dumbfoundry

Nombres.
Estan sobre la patina
de las cosas.
—Jorge Guillen

I dream of the silence
the day before Adam came
to name the animals,

The gold skins newly dropped
from God's bright fingers, still
implicit with the light.

The dead are selfish:
they make us cry and don't care,
they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
they refuse to walk, we have to carry them
on our backs to the tomb
as if they were children. What a burden!
...

06.07.2002


By PETER CALDER

* Poet, scriptwriter, performer. Died aged 55.

One evening in early 1970, Alan Brunton was sharing a stage with some of the elder statesmen of New Zealand poetry. Kendrick Smithyman was there and Keith Sinclair, and Karl Stead too as I recall.

When his turn came, the youngest reader, plainly unintimidated by the company he was keeping, strode to the edge of the platform and dropped the needle on a scratchy LP. The insistent guitar riff of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love filled the hall.

"I just thought," he drawled raffishly after the entire song had played, "you'd like to hear some poetry before I started reading."

Celebrating Our Poets Laureate
Thursday 6 October, National Library Auditorium, 5.00 for 5.30 pm

Readings by Bill Manhire (1997), Elizabeth Smither (2001), Brian Turner (2003) and Jenny Bornholdt (2005). Light refreshments at 5.00 pm. Public welcome, free admission.

MAIN TRUNK LINES - an exhibition celebrating New Zealand poetry

Drawing extensively on the book and manuscript collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Main Trunk Lines: New Zealand Poetry samples some of the country’s best-known poems alongside the more peripheral, experimental and surprising.

DON Paterson, the only poet ever to win the TS Eliot Prize twice, is on the lookout for verse that can make him cry.

1. Map your neighborhood, block, or favorite walking path. use any medium.
2. Photograph or draw a fruit tree which overhangs public space, and send us the cross street and address. Put yourself in the picture too!
3. Send us a recipe, a poem or your thoughts on your favorite fruit, or fruit related experience.
4. Plant a fruit tree which overhangs public space, and document the experience.

The title comes from an Alaskan Inuit word for sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst.

Please consider contributing original prose, poetry and/or artwork; all modes, moods and themes are welcome within the broad parameters of a monthly theme.

Themes
Sept: waiting for something to burst
Oct: change and continuity

Poems about the body are often poems of celebration and awe, poems that delight in the body's mysteries, its "dream of flesh" says Mark Strand, poems that wonder at the body's remarkable capabilities—the hands, bones, face, eyes, brain, arms, genitals, and, of course, the heart, that "ragtime jubilee," as Yusef Komunyakaa calls it.

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the
Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House. [...]

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration. [...]

Sincerely,

SHARON OLDS

Mayo County Council Arts Office and Library Service are currently inviting submissions from poets and photographers who wish to be considered for inclusion in an anthology publication, a showcase for the best work in poetry and photography from the county. The publication will reflect high quality work of artistic integrity, by poets and photographers & artists born in, or living in, Mayo.

Submission details:

Poetry
Individuals can submit up to 5 poems. 50 lines will be the maximum length considered; of necessity the majority of poems published will be no more than a page long. Mayo County Council reserves the right to edit and publish extracts from works. Poems to be submitted on one side of A4-sized paper, double-spaced typed in at least 12pt. font. All submissions should have the poet’s contact details printed clearly on the reverse side of every sheet.
[...]

By submitting work, the poet/photographer is giving Mayo County Council
permission (for the purposes of the anthology publication) to publish the
work. The poet/photographer retains all copyright for all other use of the
work.

Editors’ decisions will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.

All submissions (poetry and photography) to be sent to:

Poetry & Photography Anthology 2006
Arts Office
Mayo County Council
Áras an Chontae
Castlebar
Co. Mayo
[...]
Information and application forms can also be downloaded from
www.mayococo.ie

Closing date for receipt of application: 5pm, Monday 10th October, 2005.

