Operations Manual2

Ars Poetica Western Washington — Operations Manual

1. What Ars Poetica Is

Ars Poetica Western Washington is an annual interdisciplinary program that pairs poets with visual artists across galleries/venues in Western Washington. Each year, poets submit work through an open call. After a screening by the Ars Poetica Committee, the selected poems are compiled into a manuscript and distributed to participating galleries/venues, where visual artists select poems to respond to with new work. The resulting pairings are exhibited together, and galleries/venues host a live reading event where the poet and the artist stand together with their paired work: the poet reads the poem, the artist speaks about the piece it inspired, and the audience sees both side by side.

The program has run for over a decade and currently operates across Kitsap, Mason, Jefferson counties, Gig Harbor, Clallam, and Key Peninsula counties, with participating venues that have included Flywheel Fine Art, Bainbridge Island Photography Club, JG Art Gallery+Events, Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, Collective Visions, Ebb-Tide, Front Street, Rimbert Illustration, and Northwind Art. The number of galleries shifts somewhat from year to year as partnerships evolve.

Ars Poetica is coordinated by Tamarah Rockwood and David Stallings, who together convene the Ars Poetica Committee. The Committee includes representatives from each of the participating galleries and venues. Galleries manage their own exhibitions and events; the coordinators handle the poet call, the manuscript, the pairing process, communications, and the overall rhythm of the season.

The program's premise is where poetry meets art.

2. The Annual Calendar

The Ars Poetica year runs on a September-to-July cycle, with exhibitions and events concentrated in April. The rhythm below is what a full season looks like.

Mid-September: Poet call opens. Submissions open through Submittable on approximately September 12. The call is publicized through the website, regional poetry networks, and the poet contact list from previous years.

December 1: Gallery event dates committed. Each participating gallery commits its April event date to the coordinator by December 1, so the full season schedule can be shared with poets and artists when selection begins.

December 31, midnight: Submissions close. No late entries. Fees are non-refundable per the submission terms.

Early January: Screening. Tamarah and David screen all submissions and select the poems that will form the manuscript.

End of the first week of January: Manuscript goes live. The manuscript is posted to the Poetry Manuscript page on the website and sent as a PDF to each participating gallery/venue. Galleries forward the PDF to their artists along with the link to the Artist/Poem Confirmation Form.

January through March: Artist selection window. Artists choose poems and submit the confirmation form. As poems are claimed, they are removed from the manuscript page. If duplicate selections come in, the coordinator contacts the second artist to ask whether they would consider choosing another poem.

January through April 1: Poet notifications. Every two weeks, the coordinator verifies the Artist Form spreadsheet against the master record, updates the website list of selected poems, and emails poets whose work has been claimed to tell them when and where their poem will appear. The rolling website list serves as a continuous reference between emails.

March 31: Artist selection closes. No further poems can be claimed from the manuscript after this date. Any unclaimed poems remain in the archive but do not appear in the exhibitions.

April: Exhibitions and events. All gallery exhibitions and live reading events take place in April. Individual gallery dates are listed on the website at arspoeticawa.com/galleries.html. Each event is a joint appearance: poet and artist stand together with their paired work.

May: Year-end meeting. Tamarah and David meet to review the season and produce the end-of-year report and financial summary.

July: Stipend paid. The coordinator's stipend is paid once the reports are complete and the year-end meeting has taken place.

August: Quiet month. No active work on the program. The cycle reopens in mid-September.

3. Gallery Partnerships

Ars Poetica has grown organically from the beginning. Collective Visions Gallery hosted the earliest events on its own. Front Street and a few others joined after a couple of years. After a pause during the pandemic, the program rebuilt with Collective Visions and Front Street again, and then expanded outward. Port Townsend was added because so many participating poets already lived there; Gig Harbor followed for similar reasons; Hoodsport pitched itself because of the poets already active in that area. The pattern has remained grassroots and community-oriented, with galleries and venues coming in through local connections rather than open application.

