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

“Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday” by ROBERT HAYDEN

Lord’s lost Him His mockingbird, His fancy warbler; Satan sweet-talked her, four bullets hushed her. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four bullets hushed her. And the world a-clang with evil. Who’s going to make old hardened sinner men tremble now and the righteous rock? Oh who and oh who will sing Jesus down to help with struggling and doing without and being colored all through blue Monday? Till way next Sunday? All those angels in their cretonne clouds and finery the true believer saw when she rared back her head and sang, all those angels are surely weeping. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four holes in her heart. The gold works wrecked. But she looks so natural in her big bronze coffin among the Broken Hearts and Gates-Ajar, it’s as if any moment she’d lift her head from its pillow of chill gardenias and turn this quiet into shouting Sunday and make folks forget what she did on Monday. Oh, Satan sweet-talked her, and four bullets hushed her. Lord’s lost Him His diva, His fancy warbler’s gone. Who would have thought, who would have thought she’d end that way?