If your friend submitted his poetry for this year's poetry issue, we're sorry he was not included. If not, he should submit next year.

After this issue was completed, we considered options for next year's issue, including hosting a Birmingham Weekly Poetry Workshop, in which some of us at the Weekly and people interested in submitting a poem or two might get together for a day or two one winter week and workshop each other's poetry. In my own experience, a good workshopping session can make a mediocre poem into something that will leave you with chills. This is all totally in the idea stage, but we might ask everyone to write two pieces, one about whatever the poet fancied, and another corresponding to a Birmingham or Alabama-related theme we picked (like, say, The Vulcan, or Civil Rights). Then we'd publish the best of those in the print edition but put everything online.

If we were to do that, do you think your friend might participate?