From Christine’s Patreon:

Have I told you about the Grand River Poetry Collective yet? No? Well.... I think we will be ready to publish some Grand Rapids poets in 2025.

So I'll back up a little bit. While I was completing my project An Oral History of Poetry In Grand Rapids, it occurred to me that if people want to read the work of the poets we interviewed, they would have a difficult time finding it. Even for myself, poet laureate, I do not have a book... and this is also true for the past two GR poets laureate .... publishing was not a big priority. Rather, community involvement is the important issue. And so as a result, our poetry feels less permanent and more difficult to share and to reward. I want to help fix that.

So a small group of us got together in September of 2023--poets , designers, creatives. We donate our time to make poetry books. We direct any profits to the poet. As a collective, we share skills and opportunities and are working on a no cost up-front print-on-demand model for publishing poetry books. We are volunteer run. We share skills and opportunities.

We still have a few things to work out, but the first people we'll be approaching to publish are people who participated in the OHPGR project, starting with people who have not yet published a full length book (but considering everyone, really). We'll be reaching out to that community in 2025 with book queries, and once we have a handle on that, we'll offer publishing to the broader community of Grand Rapids poets.

Have I mentioned how excited I am about this? Our first book might be ready to go in October 2024!! I have so many plans in the works, but this one,,,, this one I am very proud of.

This is still in the works, but I think it's pretty cool:
https://www.grandriverpoetrycollective.com/

Well, we didn’t make October. But we’re real close on our first title, a reprint of Melissa Wray’s book Small Gestures. We want to get the processes for publishing and promoting in place so we can do this with some sustainability. Along the way, we’ll be as transparent as possible about our process here on the website. This is all about community! We think we have a process, the secret sauce of publishing is conscientious people.

We have a number of other projects in the works that we’ll discuss as they get closer to the finish line. It’s been lovely working with folks to gather and edit works. Exciting to see what folks have come up with.

Christine has many projects, a couple documentaries, teaching poetry, and her own book of poems to hone. You can check out everything the Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids is up to here:
https://www.patreon.com/ChristineStephensKrieger