Editorial by Isagani R. Cruz: Asia Pacific writers write in many languages and in many countries. This is particularly true of Filipino writers, who write today in more than 8 literary languages (Cebuano, English, Filipino, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog, and others). More than 8 million Filipinos, some of them writers, live overseas, in what could be the 21st century’s biggest diaspora. To many writers, the term “Philippines” no longer refers to an archipelago off Asia’s mainland, but to an imagined global community with real Filipinos in it.

Read more...

Matthew Hollis: Here’s a picture. Poetry has never been so rigorous and diverse, nor has its audience been so numerous and engaged. This is an age in which we have seen poets move onto the television and popular radio like never before; where residencies have sprung up on trains, supermarkets, prisons, zoos; where sales, sponsorship, prize-money are soaring; where poets are becoming personalized, and packaged. This is the age of tags and accolades: ‘the new rock n roll’, the New Generation, National Poetry Day, The Nations Favourite, Poems on the Underground. It is a decade that has witnessed four Nobel Prizes and four Whitbreads to poetry; that has seen poetry bestsellers like Birthday Letters and Beowulf; that has welcomed a new Laureate and a heightened interested in his public role.

Faber, Cape, Carcanet, and the newly-founded Picador list are publishing as many poetry books as ever they did; Bloodaxe still put out thirty titles a year. The Poetry Library – did you know this? – receive 1000 poetry ISBNs a year, and the average first collection still outsells the average first novel. The Poetry Book Society sports 2500 members; Christina will, I’m sure, say something about the relative health of the Poetry Society. This doesn’t sound like a crisis to me: so what do we mean by the term?

If we are to talk of crisis in publishing, I think it’s important to be clear about our concepts. For there is not one, single poetry market of which we can take the temperature – it’s more segmented than that ...

One poem, up close and personal.

Inspired by Ruth Padel's 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, each essay or commentary on SV is an intimate exploration of just one poem. We publish essays from writers from all backgrounds and experience.

We aim to answer questions readers new to poetry & long-time poetry lovers alike ask about poems by living poets:

* How does this poem work?
* How is it crafted?
* What does it matter?
* With so much poetry around, why should I spend my time reading this?
* What does this mean?!!

The goal is to open the world of a poem for the average reader, who may or may not already be a lover of contemporary poetry.

"I am aware that for our writers, receiving a first Palanca award represents much more than the cash reward, although, of course, the cash is much appreciated. I believe they see it as a signal from their peers that they have earned their spurs, that they have, in a sense, arrived. If before this they may have had their doubts, this is confirmation and encouragement for them to continue along that path."
...
First prize, poetry: Joel Toledo

Rules of participation:
The competition is open to young people under 30 years of age.
The participation is free.
Participants have to send only one unpublished , never prized poem (maximum 50 lines).
The general theme of the Second Edition is “Water, Earth, Air, Fire”: Nature and its Elements in Perception, Phantasy, Memory, Myth, Symbolism.

PROJECT:
The Making of Peace Poetry Broadside Series is a response from poets who are working towards peace and goodwill in the world and want to see an end to the war in Iraq.
[...]
HOW and WHAT TO SUBMIT:
Submit 1-3 poems, unpublished or previously published poems with the theme of peace, hope, and/or humanity.
Poems should be 30 lines or less.
Please include cover letter, short bio, and SASE.

We are looking for well-crafted poems on any subject matter that are inspired or focused on the theme of peace, hope, humanity, and/or the idea of a world family. We are open to work that encompasses a specific response or offer a larger vision of our world. Poems do not have to be a direct response to the war, but can be.

Deadline: Submissions should be postmarked by November 30th, 2005.

International poetry manuscripts are eligible.

