dumbfoundry

DIRTY rats carrying the Black Death across Europe in the Middle Ages inadvertently helped give birth to modern Welsh poetry, an university expert has claimed.

AREA SNEAKS seeks work drawn from the full range of visual and
language arts. We are interested in placing artists and writers working in a variety of media and with a variety of materials into dialogue. Artist projects, poetry, historical papers, speculative essays on art and language, poetics statements, collaborations, imaginative theses, conceptual writing, photographic essays, performance documents, interviews with artists and writers, architectural critiques and film analyses are only a few of the types of work we will consider.

Submissions and proposals are accepted by email and post.

Deadline for Issue 1: January 15th, 2007. Submissions received after January 15th will be considered for future issues.

Oct. 12 is the deadline to turn in poems for the National Steinbeck Center’s "10,000 Poems Project." Since it began in October 2005, a total of 8,150 have been collected. The project aims to collect 10,000 poems in hopes of breaking the record for the largest collection of poetry.

Subject matter is not relevant to our consideration of submitted poems, though I should caution that we have no interest in obscenity, profanity, pornography, prejudice (racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.), religiosity, or light verse—in ascending order of offensiveness. And we don’t much like plain old dirty words either, at least those used gratuitously; with some reluctance, however, we will take “dang,” “darn,” “doofus,” and “yikes.”

Amid all the courses in bioinformatics and global economics, algorithms, combinatorics and optimization — look it up — the next generation of engineers and computer scientists is reading, even writing, poetry.

That makes perfect sense to Wayne Clough, president of Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in civil engineering.

'The pursuit of science and technology is just as creative a process as poetry and the arts,' Clough says. 'Both require intensely creative people who can think outside the box, look at the same things everyone else sees and imagine something more, and put the pieces together in new ways.'

"I can’t be happier for my young friend Joel M. Toledo, poet and literature teacher at Miriam College, also the percussionist for the music band of fellow-poets, Los Chupacabras. [...]

Now we have the 34-year-old Joel – who took a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at UP, and has authored a novelette for young adults, Pedro and the Lifeforce (Giraffe Books, 1997) – accomplishing the same in a worldwide contest where a poem of his won out over more than 5,000 other entries."

Unrequited love. Living nightmares. Reality that doubles up then cracks wide open.

Seeking poems that evoke and explore the strange worlds in David Lynch's Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive for publication in The Private Press's latest chapbook anthology.

Guidelines and online contribution form: http://zoo.f2s.com/privatepress/

Deadline: 31 December 2006.

The Private Press and Half Empty/Half Full recently released A Slice of Cherry Pie (ed. Ivy Alvarez), a chapbook anthology with poems from Australia, Europe, the UK and the US, inspired by David Lynch's cult TV hit Twin Peaks.

Did the fateful love affair between Assia Wevill and the late poet laureate, Ted Hughes, begin over a secretive kiss in the kitchen – witnessed by Hughes's wife, Sylvia Plath – or was it fanned into life when Assia, insulted at being asked to peel the potatoes, flounced out into the vegetable garden and started to chat him up as he was picking beans? And does it matter anyway?

Haiku must be original, in English, not previously published nor under consideration for publication or entered in any other competition.

Deadline: in hand by 30 November 2006.

"[For instance, the more exposure Lehman's wife gets as a nationally-respected poet--and appearing in Best American Poetry is perhaps the biggest step presently acknowledged in that direction--the better the job she can acquire, and the more income she can make; the more exposure Lehman's own book editor gets--the editor, I'd note, of a small but growing press in New York City--the more his own book with that press, or future books with that press, is likely to sell; the more Lehman can promote other poets who publish with that same small-but-growing press, the more exposure the press itself gets, and thus the more exposure Lehman's book and Lehman himself get; the more Lehman makes clear to the poetry community that being a student of his means almost certain inclusion in the BAP, the more attractive he is as a professor of poetry students, and the more prospective poetry students want to study with him, and thus the more salary he can command as a professor; and so on]."

"Nearly 90 poets from around the world have contributed to Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on, an anthology of poems on the Twin Towers atrocity and its consequences. But we are aiming for more than pious hand-wringing: the anthology will be free, but there is a request to donate to the Red Cross, which works tirelessly to help people caught up in disasters and conflicts, wherever and whoever they are."