How galleries come into the program

There is no formal application. Galleries typically express interest through an existing connection, a pitch to the coordinators, or a conversation prompted by poets already active in their area. Tamarah and David have the final say on which galleries join the program in any given year. Participation is never guaranteed. This is a matter of responsibility rather than gatekeeping: poets and artists often travel significant distances for these events (a reading in Hoodsport might draw a poet from Port Townsend, a four-hour round trip), and the program has to be confident that every participating venue will honor that investment of time and energy.

What we look for in a venue

The one firm requirement is that the gallery has an existing artist collective, so that there is already a community of artists available to respond to the manuscript. Beyond that, fit is considered case by case, with attention to geographic reach and the strength of the local artist-poet network.

What a participating gallery commits to

Hosting an Ars Poetica exhibition in April and providing wall space for the paired artwork for the duration of the month.
Hosting at least one live reading event during April, with poet and artist appearing together.
Committing the event date to the coordinator by December 1 so the full season schedule can be finalized.
Forwarding the manuscript PDF to their artists and directing them to the Artist/Poem Confirmation Form.
Serving as the liaison between their artists and the coordinators throughout the selection period.
Holding the expectation, shared with their artists, that the work submitted for Ars Poetica is new work created in response to the chosen poem.

What the program provides to the gallery

The screened manuscript of poems.
The contact list for the poets paired with the gallery's artists.
Publicity through the Ars Poetica website and social media.
Coordination between galleries and across the committee.

The artist collective and new work

The program's premise depends on artists creating new work in response to specific poems. The expectation is that artists come to Ars Poetica with fresh work made for the poem they chose, though there is some room for recent work that genuinely responds to a poem. When the expectation is not met at scale, the exhibition loses its reason for being. Galleries are asked to communicate this expectation clearly to their artists at the start of the selection period.

Committee representation

Each participating gallery is represented on the Ars Poetica Committee by a member they select themselves. The committee operates primarily by email. Two optional meetings are typically available each year, one in November and one in March, though most seasons run smoothly without them.

Returning galleries

Participation rolls over year to year. Galleries that want to step back for a season or permanently simply let the coordinators know. Galleries that want to return after a pause are welcome to do so.

4. Poets and the Manuscript

The call for submissions

The poet call opens in mid-September and closes at midnight on December 31. It is hosted through Submittable, with Bainbridge Island Press providing the account and technical support at no cost to Ars Poetica. All editorial decisions remain with the Ars Poetica Committee.

Eligibility

The call is open to residents of Kitsap, Mason, and Jefferson counties and the Gig Harbor, Clallam, and Key Peninsula areas.

Submission requirements

Up to three poems per poet.
Any subject, any style.
26-line maximum per poem, including title and spaces between stanzas.
12 pt Times Roman, flush left preferred.
$15 reading fee, non-refundable, payable through Submittable.
Previously published poems are accepted with citation. Citations appear at the bottom of the poem and do not count against the line limit.
Poems must not carry the poet's name anywhere in the body of the poem, to preserve the blind screen.

Screening

Tamarah and David screen independently over roughly a week. Each poem is marked 1 (yes), 2 (maybe), or 3 (no). At the end of the reading period, the two coordinators meet and go through every poem together. The rule is deliberately inclusive: if either coordinator marks a poem yes, the poem is accepted after a brief discussion, even if the other marked it 2 or 3. Most poems are accepted on the first screening.

What we screen for

The screening is a screen, not a competition. Poems are set aside only if they exceed the line limit, contain offensive content, or are of clearly poor quality. The committee is not ranking poems against one another or selecting only the strongest; it is filtering out what should not appear in the manuscript. In a typical year the committee receives over 100 poets submitting three poems each, and the large majority of submitted work goes into the manuscript.

The manuscript

The screened poems are compiled into a manuscript with the poets' names restored. There is no front matter. Every participating gallery receives a different shuffle of the same poems. This is deliberate: because artists at different galleries encounter the poems in a different order, no single poem sits at the top of every artist's reading pile. The shuffle is one of the mechanisms the program uses to distribute selection more equitably across the manuscript.

