A Word of Thanks from Tattoosday

I have now had a few days to decompress after the 6th Annual celebration of tattooed poets on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project.

I wanted to take a brief moment to offer up thanks to our record number of contributors and to a few people who helped make this year such an embarrassment of riches.

Thanks again to Stacey Harwood and David Lehman from The Best American Poetry blog. Each year they support Tattoosday by helping solicit contributors and publicize the month. They encouraged me from the beginning, back in 2009, and their continued enthusiasm for Tattoosday means the world to me.

Also, I want to thank Tara Betts, a non-inked poet, whose question on Facebook about tattooed poets provided me with a whole squadron of new contributors, six appearing in the past month alone (and many more, in the future I hope). Tara even photographed a handful of her peers at AWP in Seattle this year. Her support has been invaluable.

We ended up featuring 54 tattooed poets in April's 30 days, we double-posted on all but 6 days of the month.

Believe it or not, at one point there were over a hundred interested poets, so we've clearly not finished celebrating inked wordsmiths. That said, we are going to be handling the overflow with a "tattooed poet o' the week" indefinitely throughout the year. I mean, why should we only celebrate tattoos and poetry in April?

Of course, I also want to thank you, the readers, who have offered nothing but kindness and enthusiasm for the work we do here on Tattoosday. Blogging can be a lonely process, but the Tattooed Poets Project is a community, and I am grateful to not only our contributors, but our readers.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!