The Private Press is pleased to announce the launch of A Slice of Cherry Pie, a poetry chapbook anthology inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks series and edited by Ivy Alvarez, this Friday, September 15, starting at 10pm UTC!

Please join us at our first ever online launch party at this address: http://zoo.f2s.com/privatepress for poetry and paté, verse and versatility, stanzas and champagne!

We will also be announcing The Private Press's next call for poems during the launch.

Hope to see you there!
The Private Press: http://zoo.f2s.com/privatepress/

A Slice of Cherry Pie [US edition]
Half Empty/Half Full: http://www.shannacompton.com/half-empty.html

KADAPA: The unceremonious removal of the statue of noted Telugu poet Puttaparthy Narayanacharyulu to accommodate the late prime minister Indira Gandhi's statue at a circle in Proddattur is snowballing into a major controversy with more social, literary and political organisations denouncing it. [...]

We seek submissions for an anthology of international found poetry -- writing which has been made poetic through the manipulation and / or re-contextualization of existing texts.

Michael Palmer has been named the winner of the annual $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award of the Academy of American Poets. The accolade recognizes outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. [...]

Ted Hughes, the late Poet Laureate, was a domestic tyrant who issued a 'Draft Constitution' to his mistress, instructing her how to carry out household chores and look after his children.

A new book reveals that Hughes's lover, Assia Wevill, was ordered by him not to have lie-in, wear her dressing gown around the house or take a nap during the day. Wevill told friends the poet's lovemaking was so ferocious that 'in bed, he smells like a butcher'. [...]

Seventy years ago, in the middle of a late summer night, Spain's greatest 20th-century poet, Federico García Lorca, was bundled into a hollow in a wooded ravine north of Granada and shot dead. Lorca, 38, was a challenge to everything Franco's clerical fascism stood for. He was gay. He hailed Spain's infant democracy. His sympathies were with the left.

The poet could have fled Granada easily when it fell to the nationalists in the first days of the uprising against the Spanish republic, but he chose to stay with his sister, who was married to the city's mayor. Yet, despite fame, status and connections, he was soon dragged away and murdered. [...]

The legendary blind and one-legged Scottish mountain man Syd Scroggie has died at the age of 86.

In spite of his disabilities he achieved success as an author, poet and renowned hill walker. [...]

Jamie Fitzgerald writes: "I'm in the thick of administering a writing contest. This is the third one I've been involved with at various levels, and though the process is usually pretty grueling, I have learned a great deal that I will keep in mind the next time I enter a contest myself. For instance:

- Do not tape every available seam on the envelope with packing tape such that your submission is impenetrable.
- Do not pack your manuscript like a Russian nesting doll; one envelope is sufficient.
- Do not call the organization responsible for the contest to ask what collated means (inquire with a close, forgiving friend)." [...]

Pam Ayres is embarrassed. Last autumn, she who wrote poems about washing machines, wonderbras, cruise ships and, most famously of all, about how she wished she'd 'looked after me teeth' started writing again.

“IT’S a fair cop.” With these words, the writer Bevis Hillier confessed that he was the Betjeman hoaxer who duped the poet’s latest biographer into publishing a spoof love letter.

The Sunday Times reported last week how AN Wilson had included in his new book a letter purportedly written by Sir John Betjeman to a mistress.

The biographer had failed to notice that the first letter of each sentence spelt “AN Wilson is a shit”. Hillier was the main suspect, but until now has denied being the hoaxer. [...]

Poets for Palestine will primarily focus on issues pertaining to Palestine. However, we are accepting poems on other subjects (i.e. Lebanon and Iraq) as well as poems written in forms other than spoken word.

Independent Uznews.Net is back in business and reports that Dadahon Hasanov, a prominent Uzbek poet and singer, will face trial in Tashkent on September 5. Hasanov, 66, is to be tried for his song on the massacre in Andijan on May 13, 2005.

Investigators from the Uzbek Prosecutor General's Office and Tashkent Municipal Prosecutor's Office are convinced that Hasanov violated three articles of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan [...]

According to Ikramov, charges against Hasanov were pressed in the wake of the arrest and trial of two Erk activists in the Bukhara region. Hazrat Ahmedov and Jamol Kutliyev were arrested because the cab driver that had taken them somewhere once told the National Security Committee that his fares had been listening to Hasanov's song about Andijan in his cab.