Posting and distribution

The manuscript goes live on the Poetry Manuscript page of the website at the end of the first week of January. Each gallery receives its shuffled PDF and forwards it to its artists along with the link to the Artist/Poem Confirmation Form.

5. The Artist Form and Poem Selection

How artists select poems

Each gallery forwards the manuscript PDF to its artists at the start of January, along with a link to the Artist/Poem Confirmation Form. Artists read the manuscript, choose a poem that inspires them, and submit the form. The form asks for four things: the artist's email, the gallery or venue they are working with, the artist's name, and the title and poet of the chosen poem.

When a poem is considered claimed

A poem is claimed at the moment the form is submitted. The artist is not required to have completed the piece, or even to have started it; the form submission is the commitment.

How the manuscript page is updated

When the coordinator receives a form submission, the claimed poem is removed from the Poetry Manuscript page on the website. This update is done manually, once daily, by the coordinator. It is not automated. Artists and galleries should understand that a poem appearing on the page in the morning may already have been claimed earlier that day, and the page will catch up by the next update.

Duplicate selections

If two artists submit the form for the same poem, the artist whose form was submitted first (by timestamp) keeps the poem. The coordinator contacts the second artist and asks whether they would consider choosing another poem. In nearly every case this is resolved amicably. On the rare occasions when an artist cannot easily make another choice (most often because of age or health circumstances), the coordinators do not force the issue. The program is grassroots and community-oriented, and keeping the spirit of inclusion is the priority.

Changing a poem after the form has been submitted

This is strongly discouraged and should be treated as a last resort.

Submission of the form triggers the poet notification process. As soon as the coordinator receives the form, the poet is told their work has been chosen and given the gallery and event date. An artist who changes their mind after this point forces the coordinator to write to the poet and un-inform them, which is a painful email to write and a worse one to receive. Galleries are asked to communicate this expectation to their artists before the selection period begins: the form is not a placeholder or a browsing tool; it is a commitment.

When the selection window closes

Artist selection closes March 31. After this date, no further poems can be claimed from the manuscript, and any unclaimed poems remain in the archive without appearing in the April exhibitions.

6. Communications and the Master Record

The master record

The coordinator maintains a master record of all artist-poem-gallery pairings for the year. This lives in a spreadsheet on the coordinator's computer and is the single source of truth for the season. Two other data sources exist alongside it: the Submittable account (which holds all poet submissions and payments) and the Artist Form Google Sheet (which holds all artist selections as they are submitted). When the three disagree, the master record is authoritative, and the coordinator reconciles it against the other two during the regular update cadence.

Who controls what

All program communication runs through a single email account controlled by the coordinator. David is CC'd on all outgoing email, which means the coordinator and David share full visibility into the program at all times even though only one of them operates the account. Galleries do not communicate with each other through the program; they communicate with the coordinator, who circulates the committee contact list at the start of each season for transparency. The artist form is the one intake channel for artist selections. Nothing should ever enter the master record through any other route.

The biweekly poet update

From January through April 1, the coordinator sends an email to the poet list every two weeks. The email reminds poets of the April event dates (committed by each gallery by December 1) and reports which artists have chosen which poems since the last update. The website list of selected poems is updated at the same time, so the email and the site carry the same information.

Verification discipline

Each biweekly update follows the same sequence, in the same order, every time.

Export the latest Artist Form Google Sheet.
Reconcile against the master record on the coordinator's laptop. Flag any new entries where the artist, gallery, or poem title looks suspicious (artist-name field contains a poet's name, gallery name is unfamiliar, poem title doesn't match anything in the manuscript). Resolve these by emailing the artist or gallery before adding to the master record.
Update the website list of selected poems from the master record.
Draft the biweekly email from the master record.
Before sending, verify the email content against the master record one more time.

