This year’s annual Valentine’s Day reading is LOVE LETTERS – submissions of epistolary poems.

This follows an ancient tradition since some of the earliest forms of epistolary poems, or poems that read as letters, were love letters such as Ovid’s Heroides—love letters from the great women of antiquity.

Epistolary poems are in the form of direct address—and your Love Letters could be addressed to your partner, your sibling, someone living or passed, your pet, an idea, a place, or whatever you love!  Poets.org describes the epistolary form: ”they can be intimate and colloquial or formal and measured.  The subject matter can range from philosophical investigation to a declaration of love, to a list of errands, and epistles can take any form, from heroic couplets to free verse.”

So we asked you to write to your love or loves, and submit your poems for Love Letters to be read on The Poets Corner on February 12, 2023.  Poems were selected based on originality, wit, humor, pathos, and passion, but not sentimentality, with the prompt: Pick up your pen and let your love flow!