At the place where voices meet, a city becomes a chorus.

The Confluence: An Anthology of Grand Rapids Poets gathers 207 poems by 76 writers connected to the Grand Rapids poetry community. Established authors, emerging writers, page poets, and performers appear together in a portrait of a living literary community.

Across these pages, rivers and lakes, neighborhoods and back roads, family histories and public memory move alongside poems of love, grief, faith, work, illness, justice, nature, and joy. The collection makes room for lyric meditation, narrative, formal invention, spoken-word energy, wit, and witness. Its range reflects the many ways a place is inhabited and imagined-not as a single story, but as currents meeting, separating, and meeting again.

Published under Grand River Poetry Press, the publishing imprint of Grand River Poetry Collective, The Confluence documents a particular creative moment in 2026 while inviting readers far beyond the region into the conversation. Notes on the contributors and acknowledgments of previous publications accompany the poems, offering a map of the writers and literary traditions gathered here.

For readers of contemporary American poetry, regional writing, community anthologies, and Great Lakes literature, The Confluence is both a substantial collection and a record of poetry thriving in Grand Rapids.