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2009 is the fifth year of the May Day Poetry Project.

The first year five of us committed to writing and posting daily.

After that, participating poets took a slightly more ... relaxed ... approach, with each poet setting an individual writing and posting schedule.

Some years we had more people, some years we had less. Every year, it has constituted a fleeting but satisfying community.

This year? Well, so far eleven poets have agreed to take on the challenge of writing through the days of May.

* * *

The name of the May Day Poetry Project comes from the internationally recognized distress signal that in its turn came from the French "m'aider" (or "help me").

It's also "a modern working class celebration and commemoration that came from the 1886 events in Chicago where workers were demonstrating for an eight hour day."

And since I think good art comes out of both the individual and the community, both being helped and making sure you get what you need, I thought it was an appropriate moniker for this effort.

Also, it happened to be a project we were doing during the month of May.

And it sounded sort of snappy.

- Ariel