Beltway Poetry Quarterly is an English-language, online literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 based in Washington, DC.

As its name suggests, it features poetry from the "Beltway" region of the Washington, DC area. The publication strives to "showcase the richness and diversity of Washington area authors in every issue." Special themes have included issues on Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, "DC Places," and "The Evolving City". In 2004 the quarterly featured a "Wartime Issue" covering poetic responses to the Iraq War. The quarterly was founded in 2000 by Washington poet Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts is an award-winning American poet, author, and editor residing in Washington, D.C..-Life:Roberts was born in Charlotte, North Carolina...

 who serves as editor.

History

Beltway Poetry Quarterly publishes poems and essays on poets with strong regional ties. Featured poets have included: Kwame Alexander, Francisco Aragón, Naomi Ayala, Holly Bass, Richard Blanco

Richard Blanco

-Life:He immigrated with his Cuban exile family to Miami where he was raised and educated.He graduated from Florida International University in Civil Engineering and Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing , where he studied with Campbell McGrath....

, Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico

Regie Cabico

Regie Cabico is a poet and spoken word artist. He has been featured on two seasons of Def Poetry Jam on HBO .Cabico is a critically acclaimed who has won top prizes in the 1993, 1994 and 1997 at National Poetry Slams. His poetry appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the...

, Kenneth Carroll, Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri is an award-winning American poet and playwright. She has published 15 volumes of poetry and more than 20 plays and continues to actively write and publish. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband, sculptor Kenneth Flynn...

, Michael Collier

Michael Collier (poet)

Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripedes' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the...

, Teri Ellen Cross, Kyle Dargan, Joel Dias-Porter, Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady is an American poet focusing largely on matters of race and society, particularly the trials of the African-American race in the United States. His poetry often centers around jazz and blues, family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class...

, David Gewanter

David Gewanter

-Life:He teaches at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, D. C., with his wife, writer Joy Young, and son James.His work has appeared in Ploughshares.-Awards:* 1999 Witter Bynner Fellowship, Library of Congress * Whiting Writer's Award...

, Martin Galvin

Martin Galvin (poet)

Martin Galvin is a prize-winning American poet and teacher.-Life:Martin George Galvin grew up in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Catholic schools including St. John's High School in Manayunk, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in a class of 15...

, Brian Gilmore, Patricia Gray, Rod Jellema

Rod Jellema

Rod Jellema is an American poet, teacher, and translator.He holds a B.A. from Calvin College and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh ....

, Chungmi Kim, Barbara Lefcowitz

Barbara Lefcowitz

Barbara Lefcowitz is a published poet from Bethesda, Maryland, whose books include Red and White Lies and Photo, Bomb, Red Chair: New Poems....

, Merrill Leffler, Reb Livingston, Mark McMorris

Mark McMorris

Mark McMorris is a Canadian snowboarder who is the first to complete a backside triple cork 1440.McMorris competed at his first FIS Snowboard World Cup during the 2009-2010 season placing eighth in the big air event in Quebec City...

, E. Ethelbert Miller

E. Ethelbert Miller

Eugene Ethelbert Miller, best known as E. Ethelbert Miller is an African American poet and teacher.-Life:...

, Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan is an American poet of Jewish background. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. She is known for writing short poems that address topics like family life, domesticity, motherhood, the female experience, aging, death, loss and the fear of loss, as well as the...

, Richard Peabody

Richard Peabody

Richard Peabody is an author and poet based in Washington, D.C. A native of the region, he received a B.A. in English from the University of Maryland in 1973 and a M.A. in Literature from American University in 1975....

, Stanley Plumly

Stanley Plumly

Stanley Plumly is an American poet, who is professor of English and director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program....

, Myra Sklarew

Myra Sklarew

Myra Sklarew is an American biologist, poet and teacher.-Life:She received a biology degree from Tufts University, in 1956. She studied bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses with Salvador Luria and Max Delbruck at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory...

, Jane Shore

Jane Shore (poet)

-Life:She graduated from Goddard College, and moved from Vermont to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1972, where she was a student of Elizabeth Bishop....

, Rod Smith

Rod Smith (poet)

Rod Smith, who was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1962, is an American poet, editor and publisher. He grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to Washington, DC in 1987. Smith has authored several collections of poetry, including In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and Music or Honesty. He...

, Sharan Strange

Sharan Strange

-Life:She grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina. She graduated from Harvard College, and from Sarah Lawrence College with an MFA.She is a contributing and advisory editor of Callaloo and cofounder of the Dark Room Collective....

, Hilary Tham, Maureen Thorson, Dan Vera

Dan Vera

Dan Vera is a Cuban-American poet, and editor, living in Washington D.C.-Life:He is the Managing Editor of White Crane, founder of Brookland Area Writers & Artists, co-publisher of Vrzhu Press, and a member of the Triangle Artists Group.His work has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Delaware...

, Joshua Weiner

Joshua Weiner

-Life:He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at the Writing Program at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and at Northwestern University.He lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at University of Maryland, College Park....

