ALL Review asked Margaret Rozga about her experience editing the anthology Turn Up the Volume: Poems About the States of Wisconsin. She honored us with this deep-dive response.
ALL:. What makes Turn Up the Volume: Poems About the States of Wisconsin important for our state? And what about it is personally rewarding (or frustrating) for you?
MR: I loved editing Turn Up the Volume. I'm still in awe of the collaborative way it came into being. Then it has branched out into other projects, and even more important it helped me define or refine my approach to being an activist poet/poet activist.
I was outraged by the arrests for singing in the Capitol, such a creative way to protest the destructive measures Republicans were determined to ram through the legislature. Singing empowers. It's in the tradition of the civil rights movement. You asked if I have an "origin story,” and now that I think about it, I think I was born in movement song.
I was outraged at Act 10 and the undercutting of environmental law to pave the way for mining of The Penokee Hills and then the arrests. I created a Facebook page, Poets for First Amendment Protection, and threw a question out into the world: what can we do?
A poet friend of mine, Kristin LaTour, replied, "Let's put together a poetry chapbook anthology. I'll do the layout and pay for the first 50 copies." No way to turn down an offer like that. Wendy Vardaman, who had lots of editing experience as co-editor of Verse Wisconsin, offered to help. She and co-editor Sarah Busse also had developed an amazing network of poets, so we could get out the word quickly. From this network, we assembled an editorial team. Some wanted to take the time to make it a national project, but I knew we had to work quickly while the arrests were still commanding front page attention. I may have been obnoxious in my push to get it done. You'd have to ask others about that.
A month later we had the poems. Soon the editing was done, and all that was left was to agree on a title. At a lunch meeting, Sarah Busse said the proposed titles were all too bland. "We need something with more energy," she said. "We need to turn up the volume." That’s it, we all agreed before she even realized she'd just named the chapbook.
By the time of the book's official release party, we were almost sold out. We had to have more printed. The Overpass Light Brigade lighted up a message, Poetic Justice, to greet the standing-room-only crowd that filled Woodland Pattern. A well-decorated bus brought singers and supporters from Madison.
Three months earlier many of us didn't even know each other. Together we raised about $1800.00 for the First Amendment Protection Fund. That convinced me of the power of people coming together for social justice. You may not individually know where or when or how, but together we can find a way.
That project led to a similar project to raise money for the Coalition for Justice, organized after Dontre Hamilton was killed by a Milwaukee policeman. And it led to the current project, Where I Want to Live. Each time there was a new editorial team and collaboration that made the project bigger and better than any of us imagined.