This sequence exists because most errors come from pulling from the wrong source. The Artist Form sheet is raw input, not verified data. The master record is verified data. Anything published or emailed must flow from the master record.

Catching artist-entered errors

Artists sometimes fill in the form with the poet's name in the artist-name field, or garble a poem title. These errors are caught during step 2 of the verification sequence. Any ambiguous entry is resolved with the artist or gallery before it enters the master record.

7. Events and Readings

The shape of the event

Each participating gallery hosts a live reading event in April. The event is scheduled for two hours, with roughly ninety minutes of active running time. The format has settled into a reliable shape across galleries, and the sections below describe it. Galleries run their own events and retain authority over them; the format here is what the program has found to work.

Opening

The gallery owner opens the event and welcomes the audience. The coordinator then gives a short Ars Poetica speech introducing the program.

Pairings

The coordinator typically MCs the readings, calling each poet and artist forward by name. The poet and the artist come up together and stand in front of their paired work. The poet reads the poem first. The artist then speaks about the piece they created in response. The MC then moves on to the next pair.

Some galleries prefer to MC their own event, which is entirely their call. The MC role has traditionally fallen to the coordinator because the coordinator has the full roster and the running order, not because the role belongs to the coordinator by rule.

Absences

If a poet cannot attend, they may ask a friend to read their poem, or the coordinator will read it. If an artist cannot attend, the gallery owner can speak on behalf of the piece. The program is built so that an absence does not break the event.

Closing

After the last pairing, the audience is invited to shake hands with the poets and artists and to spend time with the paired works on the walls. There is no formal closing ceremony.

Equipment

The program brings a microphone to each event. If the gallery already has audio equipment, the gallery's system is used instead.

Gallery publicity

Galleries are welcome and encouraged to do their own publicity for their event, featuring their artists and their space. The Ars Poetica website and social media publicize the season as a whole and each event within it. Everything the galleries publicize is recognizably an Ars Poetica event, but the gallery's own identity is fully visible within it.

Gallery authority

Once an event is scheduled, the gallery is in charge of its own event. Setup, timing, refreshments, seating, audience outreach, and the feel of the evening are the gallery's to shape. The coordinator supports the event and fills the MC role when invited, but the gallery owns the space and the night.

8. Finances

Ars Poetica operates on a small budget funded entirely by poet reading fees.

Income

Each poet pays a $15 reading fee at submission. The fee is collected through Submittable and deposited into the Ars Poetica bank account at Kitsap Credit Union. The account is controlled by the coordinator, who holds the debit card and handles all transactions.

Expenses

The reading fees cover the program's operating costs for the year, which typically include:

A post office box, rented for six months during the active season.
Website hosting.
A microphone and any other audio equipment needed for events.
The coordinator's stipend.

The coordinator's stipend

The coordinator receives a fixed $500 stipend at the end of each season. It is paid in July, after all reports are complete and the year-end meeting with David has taken place. David does not receive compensation for his role.

Transparency

The coordinator provides a financial summary at the end of each season, showing the year's income and expenses. This is shared with David as part of the year-end wrap-up and is available to the committee on request.

9. End-of-Year Wrap

The program closes cleanly in the months after April and does not require active attention again until the next call opens in September.

Thank-you note

After the final gallery event in April, the coordinator sends a thank-you note to poets, artists, and gallery hosts.

Year-end meeting

Tamarah and David meet once in May to review the season: what worked, what didn't, and what to adjust for the next year. There is no set agenda beyond those three questions.

End-of-year report

A written report is produced at the end of the season summarizing participation, exhibitions, and notable developments for the year. The report is kept on file and shared with David. It may also be shared with participating galleries at the coordinators' discretion.

Financial summary

The coordinator prepares the year's financial summary (see Section 8) alongside the report.

Stipend

The coordinator's stipend is paid in July, after the reports are complete and the year-end meeting has taken place.

August

Quiet. The program is dormant until the next call opens in mid-September.

Ars Poetica Operations Manual