Why I Share Poems from the Public Domain at www.thepoetmiranda.com
We must preserve to persevere.
What is the Public Domain?
The public domain consists of creative works not protected by intellectual property rights (i.e. copyright). Most works in the public domain are those with expired copyright protections, which in the context of poetry I use for this site are all works published prior to January 1, 1930 (according to U.S. laws, copyright laws vary by country).
Once a work enters the public domain, anyone can reprint, republish, reference, or otherwise use that work without permission.
I share works that are in the public domain because I want to lift unheard voices, keep the book burners at bay, and learn from our poetic ancestors.
Lifting Unheard Voices
I’m writing this during February 2025. The current U.S. regime is actively working to suppress voices that don’t fit their narrow mold (white, cis, hetero, evangelical, men). Grants for art organizations through National Endowment for the Arts have already been politicized. New requirements for grants include:
The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.
The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.
Fuck that. February is Black History Month, so this month all poems I share from the public domain are by black poets. There are other months when I will post poems from specific marginalized groups.
Otherwise, my general approach is to choose poets and poems that give us perspectives that vary from the accepted default. Am I saying I won’t post any white men who you’ve seen in the literary canon? No. They just won’t be as frequent here.
Keeping the Book Burners at Bay
I say on other parts of this site that we live in an age of book burners.
That includes organizations like Moms for Liberty who have challenged the inclusion of books in school and public libraries that include characters or ideas that are pro- BIPOC, queer, trans, immigrant, religious minority, or women.
Book burning is also a digital exercise these days. Currently, the U.S. government is scrubbing websites, databases, and reports that offend the sensibilities of those in charge. Their deletions of medical data at the CDC and NIH regarding healthcare for transgender Americans mirrors the May 6, 1933 raid and book burning at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science). Back then, they started by burning books about sexual and gender minorities, then they stuck pink triangles on us and sent us to the camps. These recent actions (and others) inspired me to write this poem.
Sharing poems from the public domain is part of my small role in preserving these voices.
Learning from Our Poetic Ancestors
As a poet, me reading these older works is important to my craft. Poetry has existed since humans gained speech, and then continued and changed with the advent of writing and again with printing, widespread audio reproduction, video, and so on. Poetry has always been a part of the human experience. It adapts to the mediums of the age, but it has an ancient linage. When we write poems, we aren’t just jotting down a few thoughts, we are calling back to our poetic ancestors and joining their chorus.
Reading these older poems is also important to me as someone who lives as a marginalized person. But you don’t have to be marginalized in any way to benefit from seeing what black artists were creating despite being held down by slavery, what queer writers were thinking at times when they were denied rights and subject to violent persecution, or how women shared their strong voices before gaining the vote.
Preserve to Persevere
What can you do to help preserve the arts that the book burners want to purge?
Support your local libraries
Show up at your school and public libraries to fight the book burners face-to-face. Just as they demand censorship, demand a free society.
Check out books by/about marginalized groups and about off-limits topics (e.g., climate change). Showing demand will help the libraries fight back, and you’ll learn a lot, too.
Expand your personal library
This can be both physical and digital (be careful; some e-book purchases allow distributors like Amazon to grab it back). Buy a wide variety of books, not just what you’ve read in the past, that preserve data and stories they don’t want us to tell. For digital copies, store on offline machines and/or removable storage devices (e.g., CDs).
Buy/order from your local bookstore. There are a thousand reasons to buy local when it comes to books. A couple of those include, if the government starts no-sell orders for certain titles or demands purchase lists from booksellers, Amazon and Barnes&Noble are much more likely to comply than an independent bookseller.
Support archivist efforts
Look for organizations that are already doing the work to preserve our arts and data, and do what you can to help. In my sphere, Project Gutenberg actively preserves and publishes written works that are in the public domain. Other groups work to archive more recent writing.
I’ve been reading The Transfeminine Review’s blog series on archiving and preserving works at risk of censorship and recommend you do the same.
Become an archivist in your discipline. Those who want to censor the arts also want to censor free thought across many other fields. Do what you can to preserve knowledge and truth where you are.
Share works at risk of censorship
The more people who see what book burners want to ban, the more difficult it is to ban it. And if banned, the more difficult it becomes to destroy all copies.
As you build your personal library, buy extra copies if you can, and put those extra copies in the hands of as many people as possible.
In our world of social media, share posts, art, poems, stories, and news from people in marginalized groups. I don’t just say this to get you to share more poems by this trans woman (no complaints if you do); people who have relative social privilege can break through the algorithms when they share in ways we can’t.
💜Miranda📚
Note: I am crossposting this at Wendy the Druid’s blog Thistle and Moss, where I’m editor-in-chief and sometimes write about LGBTQ+ issues, politics, and religious trauma.