demand much time in between teaching, and perhaps, administrating at the university. Even though those scholarly efforts may yield more rewards, such as job retention and hopefully, job promotions; personal poetry, intermittently created, yields a satisfying venue for emotional issues and satisfying creativity.

The 2026 Revisiting Closet Poets Creative session is an opportunity to expand and share your poetry by perhaps featuring the key issues of this years’ convention. I am pleased to report that MLS published several participants poetic work in 2023 in their new online venue. Perhaps you will have an opportunity to have your work published in MLS in future publications of our Closet Poets work. Remember the words of Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, who shared his joy of telling poems during a previous NeMLA conference, “Poetry is the breath of humankind, and must be heard.”

Poetry is a perfect medium to explore "(R) generation" in "our society, interdisciplinary elaborations of cultures and cultural legacies, as well as the re-examination of our histories." Even though scholarly efforts may yield more rewards (such as job retention and hopefully, job promotions), personal poetry, intermittently created, yields a satisfying venue for emotional issues and satisfying creativity.