dumbfoundry

A poetic collaboration published in a limited first edition...

"POET Edwin Morgan was named the winner of Scotland's leading book award yesterday, collecting a £25,000 prize at the age of 88."

"While wandering through Bethesda this weekend, we were delighted to find these whimsical benches marking stops for the Bethesda Circulator (a free trolley service running through downtown Bethesda).
...
The benches feature lines of poetry by local poets who competed to participate in the project."

Several worthy scribes have already declined the post in advance, as other worthy scribes did 10 years ago. Before encouraging women to run panting like little lap-dogs after a post that was designed originally by, and for, male poets on the make (MPMs), perhaps we should pause and work out what a genuine 21st-century version of the job might look like.

Anne Haines: "Then I started pulling out the poems that felt like they belonged in the first section. I'd had a first section and a last section loosely in my mind for quite a while, but amusingly enough, what I'd been envisioning as the last section kind of turned out to be the first one, and vice-versa. As I sifted and sorted and pulled different poems up to the top, I kept asking myself, Which one is my 'Thunder Road'? And I kept hearing that piano intro in my head, the invitation of it. And you know what, that did the trick."

"Twice before I have posted a list of print journals that accept email submissions. I continue to be appreciative of journals that have made this accommodation."

HAIKU CALENDAR LUDBREG 2009

Deadline
September 17, 2008

Regulations
- The contest is open to the public
- Entries (up to 3 haikus in english) must be original, unpublished and not currently submitted elsewhere
- Send only one copy and print your name, age, occupation and address
- No entries will be returned, so keep a copy

Entry fee
No entry fee this year!

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response that we have received here at Weave Magazine, we will be closing our open submissions period for our first issue a little early, and by a little early we mean two months early.

The deadline for the first issue of Weave Magazine has been pushed up to June 30th.

Do you want to set up a new Literary Magazine? Then this masterclass is for you.

BRAND editor Nina Rapi will go through the nuts and bolts of starting a magazine, from finding collaborators, suppliers and finances, to choosing the style, genre, title and identity. And finally, get to work and put together an action plan for how to actualise your own idea for a magazine or journal.

Tickets: £30/ £20 concessions

For more information and to book, see spreadtheword.org.uk [...]

FIVE BELLS, Kenneth Slessor's elegy for his friend Joe Lynch, who drowned in Sydney Harbour in 1927, is arguably the most famous poem written about Sydney.

But Slessor's own rarely seen notebook, meticulously written in his neat handwriting and recording every change of phrase, reveals his masterpiece was very nearly called Six Bells.

"A writers' spat is not the sole preserve of the big names - the most exciting and vicious scraps are to be found in the poetry blogosphere [...]

One much less reported literary ding-dong caught my eye recently. What interested me about Todd Swift's and Sean Bonney's spat on Swift's Eyewear blog is that it wasn't an old codgers' hurrumphing fest (no offence meant to any of the above). It was young literary bucks taking the gloves off and going some rounds..."

TORONTO — Robin Blaser, poet and professor emeritus from Simon Fraser University, was handed the prestigious Griffin Prize for Canadian poetry on Wednesday night.

Blaser was joined by John Ashbery, who took home the international Griffin poetry prize.

'This is truly a great honour and one I didn't expect,' said the 83-year-old Blaser, who added that poetry remains 'primary' in his life.

...the Queen's Birthday Honours list includes a Queen's Service Medal (QSM) for Catherine Mair of Katikati, "for services to poetry and the community".