Shenanigans Round Up!

January – We launched the project at the end of January to a crowd of enthusiastic and extremely kind supporters at Heirloom Rustic Ales. Meadow Market sold books for us, we had coloring sheets created by Guild of Calamity, and the side quest involved writing a postcard to a friend or loved one, just for fun! Jes did a quick overview of the project and Josh read some poems to kick off the year of community in poetry!

February – Josh and Jes were honored to be the featured poets at Swan Song Studio’s Homegrown Poetry series. We read poems and plugged the project. It was wonderful feeling on the right track finding poets and people interested in the project!

In February we also had the opportunity to record a podcast episode of the Okie Bookcast with J. Hall. Something Jes has been excited to do for pretty much the whole time J has had a podcast! You can listen to our episode here.

March – This month was super busy with THREE events. Jes ran the programming at SIAMB’s second Saturday Symposium series and the attendees had a side quest to do, listened to a discussion about creating community and embracing whimsy, and participated in an exquisite corpse poetry activity.

Then, Create Tulsa presented another event the next day at Meadow Market books. This one involved ekphrasis poetry about memes workshop, followed by a reading where anyone who wanted could read their own poems OR have a member of the Third Space group read for them. It was intimate and lovely.

Finally, on the last weekend in March, Tiny Things by Bowen set up with us at MUST during the farmer’s market and participants created their own magical companions to take with them on poetic journeys. It was a beautiful day and the creations were delightful.

Thank you so much to everyone who has participated so far, and we can’t wait to meet more of you soon! Remember, every event is different, so you can come to each one and get a new side quest!

To our future side questing poets,

There are many ways to use this book, but the main thing is to use it. Write in it, dog ear the pages, scribble doodles. 

When Josh proposed the concept to me, I latched onto the community interaction potential and we ran with it. To help people interact with the text and create their own poems and writings, we are going to do several things that rely on things Josh and I both love: working a room, teaching our craft, and getting to know people. 

Meetups and workshops and readings! We will be hosting regular meetups where we can come together to follow the prompts, workshop our poems, learn from poets, and be in community. We want to share the things we love with all of you, and be available to encourage you through working on this book. 

Events will be free and all ages and we will share information about each of them on our social media accounts. There will be both in person and virtual meetups in order to accommodate as many people as possible! 

In 2027 we will be publishing a poetry collection that corresponds with the prompts and we invite you to participate. 

There will be a call for rolling submissions throughout 2026 and we will have information at the community events as well as on social media and via an email signup. 

Submission guidelines will be detailed later, and we want everyone who submits to participate in at least one meetup through the year and really utilize Side Quests and Shenanigans.

We hope you’ll join us.