Receive a personalized verse across the earth from a poet who connects with your story 💌

Calling All POETS

If you are interested in sending us your application to become part of the team of poets who respond to messages, head to our contact page for more information on how to get started.

Inspired by London’s Poetry Pharmacy, Dear Poets Society is a digital interactive poetry exchange and literary journal cofounded by young poets Helena Tang and Bethany Lines—seeking to enhance our connection to life’s natural poetry by taking in submissions from individuals globally and having a writer respond with poetry.

All submissions are free. A member of our team of poets will be assigned to respond to your unique prompt.

Meet the Team

  • Poet and Co Founder of DPS

    Helena is based in Australia. Though she began as a prose writer, she found her voice in poetry and now writes to explore memory, identity, and language. Helena hopes to study literature and linguistics at university. Her work has been recognised by The New York Times and Red Room Poetry.

  • 聲 / Voice

    To record someone is a small theft of breath,

    says a poet I once read. I believed this. It is known a tape

    can keep you living in someone else’s mouth.

    How it is first to sing at karaoke, my father

    hoarding each note on a cheap cassette deck—

    flattened, hissed, stripped of the air between syllables.

    Each chorus filed in a shoebox of plastic shells.

    Reading Barthes, I wonder if the microphone is

    a thirsty ear that must drink to remember. My father

    records more now—not songs, but speeches:

    my grandmother blessing her eldest son at New Year,

    her hands folded over a packet of tea leaves.

    The echo of her cough, the rustle of paper.

    There’s a tape of her naming every cousin

    in the family, pausing to laugh at her own mistakes,

    a fragment I rewind as I enter her empty house,

    my recorder the only machine that can keep her.

  • Poet and Co Founder of DPS

    Bethany explores her passion for words through writing poetry, dissecting the mysterious facets of language that colour human nature. She currently attends high school in Adelaide, South Australia, running her own literary blog You Think I’m Quiet, and more recently has completed a poetry writing workshop with Natasha Rao in Ellipsis Writing.

  • if ever you had asked me what i wanted
    i’d be sure to tell you
    all about the bridge we walk on

    about it’s railings that say, “oh baby,
    i would never lie to you, and
    oh, yes, i’ll be sincere
    don’t you know that already?
    have i not been oh so clear?”

    i know all about the bridge we walk on
    your wandering laughter, away on tip-toes

    when you asked me what i wanted
    i begged you, get the blinds
    and so i used my hands to teach you
    about your body, earthquakes, the divides
    between us and mankind
    i thought it was what i wanted
    but in the end, it meant little to me
    so we drew the curtains and our breath, our brides
    yours was prettier than mine
    so in the end, i found it easy
    to lie
    right down on that bridge
    your noises in the ground
    and when you asked me what i wanted this time,
    i said, “this suits me just fine”