Thank you for being a Poets Against Racism & Hate USA member! Here you’ll find general information about PARH USA membership as well as guidance for submitting your work for potential publication on our Featured Poem page, participating in PARH USA events, taking advantage of book promotion opportunities, and expanding the reach of poetry videos posted on your YouTube channel.
General Membership Information
As a member, you are subscribed to the Poets Against Racism & Hate USA website. You’ll receive notifications when we publish a new featured poem, add a blog post, or announce an upcoming event. Be sure to add our email address, poetsagainstracism.usa@gmail.com, to your spam filter.
At PARH USA, we seek to involve as large and diverse a community of poets as possible in our efforts to promote positivity toward all, regardless of color, ethnicity, place of origin, creed, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, appearance, or physical or mental ability. Please help us by encouraging social justice poets in your networks to become PARH USA members.
One important benefit of PARH USA membership is engagement with a community of like-minded poets. We invite you to let us know via email about successes or struggles you experience with your social justice poetry, topics you’d like to see addressed in our blog, ideas for PARH USA events, and so on. We also encourage you to share and reply to our social media posts. We want to learn from and be inspired by our members, and we want you to learn from and be inspired by one another!
Featured Poem Submission Guidelines
You are eligible to submit your work for potential publication on the Featured Poem page of the PARH USA website. Members may submit up to three poems per submission for a total of up to five poems per year. To submit a poem, follow these guidelines:
- Send an email to poetsagainstracism.usa@gmail.com. As an attachment, send the poem and a biographical statement (written in third person and not more than 100 words). File types accepted are .doc and .docx.
- In the body of the email, include the following permission statement: I am at least 18 years old and confirm that I own the content I am submitting. I grant Poets Against Racism & Hate USA permission to publish my submission on its website and to use my submission for marketing purposes on social media and otherwise. I understand that I will retain all further publishing rights to my submission.
- Understand that PARH USA does not tolerate any kind of discrimination, hate speech, or endorsement of violence. Ensure that any poetry you submit is respectful and considerate of the diverse groups that make up the PARH USA community, our audiences, and our larger world.
- Note that PARH USA accepts previously published poems. You can take advantage of this policy to extend the impact of works you’ve had published before! If the poem you are submitting was published previously, let us know which literary journal, website, or other forum we should credit if we choose to publish it.
We also include spoken word poetry on our Featured Poem page by linking to spoken word videos on our members’ YouTube channels. For a spoken word submission, follow the submission guidelines above but also let us know that yours is a spoken word submission and provide a link to the spoken word video version of your poem on your YouTube channel. If your work is selected for publication, we’ll link to it from a Spoken Word Featured Poem playlist on the PARH USA YouTube channel.
Participation in Live and Virtual Events
You may receive invitations via email to participate in person or virtually in PARH USA events. Details specific to an event will be included in the invitation email.
Book Promotion
If you have published a book of poetry that focuses on or contains poems addressing racism, bigotry, or hate, we can help promote it! We promote (but do not sell) members’ books at readings, fairs, and other events we attend.
To take advantage of this service, provide us with a copy of your book (to which we’ll add a “display copy” label) and associated promotional postcards or flyers. We strongly suggest that the postcards or flyers include a QR code for a site where your book can be purchased (see example).
Send these materials to Poets Against Racism & Hate USA, P.O. Box 2831, 3375 Canfield Rd., Youngstown, OH 44511. Please notify us via email when you have sent your materials so that we can be on the lookout for them. Once we have your book and materials, we’ll display and disseminate them at future events.
Member Poetry Playlist on YouTube
Have you posted a video of yourself reading or performing your social justice poetry on your own YouTube channel? Do you want to increase exposure to your work? We may choose to link to your video from the member poetry playlist on the PARH USA YouTube channel. Send us a link via email to your YouTube video. We’ll check it out and let you know if we add it to our “Poetry from the PARH USA Community” playlist.