Please be patient as we work to determine the best use, as a group, for this blog and the website. Like so many other things in life, much of our communications, interactions are occurring on Facebook. If you have any suggestions for the best way we can serve the CU Poetry community, please leave a comment below.
Hi all! Here's a link to a list of poetry markets accepting electronic submissions. The list owner says it is updated regularly and that he verifies each link at least once a month. He indicates which take submission by email and which use a webform, e.g., Submittable. He does not, however, indicate which webform markets charge a submission fee so you'll have to find that out for yourself. At any rate, knock yourself out here.
I'm dropping this in two days early because the deadline is May 1st. Free contest with cash prize, can't go wrong there. Pick from any of the online images and go!
The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky and the University of Kentucky MFA Program in Creative Writing present The Kentucky Poetry Festival’s Ekphrastic Poetry Prize.
First prize: $100
Deadline: May 01st
Entries must pertain to the permanent collection, or a current or past exhibit at The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky. Please indicate the name of the work and the artist’s name with entry. Contest is open to all poets, excluding current MFA poetry students at the University of Kentucky. Images of past and current exhibits are available at The Art Museum's website: http://finearts.uky.edu/art-museum
Entrants may submit up to 3 poems as a single attached file with the format firstname_lastname2015 to:
kpfpoetrycontest@gmail.com
For inquiries contact us at kpfpoetrycontest@gmail.com
For the Boneyard Arts Festival 2015, the CU Poetry Group facilitated a community poem at Jane Addams Bookshop. We set up an easel and invited people to read the most recent line and add a line. A big Thank You to everyone who participated and to Jane Addams Bookshop for all their support during a great weekend of poetry.
Here is the final, unedited product:
Community Poem 4-11-2015
In the garden of the community of books
A girl drops her thoughts like pebbles into a well
She whispers out her fears and dwells on long-forgotten regrets
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Let us not live for tomorrow but for today
There’s only us, there’s only this –
So we might as well kiss
Since we’re feelin’ the bliss!
on this lovely & wondrous spring day…
passers-by shed their winter shells
nuts she said
hot day, cold morning, sweating
I just need to make it though the first 24 hours
Eyes closed running blind in a forest of regret
The future is cold with drops of blood in my sweat
My heart a frozen tundra bathed in the light of your soul
And still this bouquet of yellow flowers remain
chilled by the cold wind blowing from the sound
Covering what is hidden just below the ground
My veins, like roots fill and cycle through and head toward better settings of the sun
The rising of the moon fills me with the anticipation of trouble
Just wanted to let you know of another free poetry contest. If you remember from last year, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize is offering another free contest. Be sure to get your entry in by April 30th. Visit here for more info
For poetry month we are participating in the big poetry giveaway. Kelli Russell Agodon: Book of Kells is again supporting poetry and bloggers by hosting the Big Poetry Giveaway. What is that? Simple - click on one of the many bloggers who are giving away free books of poetry on the book of kells site and make a comment and be entered to win a free book - including shipping. What are we offering here? Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirshfield and The Cradle Place by Thomas Lux. Both great reads by two of our prominent authors.
Be sure to comment and enjoy!
Call for Submissions
John Guzlowski, a former EIU instructor and all-around great poet, is putting together an anthology and has put out a general call for submission. Here is John's post:
Poems on Dreams and Dreamers and Dreaming
I am looking for poems for an online mini-anthology of poems about dreaming and dreams.
They will appear in Scream Online, an online arts/culture/literature journal that gets about 50,000 hits a month.
The journal in the past has published poems by Dorianne Laux, Jared Carter, Robin Davidson, Tom C. Hunley, Helen Degen Cohen, Charles Fishman, Bruce Guernsey, Lola Haskins, Rick Hilles, Sharon Mesmer, and many others.
Here's a link to the most recent mini-anthology: Heaven and Hell: 48 Poems by 37 Poets.
http://www.thescreamonline.com/poetry/poetry7-4/heavenhell.html
What I'm looking for are poems talking about what you think about dreams or dreaming. The poems can be previously published or unpublished. Short prose pieces (prose poems?) would also work.
The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2015.
