SWWIM Every Day

Dear Readers, We hope you’re enjoying your summer! This is a reminder that applications to our residency program will close on August 1. If you want to attend a SWWIM residency, please check out the FAQs and submit via Submittable. We’d love to review your work! Stay safe, be well, and keep cool! With love, SWWIM Team Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Bluesky for more updates—and visit our website to see past, present, and future readings & events.

Welcome to our occasional blog! Where We SWWIM: Dispatches from the Editors is a day-in-the-life, look-behind-the-scenes communiqué/musing. We’re taking turns talking about where we’re traveling, what we’re reading, what’s inspiring us, and more. This month’s post is from Catherine Esposito Prescott, SWWIM’s Co-Founder and SWWIM Every Day’s Editor-in-Chief. Rest is something I’m not intrinsically gifted at.

Dear Readers, SWWIM Every Day will be on its annual hiatus August 31, when we return with a poem every weekday. But while our Substack will be idle for eight weeks—aside from our last “Where We SWWIM” post, coming at you at 5 pm tonight—we won’t be. During our publishing break, we read submissions (which are open year-round), review residency applications via Submittable (see more below), and plan special activations and readings.

Note: Residency applications for SWWIM’s residency at The Betsy Hotel are now open until August 1. We can’t wait to read yours! See more about the residency on our website. SWWIM’s Weekly Spotlight is now on hiatus until August 15. Please hold off on sending your news until then. (Forms that are sent in anyway will be automatically deleted.) Are you looking for editorial feedback? SWWIM’s editors offer commentary on 3-6 pages of poetry.

Today’s poem is uploaded as an image to preserve its formatting. Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Sophia Saco is a poet from Hialeah, FL. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida.

Note: Residency applications for SWWIM’s residency at The Betsy Hotel are now open until August 1. We can’t wait to read yours! See more about the residency on our website. SWWIM’s Weekly Spotlight is now on hiatus until August 15. Please hold off on sending your news until then. (Forms that are sent in anyway will be automatically deleted.) Are you looking for editorial feedback? SWWIM’s editors offer commentary on 3-6 pages of poetry.

Today’s poem is uploaded as an image to preserve the formatting. Ashley M. Jones was the 13th Poet Laureate of Alabama. She was the first person of color and youngest to hold this position in Alabama's history. Jones is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Lullaby for the Grieving, and she is the author of What the Mirror Said: The Necessity of Black Women in Poetry. Jones has been featured by CNN, The BBC, Good Morning America, ABC News, and The New York Times.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published On Evacuating to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival During Hurricane Milton I am telling a story in colors, a field unending where even absence is a landscape of blue sky and air. In a field once filled with absence balloons are blooming like lungs while the heart, first a flame, dies and then flickers, sends heaviness alighting to fly away faster. What then of darkness?

Note: Residency applications for SWWIM’s residency at The Betsy Hotel are now open until August 1. We can’t wait to read yours! See more about the residency on our website. SWWIM’s Weekly Spotlight is now on hiatus until August 15. Please hold off on sending your news until then. (Forms that are sent in anyway will be automatically deleted.) Are you looking for editorial feedback? SWWIM’s editors offer commentary on 3-6 pages of poetry.

Note: Residency applications for SWWIM’s residency at The Betsy Hotel are now open until August 1. We can’t wait to read yours! See more about the residency on our website. SWWIM’s Weekly Spotlight is now on hiatus until August 15. Please hold off on sending your news until then. (Forms that are sent in anyway will be automatically deleted.) Are you looking for editorial feedback? SWWIM’s editors offer commentary on 3-6 pages of poetry.