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

Daily Poem

“Song Out Here” by Juan Felipe Herrera

if i could sing i’d say everything you know from here on the street can you turn around just for once i am here right behind you what is that flag what is it made of maybe it’s too late i have too many questions where did it all come from what colors is it all made of everything everything here in the subways there are so many things and voices we are going somewhere but i just don’t know somewhere but i just don’t know somewhere do you know where that is i want to sing so you can hear me and maybe you can tell me where to go so you can hear me and just maybe you can tell me where to go all those hands and legs and faces going places if i could sing you would hear me and i would tell you it’s gonna be alright it’s gonna be alright it’s gonna be alright it would be something like that can you turn around so i can look into your eyes just for once your eyes maybe like hers can you see her and his can you see them i want you to see them all of us we could be together if i could sing we would go there we would run there together we would live there for a while in that tilted tiny house by the ocean rising up inside of us i am on the curb next to a curled up cat smoking i know its bad for you but you know how it is just for once can you turn around a straight line falling behind you it’s me i want to sing invincible bleeding out with love just for you