The Annual Del Sol Press Poetry Prize
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$22* [ends January 15, 2006]

The John Ciardi Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$25 [ends January 16, 2006]

Colorado Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 40pp. Fee: US$25** [ends January 17, 2006]

Main Street Rag's Annual Poetry Book Award
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25* [ends January 31, 2006]

AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends February 28, 2005]

Sixth Annual Verse Prize
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20 [ends February 28, 2005]

Fourth Annual Sawtooth Poetry Prize Competition
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [ends March 1, 2005]

The Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [ends March 14, 2005]

The Fourth Annual Slope Editions Book Prize
Minimum: 40pp. Fee: US$20* [ends March 15, 2005]

Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [postmarked March 2005]

Second Annual Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends April 30, 2006]

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends April 30, 2005]

Anhinga Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends May 1, 2005]

Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20 [ends May 1, 2005]

The FIELD Poetry Prize
Minimum: 50 pp. Fee: US$22 [postmarked May 2005]

The 2005 Backwaters Prize
Minimum: 60pp. Fee: US$25 [ends June 4, 2005]

Akron Poetry Prize
Minimum: 60pp. Fee: US$25 [ends June 30, 2005]

Four Way Books
Fee: US$15 [postmarked June 2005]

Pearl Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends July 15, 2005]

Zoo Press
Fee: None [postmarked July 2005]

Bullfight Little Book Prize
Minimum: 24pp. Fee: US$8/10 [ends September 10, 2005]

The Philip Levine Prize in Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [ends September 15, 2005]

Juniper Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20 [ends September 30, 2005]

May Swenson Poetry Award
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$25 [ends September 30, 2005]

Ohio State/Journal Award in Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25** [ends September 30, 2005]

Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Prizes
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$25 [postmarked September 2005]

Sarabande Books
Open [postmarked September 2005]

2005 Gerald Cable Book Award
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends October 15, 2005]

Carnegie Mellon University Press
Fee: US$10 [postmarked October 2005]

Hollis Summers Poetry Prize
Minimum: 60pp. Fee: US$20 [postmarked October 2005]

The Paris Review Prize in Poetry
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$25 [postmarked October 2005]

T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 60pp. Fee: US$25 [postmarked October 2005]

NFSPS Stevens Poetry Manuscript Contest
Minimum: 35pp. Fee: US$15/20 [ends October 15, 2005]

Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends October 31, 2005]

Elixir Press Poetry Book Awards
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [ends October 31, 2005]

The Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$25 [ends October 31, 2005]

Winnow Press First Book Award in Poetry
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20 [ends November 8, 2005]

Third Annual Many Mountains Moving Poetry Book Contest
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20/25* [ends November 15, 2005]

The Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry 2006
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$20 [ends November 15, 2005]

Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends November 30, 2005]

Hayden Carruth Award
Minimum: 46pp. Fee: US$25 [ends November 30, 2005]

The New Issues Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$15 [ends November 30, 2005]

2005 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends November 30, 2005]

The Eleventh Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize Competition
Minimum: 60pp. Fee: US$20 [ends November 30, 2005]

Tupelo Press Dorset Prize
Minimum: 50pp. Fee: US$25 [ends December 1, 2004]

The Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Competition
Minimum: 45pp. Fee: US$20 [ends December 15, 2005]

The Tampa Review Prize for Poetry
Minimum: 48pp. Fee: US$20 [ends December 31, 2005]

* Fee includes book copy

** Fee includes subscription

Requirements: Besides poems -- and occasionally upbeat doesn’t come amiss -- Orbis welcomes prose, 500-1000 words, suggestions for cover artwork and features, eg the Past Master Section, or indeed, Past Mistress. 500-1000 words; ideas in first instance, not completed articles: subjects for discussion, technical, topical etc [...]

In particular, having been involved for some time with Social Inclusion projects and encouraging access to the Arts, eg South Asian Showcase for Liverpool’s Dead Good Poets Society, I am interested in work from all such communities, especially young people, under 20s and 20somethings.

Even with women writers -- although magazine subscriptions are around 50/50 -- submissions are still a good third less than those from men. All help with promotion gratefully received.

Orbis 121, May 2002 is on the Poetry Library website: www.poetrymagazines.org.uk and the Spring issue, 132, which has already completely sold out, will be online next month.

Brief round-up of latest guidelines follows, to publish/post/pass on/tell all your friends/inwardly digest.

