"Two things in particular have stood out since Mezzo Cammin's inception. The first is that there is still a pressing need for a magazine like Mezzo Cammin both to re-frame and reclaim portions of the poetic. When we decided we would begin to do features on women poets who had not gotten enough attention, like Julia Randall and Josephine Jacobsen, we realized, soon enough, that such features would include most women poets. In a field where roughly sixty percent of working writers are women and forty percent are men, and where literary journals, by and large, do not reflect those numbers, there is a responsibility to give voice to excellence by women. We see that as one of our missions, besides our emphasis on form.
"The second is that Mezzo Cammin would not have been possible without a community of women who have been supportive both in terms of establishing the groundwork and in contributing to the journal itself. Mezzo Cammin came out of the West Chester University Poetry Conference, and out of early women's voices at the conference, such as Rhina P. Espaillat, Annie Finch, Rachel Hadas, Marilyn Nelson, Molly Peacock, and Kathrine Varnes. I am indebted to two seminars at West Chester, the first headed by Rachel Hadas and Marilyn L. Taylor, focusing on forgotten women poets: Mary Agner, Debra Bruce, Jenny Factor, Gardner McFall, Meg Schoerke, Ellen Smith, Rachel Wetzstoen, and Terri Witek. The second, on the same topic, headed by Marilyn L. Taylor, was the one out of which Mezzo Cammin was born: Kim Bridgford, Debra Bruce, Barbara Crooker, Moira Egan, Jenny Factor, Annie Finch, Diane Lockward, Margaret Rockwell, Meg Schoerke, Patricia Valdata, and Kathrine Varnes.
"Dana Gioia and Michael Peich have been supportive of both Mezzo Cammin itself and The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, inviting women scholars to run seminars that led to the journal and the timeline, and eventually including a home for those entities at the Poetry Center at West Chester."
Kim Bridgford
January, 2011
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