, Reed Whittemore

Reed Whittemore

Edward Reed Whittemore, Jr. is an American poet, biographer, critic, literary journalist and college professor. He was appointed the sixteenth and later the twenty-eighth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1964, and in 1984.-Biography:Born in New Haven, Connecticut,...

, and Terence Winch

Terence Winch

-Biography:Terence Patrick Winch was born in New York City in 1945. He grew up in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, the child of Irish immigrants. In 1971, he moved to Washington, DC, where he became involved with the Mass Transit readings in Dupont Circle. He published the first issue of Mass...

.

Guest editors have included Kwame Alexander, Naomi Ayala, Sarah Browning, Andrea Carter Brown, Regie Cabico

Regie Cabico

Regie Cabico is a poet and spoken word artist. He has been featured on two seasons of Def Poetry Jam on HBO .Cabico is a critically acclaimed who has won top prizes in the 1993, 1994 and 1997 at National Poetry Slams. His poetry appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the...

, Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri is an award-winning American poet and playwright. She has published 15 volumes of poetry and more than 20 plays and continues to actively write and publish. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband, sculptor Kenneth Flynn...

, Terri Ellen Cross, Brian Gilmore

Brian Gilmore

Brian Gilmore was an Australian rules footballer who played with Footscray in the VFL during the 1950s.Gilmore was a follower in Footscray's 1954 premiership side and had the honour of having the ball in his hands when the siren sounded. He also represented Victoria at interstate football...

, Merrill Leffler, Saundra Rose Maley, and Hilary Tham.

For a more extensive list of poets featured in the quarterly, see the archives section of The Beltway Poetry Quarterlys official site.

In addition to the journal, the web site offers a Resource Bank with extensive links, useful to authors and their audiences in the Mid-Atlantic. Granting organizations, reading series, publishers, libraries, museums, bookstores, blogs, and conferences are all covered. The site also provides the most complete listing available of artist residency programs in the US and the rest of the world. The journal publishes a Poetry News page, updated monthly, with new book and journal releases, calls for entries, and area readings.

Critical reviews

The Washington Post has called Beltway Poetry Quarterly "a poetry journal with a yen for things Washingtonian" and writes, "These days a tasty verse morsel is just a mouse click away, thanks to Beltway."

Beltway Poetry Quarterly authors have won "Best of the Net" awards, and the journal has been supported by grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and the Humanities Council of Washington, DC. The editor was a finalist for the DC Mayor's Arts Awards in 2009 and won the 2008 Independent Voice Award from the Capital BookFest.

Press coverage of the journal has appeared in The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, The Washington Blade

The Washington Blade

The Washington Blade is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender newspaper in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The Blade is the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States and second largest by circulation, behind Gay City News of New York City...

, The Washington Times

The Washington Times

The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...

, Chickenbones: A Journal for Literary and Artistic African American Themes, The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....

, Sojourners Magazine

Sojourners Magazine

Sojourners magazine, a progressive monthly publication of the Christian social justice organization Sojourners, was first published in 1971 under the original title of The Post-American. The magazine publishes editorials and articles on Christian life, the church and the world, Christianity and...

, and other publications.

Themes

Typically, one issue per year is dedicated to poems exploring a particular theme. Themes have included: Museums, The Evolving City, DC Places, Wartime, and poems inspired by Walt Whitman. The Winter 2008 issue explored the work of poets involved in Split This Rock

Split This Rock

Split This Rock, a national nonprofit organization of poets, artists, and activists based in Washington, D.C.The organization's stated goals are: To celebrate the poetry of provocation and witness being written, published, and performed in the United States today; and to call poets to a greater...

 Poetry Festival. The journal has published an Audio issue, and several issues have been compiled by guest editors.

Every other year, Beltway Poetry publishes a special literary history issue, with tributes, interviews, and essays on influential poets who have lived or worked in Washington, DC. Poets in history issues range from contemporary authors to poets living in the city in its early years. They include: Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

, Sterling A. Brown, Ed Cox, Leon-Gontran Damas, Owen Dodson

Owen Dodson

Owen Vincent Dodson was an American poet, novelist, and playwright. He was one of the leading African American poets of his time, associated with the generation of black poets following the Harlem Renaissance....

, Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....

, Roland Flint

Roland Flint

Roland Henry Flint was an American poet and professor of English at Georgetown University.-Life:Born in Park River, North Dakota, he attended the University of North Dakota before joining the United States Marine Corps. He served in post-war Korea and then returned to and graduated from the...

, Angelina Weld Grimké

Angelina Weld Grimke

Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance and was one of the first African-American women to have a play performed.- Biography :...

, Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

, Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson was an American poet and a member of the Harlem Renaissance.-Early life and education:...

, May Miller

May Miller

May Miller was an African American poet, playwright and educator. Miller became known as the most widely published female playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, with seven published volumes of poetry during her career as a writer.-Personal life:May Miller was born in Washington, D.C. to Kelly and...

, Gaston Neal, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, Reetika Vazirani

Reetika Vazirani

Reetika Vazirani was an American poet and educator. On July 16, 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet, Jane Shore. There, Vazirani took the life of her two-year-old son, Jehan, and then her own.-Life:She was born in...

, and Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

.