dumbfoundry

The New Zealand Poetry Society is taking poetry to the streets with Pavement Poetry and Poetry Postcards as part of Montana Poetry Day celebrations – Friday, July 22nd. Thousands of Wellington pedestrians will be entertained as colour and literature pop up all around the central city in the middle of the grey winter.

Damn good coffee. Who killed Laura Palmer? The owls are not what they seem.

Seeking poems that relive the weirdness and wonder of David Lynch's Twin Peaks for an exciting chapbook anthology, A Slice of Cherry Pie.

Following the bombing atrocities in the capital, Vanessa read out this poem by 94.9fm listener Chris Neal - summing up many listeners' feelings


London Pride

You come to place your bags of hate
On bus and train, you made us late
Yet we’ll be back again tomorrow
We’ll carry on despite our sorrow

Letters and an essay by one of Ireland's greatest poets, William Butler Yeats, are to be auctioned.
The collection, which includes a working manuscript of Tragic Theatre, is expected to fetch up to £80,000 at the Sotheby's sale in London.

Oxfambooks are running a poetry competition to find six new poems for a 2006 calendar. Entrants must submit a poem of 20 lines or fewer, in English. "Entry fee is €5 or one good book," says Oxfambooks Manager Trish Byrne. Sinead Morrissey will pick the winners.

Closing date: Monday, August 8th.

Anne: 'Well, this blog is active again. Thanks to everyone encourages me to keep it going. (I did not realise that it was so useful to so many).'

'Thanks to those who have written in with news. May your collective writing lives flourish.' [30 June 2005]

• Red Paper Flower by Suzanne Frischkorn
  
• Mayport by Maureen Thorson
  
• 44 Sonnets by Mike Snider
  
• Where the sea burns & Fold Unfold, both by Jill Jones
  
• Unnecessary Roughness by Shin Yu Pai
  
• Discount Heaven by Christine Hamm
  
• Eureka Slough by Joseph Massey
  
• Female Comic Book Superheroes by Jeannine Hall Gailey
  
• THE ESTRUS GAZE(S) by Eileen Tabios [+more yummy chaps]
  
• Bloody Mary by Kristy Bowen [+more at Dancing Girl Press]
  
• Notebook. Knife. Mentholatum. by Simone Muench
  
• Fa(r)ther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials by Arielle Greenberg
  
• Book Expo America Broadsides by Half Empty/Half Full Press
  
• Fair Territory by Jilly Dybka [e-book or paper edition]
  
• Whatever the Story Requires by Steve Mueske
  
• Things in a Glass Box by Beth Spencer [print-it-yourself]
  
• Moonshine by MML Bliss
  
• Red Dragonfly Press
  
• ecology by Khan Wong [+more at noemi press]
  
• The BOA Editions Season Sampler [print-it-yourself]
  
• a virtual chapbook by Bao Phi
  
• horse less press chapbooks
  
• Dancing with the One-Armed Man by Alison Pelegrin
  
• Pianissississississimo by Ryan Hildebrand [+more at Greengate Press]
  
• The Border Tryptich by Eduardo C. Corral

COURSE ONE
Monday to Thursday
5 - 8 September 2005
at Leiston Abbey
Tutors: Gillian Allnutt & David Hart

COURSE TWO
Monday to Thursday
31 October - 3 November 2005
in Aldeburgh
Tutors: Jane Hirshfield & Michael Symmons Roberts

Ted Kooser won the 2005 Pulitzer prize for poetry and publishes American Life in Poetry, a free weekly column for newspapers and websites that provides a brief poem and description as a way to bring verse to the masses. His poems are about the simple details of everyday life.

Talk of the Nation, July 4, 2005 · On July 4, 1855, a book of poetry by an unknown by the name of Walt Whitman came out to mixed reviews and widespread disinterest. Eventually, it changed the way poets thought... and sang... of themselves. Lynn Neary leads a discussion on Leaves of Grass.

'Cork is the European Union Capital of Culture for the year 2005. As a result, our festival is extended this year from 2 days to a week' from July 4-10, 2005.

1. The winner of this year's award will receive 2,500 euro. For the first time ever, there is also a second prize of 1000 euro and a third prize of 500 euro.
2. The award is open to poets, born in the island of Ireland, or of Irish nationality, or a long term resident in Ireland, who have not previously published an individual collection of poems. Poets whose collections have been accepted for publication will be ineligible if published before the competition closing date.
[...]
The closing date for entries is Friday, 30th September 2005.

'This month, Book Slam has all the best stories in the company of KRISTA FRANKLIN, one of Chicago's finest poets, visual artists and 'edutators'; LUKE WRIGHT, Book Slam favourite and founder member of the UK's only poetry boy band, Aisle 16; and Patrick Neate, author of City Of Tiny Lights.