Send your poems to John Guzlowski at jzguzlowski (at) gmail.com
Hello CU Poets,
As you all know National Poetry month is almost upon us and what better way to celebrate than writing 30 poems in 30 days - one for each day in April. For the last couple of years I have been taking the Poem A Day Challenge at the Poetic Asides blog. There are other challenges but I find this one a good fit for me. Do you have to put your poem on line? No. Keep it to yourself or share on the site - the main goal is to challenge yourself and write poems. Can't make it all 30 days? At least you got some new poems. Also for the second year, there are guest judges who pick a winner for each day.
Hi all, sorry, but running a day behind already this week. Today, I am looking at another journal that uses blind submissions through Submittable. It's called Lunch Ticket and the guidelines are here. Even though it's a blind process, this journal is run by an MFA program so tighten up before sending. Deadline is April 30th. Get busy.
Hi there. Are you familiar with MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses? Basically, they are free uni courses offered by various institutions. There's a great one out of Penn on Modern Poetry that repeats every September and there is also this one from Iowa. Steve and I signed up last time (and maybe Will, too, not sure). Steve was much better than I was at doing the exercises but I'm committing to it this time again. Here's an intro email with links:
Dearest Writers,
Greetings from the University of Iowa!
Our new MOOC, How Writers Write Poetry 2015, opens next week! This seven-week online poetry writing course is open to everyone in the world, free of charge, and will be taught in English. Class discussions will run 24/7, so you can join us from any time zone. Watch our welcome video here on Vimeo or here on YouTube.
If you have already registered, we can't wait to see you -- and if you haven't, come sign up! How Writers Write Poetry 2015 will present video lectures from a diverse group of poets, including:
Robert Hass ~
"This is a matter of feeling the rhythm of two lines"
Camille Rankine ~
"The power of repetition is not only to build up, but to take apart"
James Galvin ~
"Poetry is a way of surviving"
No previous writing experience is necessary, only a stable internet connection. If you cannot stream video, the course will offer small low-res video files, audio files, and transcripts for quick downloading. If you would like to take this course but do not have stable internet access, please contact us at distancelearning.iwp@gmail.com.We are working with U.S. Embassies around the world to support local MOOC viewing and discussion groups and would love to support one near you.
Class will start on Monday, March 23! Sign up here:
https://www.canvas.net/browse/canvasnet/uofiowa/courses/how-writers-write-poetry.
Until then, you can find our community on Facebook and Twitter at #heypoets. We're looking forward to writing with you!
Sincerely,
Susannah Shive, Distance Learning Coordinator
International Writing Program
University of Iowa
So, here we are on the Ides of March. Anyone named Julius has my sympathy in general, but particularly on this day. In the spirit of such, I tried to find an Ancient Roman or at least, Shakespearian themed recommendation today, but that proved nearly impossible. Serendipity happened, though, when I came across Your Impossible Voice:
Your Impossible Voice seeks poetry that is devious and feisty. Send us work that frustrates our ideas of beauty and illuminates surreal new intersections. Ignite our understanding of form. We are drawn to sharp juxtapositions, secret codes and mysterious circumstances. Show us what lives in your peripheral vision; invite us in to your hidden rooms. Hand us the skeleton key and the magnifying glass – we’re ready to follow.
As you'll see in the submission guidelines, they take blind submissions only. Additionally, it appears that most of their accepted poems are posted as recordings by the poet. Not sure how they coordinate that but we have a group of wonderful readers in the CUP Group so I hope to hear you there soon. Here is their website.
At our workshop this week, the CUPpers discussed the merit of submission fees and whether there is any justification in charging. Steve and I also discussed this in his hospital room. My immediate inclination was no, never pay for the privilege of submitting. Steve stated he has run across journals that only charge for electronic submissions. The rationale here is that the writer saves money on ink, paper, postage, etc. so should show their appreciation by chipping in a few bucks in the form of a submission fee. I still bristle at this.
But then I found this journal, Black Heart Magazine, which gives submitters the option of a free submission or a paid submission, the difference being he paid submission will get a full editorial critique if the piece is not accepted but the free submission will only get a generic, form-letter rejection if not accepted. This seems fair to me since there is clear value to the paid submission. However, since I am in a dynamic and effective workshop group, I think I will skip the paid submission and be happy with the face-to-face feedback I get from people I trust. In either case, Black Heart Magazine is my recommendation for submission Sunday. Guidelines can be found here.