This listening to a song earned Ahmedov 4 and Kutliyev 7 years imprisonment. [...]

It is said in “the bill of particulars” that in November 9, 2005 Gijduvan district NSS of Bukhara region received a written complaint from a citizen Husniddin Sayfiyevich Avazov, driver of private minibus with registration number 21E 8200, model “Ford”, saying that passenger Hazrat Ahmedov listened to songs dedicated to Andijan events on May 13, 2005 singed by Dadaxon Hasanov.

In accordance to this denunciation, Hazrat Ahmedov and Jamol Kutliev who is the head physician of children’s hospital, members of “Erk” Democratic Party of Uzbekistan were arrested and against them started criminal case with articles 159, 216, 244-1, 244-2 of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan. In March 2006 J. Kutliev and H. Ahmedov were convicted for 7 and 4 years of imprisonment respectively. [...]

"Starved and frozen, I huddled on the stone floor making a sort of tent of my verminous coat, breathing into a sleeve to warm my body, and made poems all day long."

Faludy was married three times. But his most prolific love story was with ballet dancer Eric Johnson, who was 26 when he read one of Faludy's most famous books, My Happy Days in Hell. Johnson pursued Faludy until he met him in Malta. By this time, Faludy's second wife had passed away.

Faludy fell for the beautiful ballet dancer and they lived in Toronto happily for many years.

But trouble began to brew when the pair moved back to Hungary. There, another youngster, Fanny Kovacs, caught Faludy's attention. He married Kovacs, a 26-year-old model, and sent shockwaves through Hungarian society when he posed with her for Penthouse magazine.

"She looked voluptuous and he looked his age," said Colombo.

Johnson died alone in India.

Virginia's husband, Douglass Adair, was a Professor of History and an Editor of the William & Mary Quarterly. Douglass was a revered scholar whose work on the American founding is considered fundamental to the field. In 1968 he inexplicably shot himself in their bedroom while Virginia was preparing dinner downstairs in the kitchen. She wrote many poems about this.


AVL: That's fine… my other question was, were you taught other languages?

VA: When I was four, I was at a Montessori School that took boys up to a certain level. And I remember the day that the boys had been taught to bow and the girls to spread their skirts, which was pretty silly. But—let's see, where was I?

[Joanne Gonzalez]: The languages, Virginia.

VA: Oh yes. They said 'Oh all right…'—this was our teacher. She said, 'Alright now, those of you that can write go down the corridor and start French. So we were four-year-olds and maybe a five-year-old or two, but mostly four. And when I went home that day at supper I told them that we had learned to speak French. And my father said, 'Let's hear it.' And I said 'Un, deux, trois, girer dans le bois. Quatre, cinq, six—.' And I stopped, that was as far as I could go. And my father said kindly, 'Un, deux, trois/ Quatre, cinq, six/ Send for the police.' My mother rebuked him for such….but anyway, that was the story. We had French teachers that spoke only French. Every now and then they would break down and speak English … I remember one day I saw a spider going across the floor. And I went [makes a stomping motion with her foot.] And the teacher said 'Stop, that animal is my guest.' And I had to withdraw my foot. But I remember she was such a strange mademoiselle. Well this one was—I was no longer in New York, but mademoiselle used to come out from — I don't know, the train, I guess—

JG: Well Virginia, I don't know how many languages you learned—Latin, French—but I've read tons of poetry to her and often I don't know how to pronounce the poet's name or some of the words. She always knows. She always corrects me. And I've learned a lot.

VA: I remember much better those things than I do the present. On the other hand, I'm quite eager to see the old written friends [poems] emerging back, coming back. And — what's the little….?

JG: The chapbook?

VA: Yes.

Virginia's chapbook Magical Highways was issued in 2002. It holds two poems, one of which, 'Dawn Blessing,' is about Shiloh, Virginia and Douglass' house in the desert.

AVL: Which I have, and I was very happy to have it, because it's the latest thing from you.

VA: Well that was another thing that didn't belong to me, or maybe just corners of it belonged to me.

JG: Virginia kept trying to give me credit for 'Sheltering Sands' and I said, 'No, I did not write that.'