Welcome to...
After beginning this journey as a one-woman show, five years later we have evolved to a staff of seven. After several hundred poets and waaay too many poems to count, solely through word of mouth and the power of the internet search engine, we have garnered more than 171,000 unique visitors checking out our ten distinct issues: poems on place, ekphrastic poems, poems in form, the prose poem, the persona poem, humorous poems, gender in poetry, collaborative poetry, and "prime time" poems.
In keeping with our theme this year we have dubbed this the "open issue" and flung open our pages to any poems, any style, by anyone willing to submit. Not suprisingly, we received an overwhelming reponse to our call. From that pool we have curated a representative selection for our readers.
Over the past five years we have gone through a number of costume changes. We've gone from:
to 
to 
to
with some others in-between. We've hosted five readings, including at the Riverside Art Museum, the UCR Sweeney Art Gallery, and West Hollywood Book Fair. We've run five Mystery Box contests. We've published 64 Habitual Poet contributor interviews. Work from our pages has been included in the the University of Virginia/Meridian Best New Poets anthology, Sundress Press' Best of the Net, Verse Daily's Web Monthly Feature, and NewPages Words Matter section.
We couldn't have done this without you -- readers, contributors, and everyone who supports the independent publishing community. Thank you for making us who we are.
Also, a huge thank you to our editorial intern, Lalanii Grant, who did much of the formatting for this issue and who has taken over management of our Habitual Poet contributor interview series. And with this issue we also welcome one new staff member, Charlotte Davidson, who will be reading all the essays.
Crack open the Open Issue and enjoy the fruits our collective labor. We are all contributing to the conversation as we look forward to another successful five years!
Cati, Maureen, Ren, Judy, Tom, Lalanii, and Charlotte