12 is a collective of women writers using a shared Google document to post monthly poems in response to one another’s writing. The collective originally formed at the request of Sophia Hao, curator at Cooper Gallery in Dundee, in order to create work echoing the collaborative Feministo Postal Art Event of 1975-77. For that project, women made art at home and posted it to one another, generating home-based art collections and a tight-knit community of women artists.
The poets in the collective so enjoyed writing in a safe and easily accessible space, with a simple constraint and support garnered from working alongside and in response to one another’s creativity, that they decided to continue. One poet writes a lead poem each month and the others each post a response. The writers in the original collective were Tessa Berring, Anne Laure Coxam, Lynn Davidson, Georgi Gill, Marjorie Lotfi, Jane Goldman, Rachel McCrum, Jane McKie, Theresa Muñoz, Alice Tarbuck, Karen Veitch and JL Williams.
Since then, women come and go. Those who have been part of 12 have included Lila Matsumoto, Rachel McCrum, Karen Veitch, Em Strang and Kathrine Sowerby.
The current 12 are Tessa Berring, Anne Laure Coxam, Lynn Davidson, Georgi Gill, Marjorie Lotfi, Jane Goldman, Saskia McCracken, Jane McKie, Theresa Muñoz, Alycia Pirmohamed, Alice Tarbuck, and JL Williams.
Alongside our monthly writing, 12 continues to write for galleries and other projects, such as our recent anthology in support of the West Port Garden, Spaces Open and the Pink Witch project, which considers Barbie and the witches from all sorts of angles. For these projects, sometimes not all 12 writers are involved, or friends and guests of the 12 are invited to contribute. For more details, please click on the links to these publications.
12poetry.wordpress.com 