'Hosted by DAN ANTOPOLSKI, West London's scissor/paper/stone champion. DJ BIG FUN plays good music and discusses impending fatherhood.

'No-brow literature kicks off around 8.30 pm. This is a good thing. We are the political option. You know how 'Africa lives on the BBC'? Well, in a way that is every bit as meaningful, books live at Book Slam. Really.'

58 Porchester Road, London, W2
Reserve tables on 020 7727 9950
Free 7.30-8pm, then £5

'The world of American poetry has been rocked by scandal over the past two years. It began in April 2004 when an anonymous website, www.Foetry.com, set itself up as the "American Poetry Watchdog" - a dog, as it turned out, with a nasty bite.

'To understand the impact of Foetry's j'accuse, one should look at how the poet's craft is plied in contemporary America. Commercial publishers don't publish the traditional slim volumes any more. They never made much money and a tax ruling in 1979, stopping "write-offs" for unsold inventory, means that they now inevitably lose money. Nor will the bookstore chains give precious shelf space to new poetry (it's the same with Waterstone's in this country). It doesn't sell.'

'The deadline for submissions considered for this special issue of IR will be Postmark date: December 31, 2005.

'Submission Guidelines: Indiana Review is proud to announce a call for work by Latino & Latina writers. We are seeking Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction by Latino & Latina writers that that is well-crafted and lively, has an intelligent sense of form and language, assumes a degree of risk, and has consequence beyond the world of its speakers or narrators.'

Submit
Complex, ironic understandings of one’s bodily existence will be given precedence over works that do not do this. Of particular interest are stories which critically address racialized assumptions about the supremacy of gender which predominates in white communities or which present understandings about living in a white, male [some of the time] body. Also of interest are pieces which discuss complex, ironic understandings of movements in spiritual/religious communities and movements between disability communities and TAB (temporarily able bodied) communities, up through class, down through education, around bathrooms, political organizing and back home.
[...]
Word Count/Page Limits:
Personal Narratives – 20 pages/5000 words
Fiction – 20 pages/5000 words
Critical Essays and Cultural Critiques – 20 pages (including bibliography) 5000 words
Interviews – 10 pages/2500 words
Poetry/Rhymes – No more than 3 pages per poem/rhyme and 3 poems per poet/mc
Graphic Stories – No more than three pages per submission (number of panels up to you) Up to three pieces per artist (B and W only!)
Deadline: November 15, 2005

Dylan Hock, Editor in Chief: 'Just a reminder, the deadline is creeping up for Watching the Wheels: a Blackbird. Make sure you get your submission(s) in by July 4th.'

Slushpile: Tell us what life is like for an editor. What do you do? How much time does it take?

Pitts: I suspect that I’m usually, like most editors, doing something that’s journal related. I may be working on the website one day and then reading submissions the next. Or I may be working on layout, or I may be stopping by the bank, or ordering address labels, or looking at paper samples and weights. It’s so unpredictable. But the journal is always in the back of my mind. If you’re going to start your own journal, the pure editing isn’t going to take you that long. It may take a long time to put together the pieces you want to publish, but it’s going to take a lot longer for you to sit down and fit all that into 48 pages, or 64, or whatever. You’re going to make a lot of changes at that stage, and you’re going to make mistakes, which you’ll have to correct, and you’re going to decide at the last minute that you want a red cover instead of blue, like we did, and those sorts of things. And as soon as that issue comes out you start thinking about the next one, and how it can be better. It’s just a love of language and being able to see an idea become a physical book that you can hold in your hand, and enjoy, that gets to me. Being able to read a poem that you know was good but that you made better is also very satisfying. If you like that kind of feeling, then you should be an editor.

Tom Geddie: 'For the rest of the day, I drove through Northeast Texas, stopping to ask people if they knew April was National Poetry Month, and reading them poems. (One of the few problems with road trips is that they end.)

'I drove east past Zion Road and Horizon Road to stop in Fate.

'Inside the (city) limits of Fate, the first building I noticed on my left was the House of Pain. Turned out to be a place that sold "sportswear with attitude."

'I stopped at the tiny Fate post office to leave some words with the messenger.

"Do you know that it's National Poetry Month?"

"No," the clerk said.

"May I read you a poem?" '

Ron Riddell: 'It was a great honour to represent Aotearoa-New Zealand at The Austin International Poetry Festival and to share poetically with a fine selection of international poets and also, of course, the people of Austin. The Austin cultural community is friendly, open and welcoming of antipodeans. Some even know where New Zealand is. Isn’t that the place where The Lord of the Rings comes from? I nod my head. O.K. Yes, I say, that’s it: the land that Peter Jackson made!'