Orbis Quarterly Literary International Journal
80 pages of news, reviews, views, letters, features, prose and quite a lot of poetry.

Each issue, 50 pounds: Featured Writer; 3-4 poems or 2000 words. Plus Readers’ Award: 50 pounds for piece receiving the most votes. Four winners selected for submission to Forward Poetry Prize, Single Poem Category; 50 pounds split between four, or more, runners-up.

I Filled the Bath with Coty L’Aimant by Ros Barber, joint winner of the Orbis 126 Readers Award, was selected for The Forward Book of Poetry 2005

Submissions by post: four poems; two prose pieces, 500-1000 words. Please enclose SAE with ALL correspondence. Overseas: 2 IRCs. Via email, Overseas only: two poems/one piece of prose in body. No attachments.

Please note, although priority and hopefully a swift response is given to first time enquiries, subsequently, replies can take a lot longer due to the volume of mail. Subscribers usually receive an answer re submissions in 3 months at the latest, ie with the following issue of the magazine.

Subs: cheques payable to Carole Baldock; post to 17 Greenhow Avenue, West Kirby, Wirral CH48 5EL

Subs pa: 15 GBP for four copies. Overseas: 20 GBP; 30 euros or 38 dollars. Single issue: 4 GBP; 5 GBP; 10 euros or 11 dollars, all including post and packing

Review copies and press releases to be sent to the Reviews Editor, Nessa O’Mahony, First Floor Flat, 4 Raglan Street Beaumaris LL58 8BP

el pobre Mouse invites all manner of innovative, electric, and alarming work for our third issue. we encourage you to send in prose, hybrid, drama, notes, intvws, essays, sketches, diagrams, flowcharts, crumpled miscellania, and of course, poetry and poetics. we are interested in work that can provoke further work: conversation, contemplation, response.

submission deadline: october 15

It is to the editors' credit that so many of the poems have been sourced from small, independent presses, such as Akros and Diehard, and from literary magazines. There is, however, one striking example of seeming bad faith. The volume contains two hitherto unpublished poems: one by Mr Lindsay and one by Ms Duncan. Was the opportunity to include unpublished material extended to all the living authors, or was it a "reserved power" for the editors?

'we were approached by luke who introduced himself as a creative writer ...'

With so much attention usually focused on the literary luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, Paul Laurence Dunbar never really seems to get his due as one of this nation's premier African-American writers.

That's because Dunbar died in 1906, more than a decade before the artistic and intellectual movement that produced, among others, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. Still, the specter of Dunbar's considerable talent and achievements inspired the writers of what, in the 1920s, was called the "New Negro Renaissance." [...]

This National Poetry Day, you have the chance to choose the poem you'd like to see launched into space to be discovered by whatever creatures should find it, far in the future.

"Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity."

Alice Fulton: I am talking with my student, Sean Norton, in the Café Zola, on West Washington St., Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. The state of Michigan is located in the Midwest. It is a sunny, pleasant day, about 60 degrees, with a slight (7 mph) wind, though inside the café, it is dimmer and warmer. There’s rock music playing, but not so loudly that we have to raise our voices. Sean and I are having our final discussion of his MFA thesis, Present and Accounted For. At 5:50, we start laughing self-consciously. I feel like continuing -- what fun, to laugh! -- but Sean quickly becomes sober, and I follow suit. My back is to the window. There’s a glass of warm iced tea and a cup of cold hot tea on the reddish wooden table. I’m focusing so intently on Sean (black sweater, black glasses, black hair) that the rest of the room blurs to inconsequence, though I note the light fixture, a retro-fifties crescent, hanging from the ceiling several feet behind him. He retains his equipoise under scrutiny. We gaze at each other through plastic filters. Sean’s eyes are seriously brown behind his glasses; my irises and pupils are wearing tiny, transparent shields: contact lenses.