I am also proud to note that one of CUPs own, Frank Modica, was recently published in BDM. His poem can be seen here. Congrats Frank!
Jim
Today's Writer's Almanac poem is from Dean Young titled The Invention of Heaven. I'm always in awe of poems like that that effortlessly move me, the reader, from one state to another as if there was no other option. Have a great Friday! Jim
I (Jim) am back. Steve is getting closer to being back. And today is Submission Sunday. One journal that has probably been mentioned here before is Rattle. In addition to their website, their editor Timothy Green is fairly active on their Facebook site as well. He launched a post on Friday that can be found here.
That post starts out:
So I decided to make some submissions of my own tonight, for the first time in six years, and I'm experiencing a kind of culture shock. Do you all really pay just to submit, almost everywhere? This is accepted now? Not only are writers the only subscribers, but they're also supposed to prop up the magazines by paying for the privilege of having their work rejected in favor of some fancy poet the editor met at the AWP?
It generated quite a few comments and any comment that came from an editor of another journal, and there were many, were received with an encouragement from Mr. Green to link and promote these additional journals which have no submission fees. Very generous.
So, if you are looking for fee-free submissions, go to here and scroll the comments. You will find a bunch.
Hi all. Steve is making great progress in his recuperation and I am out of town for the next 6 days so the blog will be on a brief hiatus until the very end of February. Please use this time to write something bold or completely implode a previous poem and blow it up from scratch. Cheers!
Okay, so maybe it's Monday morning where you are. At any rate, this week's recommended market is Pilcrow & Dagger. They are another new-ish journal that Steve and I found last year when they hit us up on Meetup to announce their launch. Each of their 8 issues has a theme. Here's info on their next two themes from their website:
April’s theme is Hometown Stories/Open Call. Do you live in a small town? Are you dying to escape? Did you move to a small town from a large city? Is the quiet environment driving you crazy? If you have any experience with town gossips, goofy sheriffs, strange fundraisers or enjoy watching tourists stumbling around your town, please send us your stories. If you don’t have any experience with any of the above, don’t worry about it. After all, you’re fiction writers; make something up. The submission window for April closes March 1, 2015.
The May/June issue is featuring a theme of Summer Vacations or Travel Stories. If you have never taken a vacation or traveled anywhere or never dreamed of traveling, then feel free to submit anything you have on hand. The submission window for the May/June issue closes on April 15, 2015. You’ve got plenty of time to take that trip and write your essay!
Prompt #5, but I think I missed one. Steve was posting weekly and I missed one but the group rallied and showed up with their poems. Anyway, Steve had prescheduled this week to be dedicated to spoken word and had planned on having it at his house, where we would watch YouTube videos of slam poetry and other performance pieces. However, that's not going to happen since he is on medical leave. So...
We have, from time to time, observed that some poems are written for the eye and some for the ear and some, maybe the best, are written for both. So...
For this week, write or revise a poem paying extra attention to how it sounds as well as how it looks on the page.
My turn for Submission Sunday posts and this week, I've selected a newer journal to highlight - The Tishman Review http://thetishmanreview.com/
There are a couple of reasons this journal should get your attention. First off, submissions are to be sent in completely blind with the poems, stories, essays, etc. in a separate document with no identifiers. This keeps the playing field level for new writers as each piece is considered on its own merits, not the merits of the writer's name.
Second, they are one of the few markets to actually pay cash. Payment ranges from $10 to $70 on a sliding scale, according to their website. That's always a good thing. My guess is the higher end is for fiction or creative nonfiction. So it goes.
A third and highly subjective reason I recommend them is they just notified me that they accepted one of the poems I submitted in December for an upcoming issue due out in July. So check out their guidelines, round up five of your best, and send them in.
This week's poem comes from Dean Young, b.1955. It's particularly appropriate as our good friend Steve is battling some major wolves right now. But like the narrator, I think (and hope) he's got this. Here's a link to the poem. Have a good and thoughtful weekend.
Hard to resist - submitting to a book prize competition - This is from The Sundress Blog - please visit them - I know I said I wouldn't enter anymore contests but this one sounds good.... in a sarcastically humorous way - they are joking right? Right?
