The Jewish Poets Collective

You will notice some big changes here and on Instagram today, and more in the coming days! 

The Jewish Poets Collective is now Esther Poetry Journal.

A bit on why this is happening…

I had been pondering the past year of the Jewish Poets Collective, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and how I can create an ongoing creative project that fits into an already busy life, when the situation arose that the Israeli poets reading was canceled. I won’t go into too many details as to why this happened, but I can share that it’s been deeply disappointing on many levels, not least of which the fact that I learned yet again that people can’t always be depended on, and my attempts to create a collective space have not worked, and so referring to this project as a “collective” had become awkward and even painful. 

Additionally, the ongoing issues with WordPress have caused frustration and stress not just with me but with some of the poets who have contributed their work. To that end, I am making the effort to switch entirely to Substack for future journals and will have a much simpler format. 

The WordPress site is not going away. I’m very proud of the first two issues and have no intention of removing all of the wonderful poetry submitted and published there. 

I also continue to move away from Instagram. While I’m excited to have over 700 followers, the facts are that we live in an age where our privacy and civil liberties are being abused through Meta products like Instagram, and I believe strongly that creators like me need to move away from it entirely. However, this will be done slowly, in the hopes that more followers will come over to the content on Substack.

Finally, as I noted before, I am moving away from hosting poetry readings. What’s on offer for Jewish poets and our allies is Esther Journal and the Rosh Chodesh Open Mic Events, as well as regular information on new releases from Jewish poets.

I hope you will continue to be a part of all of this, and I will do my best to make this transition as smooth as possible. Please join me at epj25 on Substack.