Sean has brought some questions for us to discuss. The first concerns style in poetry: does it develop naturally or must poets strive to create it? I say look for the quirks, the accidents, even. If an eccentricity seems interesting, try it again. But I think style comes from character, ultimately. It can’t be forced or chosen. Then he brings up Picasso. When asked why he always painted figures, Picasso said it was because he believed the wine comes from the grapes rather than the other way around. Sean wonders how that analogy might apply to poetry. What, in poetry, was the “grape” from which issues the “wine” of the poem? I immediately suggest language as the ichor. Sean asks what I mean by language. I say all linguistic markers and I list some, but my list leaves out what I mean most: that the reinvention of language is poetry’s deepest reason. Sean thinks language is too inclusive, perhaps, to be analogous to Picasso’s grape, and I agree. Perhaps language is the analogue to paint, the material itself, rather than to the figure. Still, it’s my best guess.

He asks what poem might make a good ending for his manuscript. I think the second-best one in the group is often a good choice, though almost any strong poem placed at the end will provide a sense of closure. I glance at my watch. Ten minutes has gone by so quickly! I tried to be conscious of the Now, but I kept forgetting myself. Only agony elongates time, and that change of scale clearly isn’t worth the price. Having time to talk about poetry is an historical luxury. Yet poetry was important, present and accounted for, for this fetishized bit of time. For 600 seconds, ten flashing minutes, poetry was all we thought about, to the extinguishment of time and place.

Despite his tumble out of the canon, Longfellow remains a marvel of American literature, a figure who resists reduction to student-memorized poetic passages. He provided the first major impetus towards public recognition of the multicultural nature of US literature; few figures among American writers, then or since, match his cosmopolitan qualities; and comparative literature studies in the United States begin with Longfellow. It was in recognition of that multicultural cast of his work and translations that Harvard established the Longfellow Institute for the study of multilingual American literature, under the aegis of Marc Shell and Werner Sollors. However, instead of this form of recognition, too often appreciation of Longfellow has been abandoned to right-wing critics such as Dana Gioia – better known as the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts – whose appreciation of Longfellow is caught up with a return to supposed ‘traditional’ aesthetic values. Yet there was little traditional about Longfellow’s work and its transatlantic hybridity, and the quietly insistent political radicalism of his Poems of Slavery gets ignored in such appreciations. [...]

I love the idea of public art through poetry. How did you first come up with the idea and how easy/difficult was it to find backing for such a project?

I saw spaces that were like blank pieces of paper and asked the owners of the buildings. They were fans and it went from there. I have poems all over Manchester on walls and I am proud of this. But I have written poems on albums too which in itself is public. A couple of the walled poems in Manchester are now Landmarks. I am sooOOOoo proud of that.

A blogzine of contemporary poetry, edited by Jonathan Mayhew. Email me your submissions at jmayhew "at" ku.edu

I'm especially interested in poems from Gary Sullivan, Nada Gordon, Jess Mynes, Clark Coolidge, Laura Carter, Jordan Davis, Alice Notley, and my hundred other favorite poets. You know who you are! Ange Mlinko? You are welcome here. James Schuyler? Go ahead and submit if you represent his estate and there are still unpublished poems.

I'm interested in poems that I might have wanted to write, that produce poetic envy in me. I might like your poem and still turn it down it down if it does not awaken this sentiment in me.

If I turn you down, wait a month or two and try again. By then I will be in a different frame of mind and perhaps more receptive. If I publish you, wait four to six months before submitting again.

Send dangerous, edgy, freakishly good poems to jimbehrle at gmail dot com. You can also read them into the phone: 347 385 1415. That's even better. Maybe 2-3. If attached please make it one attachment. Don't say nice things about me, my cartoons, my poems or my schlong. You can say something like, I hate you and think you're a complete douchebag, that's OK. Won't count against you. First issue to appear soon: online and otherwise at last. New poets I've never published will get special preference and perhaps candy. The title was chosen to be a deep woods off to careerist losers and tenured old guy types. Not looking for big names, looking for big poems. Everything starts in the maybe pile: and I'm starting from zero.