It’s official – the Fall Conference will be on Oct. 17, 2026 at the Library of Michigan’s Lake Michigan Room in Lansing, 10am-3pm. Details will appear in the “Events” menu as they become available.
Library of Michigan building: 702 W. Kalamazoo Street Lansing, MI 48915
The PSM Sandbox website is a training site for the Poetry Society of Michigan. It is not public. Only people who have requested an invitation will see the contents of the training website. You are invited to learn the ins and outs of maintaining a website on the WordPress platform so that we can build a small pool of members capable of maintaining our PSM site.
But that’s not all. You don’t need to be a developer to build a website. You just need the right starting point.
This site will give you the practical skills needed to build and maintain a WordPress website — one of the most widely used platforms on the web. Whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to make sense of a site you’ve already got, you’ll find clear, step-by-step guidance here.
What you’ll learn
You’ll start with the basics — setting up WordPress, choosing a theme, and organizing your pages — then move into everyday tasks like adding content, uploading images, and keeping your site current. By the time you’re done, you’ll know how to build something real and keep it running.
What could you do with these skills?
Plenty. People use WordPress to share what they know and love: a photography portfolio, a travel journal, a food blog with family recipes passed down for generations, a site dedicated to genealogy, gardening, a journal of paintings or studio work. Writers use it as a home base — a place to list their books, post essays, and stay in touch with readers. Local clubs and organizations use it to share news and connect with members. The only limits are your imagination.
Whatever your purpose, having your own website means you control how you show up online. No algorithm decides who sees your work. No platform can take it away.
You can do this. These skills are more accessible than you think — and more useful than you might expect.
The Poetry Society of Michigan is seeking poems for a five-year anthology to be published in 2026.
Current and former PSM members are known to be passionate about local environments both thriving and abandoned: lakes great and small; woods, streams, Karner Blue butterflies and more. We have rich histories tied to Michigan that inform our daily lives. To that end, we are seeking poems that convey the Power of Place.
If you have been a dues-paying PSM member in at least one of the past five years (2021-2025) we invite you to submit. Send your submission to PSM’s Anthology Managing Editor Melanie Dunbar at editor.psm@gmail.com.
Submissions open: January 1, 2026
Deadline for submissions: March 15, 2026
Guidelines: In the body of an email with the subject PSM ANTHOLOGY SUBMISSION include:
-Author name and contact information (address, phone and email)
-three to five poems (within the body of the email–no attachments please).
-Acknowledgement for any submitted poems that were previously published.
(We prefer new work but previously published work will be considered as long as the copyright is owned by the poet and the work is accompanied by information of when and where it was previously published.)
Note: While broad representation will be the editors’ primary intent, page limits, and applicability to the theme dictate that acceptance will be selective. Membership alone does not guarantee inclusion.
The anthology will be launched at our Fall Conference 2026 in Lansing and will be distributed to libraries state-wide. Readings will be held in multiple cities throughout 2027 to celebrate over 90 years of the Poetry Society of Michigan.
Contributors accepted will receive one copy of the anthology. Additional copies will be available for purchase at Amazon.com.
Some of the poems in A Day without Fear are months old while a few were written over forty years ago. Altogether this is an eclectic collection of poems ranging from the very imaginative to the pastoral to the hard poems about mortality and what happens after death, if anything. In this chaotic and harrowing world, it’s hard to live a day without fear, but we have to try. As far as we know, this is the only life we’re going to get.
Born and raised on the third coast, Michigan, David James has published eight books and has had more than thirty of his one-act plays produced in the United States, Ireland, and England. After working for forty-five years in higher education, he retired in 2022.
In her article, Nailing the Landing, member poet, Shutta Crum writes, “Perhaps the most egregious crime of bad poetry is when the poet tries to summarize the poem for the reader. This usually happens at endings. But the writer must bear in mind that readers bring to the table their own histories. Readers take away what is needful at the moment—to them. And it may be something entirely other than what the writer had in mind while writing the poem.” Read the full article HERE.
Shutta Crum is the author of several middle-grade novels, thirteen picture books, many magazine articles and over a hundred and fifty published poems. She is also the winner of nine Royal Palm awards, including gold for her chapbook When You Get Here. (Kelsay Books, 2020). Her latest volume of poetry is Meet Me Out There. She is a well-regarded public speaker and workshop leader. shutta.com
A crucial step in becoming a better writer is getting and reflecting on seasoned advice. At the suggestion of David Jibson, we’ve decided to post a craft/writing article every other month except for April and October, our conference months. Our hope is that these articles motivate you and provide some new ideas for writing.
Our first article comes from Florida writer and PSM member Shutta Crum (www.shutta.com). She’s published twenty-one books for children and poetry for adults, and we appreciate her letting us re-post her article. Please enjoy “Getting Started: Even with a Not-so-great Idea.” You can read itHERE
Poetry Society of Michigan 