New poetry journal launches this summer
Originally published in the Warwick Beacon, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
PORTSMOUTH — April is National Poetry Month, and locally a journal is currently seeking submissions for its first issue. Prudence Dispatch is a family affair—George Shuster is an editor, and his wife Stephanie Van Patten is the copy editor and publication designer. Their daughters, Greta and Georgia are also editors.
The journal is named for Chippaquasett, also known as Prudence Island, where the Warwick-based family has vacationed for many summers and where they bought a home in 2019. They spent their 2020 lockdown on the island and still visit whenever they can.
“We’ve been going there since the summer before I was born,” said Georgia, currently a senior at St. George’s School in Newport. “I just love how secluded it is. There’s nothing out there besides one general store. It really gives you time to think. Island time is a big cliché, but it really feels like time just stops on the island.”
“We started going there because it was easy to get to, but it feels like a completely different place when you’re there,” says George. “Now it’s a common place where we can all find time to gather.” He notes that the island is only one mile off the coast of Warwick Neck, but that most people from Warwick have never been there. (To be fair, the ferry to the island only runs from Bristol.)
The Shusters are eleventh- and twelfth-generation descendants of John Winthrop, the early New England colonist who settled the southern half of the island. “We’ve always known that he was our ancestor,” George says, “but we didn’t know that part of his history. It’s incredible that he was drawn to this place and that nearly four hundred years later we were drawn to the same place.”
Greta Shuster is currently in Maine, where she is currently an Environmental Studies major at Bates College with a concentration in the humanities. A former Beacon Media intern, she is currently working on a senior project about how poetry can help people overcome environmental disasters.
“A good poem has something at stake,” Greta said. “I keep coming back to a poem if there’s something emotionally contentious in it.”
All three editors are also poets themselves, and each of the Shusters gave a different answer when asked what types of poems interest them. George likes poems that tackle tough issues but still use formal conventions, citing as an example the ghazal. (A definition from The Poetry Foundation: “Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase—the radif—and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word—the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet. The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet’s.”)
Georgia, meanwhile, likes poems that she finds personally relatable – references to the ocean, or where she can find a little bit of herself in the words. And Greta likes brevity. “I’m often drawn to poems that are six to ten lines long, without excess language that distracts from the central meaning of the poem.”
“I think something really valuable about the Prudence Dispatch is that we have three different people at three different stages of life selecting the poems,” Greta said. “Our editorial process is kind of interesting. Because we’re in three different places, we read separately and then advocate for the poems that we like.”
Each monthly-ish editorial session results in two or three poems being selected for the issue. “We don’t have to all like a poem to get it published,” said Georgia.
All three Shusters, however, stress the importance of place in writing.
“We’re looking for poems that connect nature with the human experience,” said George. “Which is an extremely broad theme.”
So far the journal has received over one hundred submissions, though surprisingly few from local poets.
“We are trying in this next push over April and May to find ways to solicit more local poets,” George says. “We’d love to get more local submissions.”
“I would definitely echo that sentiment,” adds Greta. “New England has a lot of natural components that are worth writing about! But it’s a very small percentage of the submissions that we’ve seen so far.”
The Shusters hope to release the journal twice a year, alternating three months of reading with three months of assembly and release. Submissions for the premiere issue will be accepted until May 31. To learn more visit www.prudencedispatch.com
