The A Line Meant Project

A Line Meant is your portal to inspiration, innovation and liberated community building. Here, you’re invited to explore, fellowship, and create.

A group of poets

About The Project

A Line Meant is a poetry exchange, created by Wisconsin Poet Laureate Emerita Dasha Kelly Hamilton. For the two years of her term, new works were traded randomly between laureates, farmers, inmates, students, novices, curious and generous souls. 

The initiative produced an anthology series and a professional fellowship for formerly incarcerated leaders and system-impacted communities. We center the voices and skills of formerly incarcerated organizers to seed creative networks and community circles.

A Line Meant is an initiative of Still Waters Collective, a nonprofit organization that leverages the creative process to impact human and social wellness.

Project Guidelines

SWC has delivered programming and mentorship to writers incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons since 2006.  Started at Racine Correctional Institution, Prose & Cons writing and spoken word program grew to be one of the most active pro-social activities of the institution.  It was co-curated with SWC leaders and incarcerated proctors and writers. 

Beyond poems and publications, the central goal is to deliver a consistent and curated space for inside carceral institutions that allow creativity, culture and conversation.  Prose & Cons is an acknowledgement of the humanity pulsing inside institution walls.

We offer classroom templates and programming guides for educators and organizers within and outside of carceral facilities.

Free Writing & Conversation Prompts

Get Prompts

ALM Curriculum Guide – $175.00

Coming Soon!

Write-In Event Instructions – $10.00

Coming Soon!

About The Book

The A Line Meant anthology presents selected works from 60 poets, hailing from 21 cities across my home state. The project invited the creativity of neighbors and connected the humanity of strangers. Starting with single lines of existing poetry, participants not only crafted their own unique works, but also shared their poems and insights as a form of connective tissue with one another. Like a tree from many roots, A Line Meant threads together both the professional and hobbyist poet, growing new, powerful art from the margins between. The resulting collection includes poems from poets laureate, inmates, farmers, servers, retirees, professors, parents, veterans, sports fans, students, nurses and a host of lives in between. Together, in poetic conversation, the work glimmers with the unexpected gorgeousness of neighbors. Every one, a gift.

Published by Jaded Ibis Press

Order the A Line Meant Anthology

Cover book of A Line Meant

Submission Portal

A Poet A Poet

The ALM poetry portal is one-time exchange. For each poem uploaded, you will receive an email with a poem written by someone else in the ALM network. Incarcerated writers may receive their poem matches via postal mail or an external advocate. Contact information is not shared between participants. Writers are encouraged to add their works to multiple prompts.

We are preparing Volume Two of our Anthology Series! All poems added to the ALM network will be considered for publication. Selection will begin in Fall of 2026.

Submit a Poem Fellowship Application

Daily Poem

“what we lost” by michael ondaatje

The interior love poem the deeper levels of the self landscapes of daily life dates when the abandonment of certain principles occurred. The rule of courtesy — how to enter a temple or forest, how to touch a master’s feet before lesson or performance. The art of the drum. The art of eye-painting. How to cut an arrow. Gestures between lovers. The pattern of her teeth marks on his skin drawn by a monk from memory. The limits of betrayal. The five ways a lover could mock an ex-lover. Nine finger and eye gestures to signal key emotions. The small boats of solitude. Lyrics that rose from love back into the air naked with guile and praise. Our works and days. We knew how monsoons (south-west, north-east) would govern behaviour and when to discover the knowledge of the dead hidden in clouds, in rivers, in unbroken rock. All this we burned or traded for power and wealth – from the eight compass points of vengeance from the two levels of envy