Today, Tomorrow and Forever is a poetry anthology featuring participants of the syringe exchange program at the VOCAL Drop-In Center (Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders). Over the past two years, Editor and Drop-In Associate Charlotte Graham has led a poetry group where participants read and discuss published work, and utilize prompts to write their own poems. This anthology collects the work written during their workshops.
Charlotte writes: “What binds the poems in this book? There is poetry in all manner of writing and speaking. Poetry in surviving; poetry in how one lives; the way a person walks into a room and asks for what they need. Poetry is movement, grace, rhythm, and poise. To me, living in poetry means that one is held together by the parts of the whole. When I first started this poetry group, one of the first things I noticed was that many participants had poems in their minds already; the same poem they’d been working on for years. A singular song that could be recited at a moment’s notice. Above all, these poems are soul-talk. They converse from the depths of the person who wrote them with clarity, gravity, and integrity.”
Featuring poems and illustrations by:
Melissa Williams
Mr. R
Michelle Mundo
Enrique Guillen
William Idel Castro
Cesar Arbarracin
Donna Diorio
West
Sarge
Jesus Rivera
Hector Castro
Porkchop
Curtis Turner
Amari Ayala
Mary Anna Dolan AKA Fanny
40 pages
staple-bound
Every book comes with a bookmark and NARCAN.
20% of the proceeds will be donated to VOCAL-NY.
Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL) is a New York statewide grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war, mass incarceration, and homelessness in order to create healthy and just communities. They accomplish this through community organizing, leadership development, advocacy, direct services, participatory research and direct action. VOCAL fights for systemic change rooted in justice, compassion, and love. They approach this work with a firm belief in reducing harm and ending stigma, and the knowledge that the issues impacting our communities are driven by institutional oppression, not personal failings. VOCAL’s campaigns have saved or improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers across the state.
