Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

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Willawaw Journal

Willawaw Journal is an online magazine for poetry and art, published twice a year–Fall and Spring. Each issue features the poem prompt of a northwest poet laureate and sometimes a model response from the editor. Our mission is to encourage writers and artists to create, and to generate a community where a diversity of voices is welcome.

Welcome

Submissions Open February

For the Spring 2025 issue of Willawaw, we look at an ekphrastic poem as prompt.  You may write in response to the poem or in response to another piece of art. You may confine yourself to the form of ekphrasis or veer. Veering is always welcome. (Or you may ignore the prompt entirely.)

Read the Guidelines & Submit Your Work

Poet Laureate Poem Prompt with Erica Goss—Spring 2025

Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City, 1885

after the painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner

A shadow stretches
from dune to dune,
cool valley where
tufts of grass
lean towards the ocean.

Out to sea, sails flutter like
the wings of a cabbage moth
I saw this morning in my garden,
searching for a place to lay
a last clutch of eggs
before winter closes in.

So often I have felt
like those shrubs on the beach,
bent sideways from
some elemental force,
its life-changing weight
pressing me into a new shape,

as if my heart were an object
to be molded by wind.
I offer myself as raw material,
a last chance at transformation
before the pale half-disc of sun sets
and that cloud spreads
across the sky.

First published in Two Hawks Quarterly, Spring 2024

More About the Poet Laureate Poem Prompt

The Editor

Rachel Barton is a poet, teacher, writing coach, and editor. She earned a B.A. in English from West Virginia University where she also pursued graduate studies in the art of printmaking. Drawn to Alaska by an older sister, she continued to pull lithographs at the Visual Arts Center until her new family began to manifest. From there, she dove into clay and watercolor. Upon her arrival in the Northwest 25 years later, she earned a Masters in Teaching from Western Oregon University. It was while teaching that she became acquainted with the Oregon Writing Project where she resumed her writing life.
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More About the Editor