dumbfoundry

What was it like working with your publisher?

The process was a bit mystifying! Salt’s energy goes largely into selling. Chris cheerfully admits that where other publishers might put 80% of their time into editing and 20% into selling, Salt is the other way round. This means that the onus is on the writer to iron out the book as much as possible, because Salt won’t make any sweeping changes.

If you have written any (unpublished) poetry touching on the intersection of communication and science [including but certainly not limited to biomedicine], please submit it for consideration for 'Peer-Renewed,' a column that debuted in the July-August 2006 issue of Science Editor, the bimonthly journal of the Council of Science Editors (CSE), based in Reston, VA.

"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people," he wrote in the preface to his first substantial collection, "Poems" (1964).

Horse Feather, by Diego Quiros, is a striking poem about the possibilities and limitless boundaries of love. It is a poem that begs for several readings, as it presents insights in several diverging directions. On the one hand, the poem can be read as a fantasy narrative, where the speaker muses on the passionate image of riding Pegasus over skyscrapers. Another view of the poem reveals a more subtle, perhaps melancholy desire to rise above the limits of human love and experience an altogether unbound (unearthly) love as characterized by riding this mythical creature.

MISSING verses by Robert Burns to his great muse, Clarinda, are among five 'rediscovered' poems now attributed to the national bard.

A 42-line manuscript that the poet addressed to the woman he called 'mistress of my soul' has been unearthed by Professor Robert Crawford, one of Scotland's leading literary scholars.

The verses, My Steps Fate on a Mad Conjuncture Thrust, are published in a new collection of Burns' poetry and prose co-edited by Prof Crawford.

His life story is that of an itinerant autodidact, with shades of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and Thomas Hardy's Jude. But Peter Street has defied decades of hardship and disability to become a war poet and BBC writer-in-residence, with four volumes of verse to his name.

Street, 59, is about to release his fifth volume after winning a grant from the Royal Literary Fund, the benevolent society set up to help professional writers in straitened times. Past beneficiaries have included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, DH Lawrence and James Joyce.

Andrew Philip: "The cover looks as fabulous as all those other Salt jackets I've drooled over in the past few years but it has my name on it! A couple of slight alterations are in the pipeline to to make it even better, but it's basically just the look I wanted."

Blood Pudding Press is now accepting submissions for its first poetry chapbook contest!

Chapbooks manuscript submissions will be accepted from December 8, 2008-February 28 2009.

Two winning chapbooks will be chosen—one to be published in Spring 2009 (April or May) and one to be published in Summer 2009 (June or July). Three semi-finalists and the two winners will be announced in March. Each winner will receive fifteen free copies of their chapbook, which will be a ribbon-bound, delectably designed affair.

See the Blood Pudding Press online shop at www.BloodPuddingPress.etsy.com and/or the Blood Pudding Press blog at www.bloodyooze.blogspot.com for a better idea of the press’s sensibilities and design standards. [...]

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Blood Pudding Press is also in the midst of accepting poetry submissions for our next multi-writer project, to be published in March. These submissions will be accepted through January 25th. There is no fee for submitting individual poems; only the chapbook contest has an entry fee. [...]

January O'Neil: "I am of the school that in a poetry collection, less is more. I recommend leaving out your weaker poems. Most poetry manuscripts average between 40-72 pages, so you want the reader to experience the best representation of who you are as a writer. This is survival of the fittest, or Thunderdome—only include the poems you feel are rock-solid. In the long run, you’re much better off with a small collection of well-rounded gems than one filled with unfinished lumps of coal."

Edward Nawotka: "The room is decorated with literary portraits, including Hemingway and Dorothy Parker (both over the bar), Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe (in the bedroom), Pablo Neruda (over the fireplace), as well as George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov and Toni Morrison."

Red Leaves / 紅葉 remains an independent literary enterprise which is equally contingent upon Western creative submissions, as it is Eastern. Because of this, we-the-editors (YASUHIRO HORIUCHI and KIRK MARSHALL) are now respectively soliciting and seeking the work of Japanese authors who can demonstrate a fluency in kanji text, to bookend our established and emerging English writers in the journal's first issue.

If you're of Japanese origin or nationality and adept in written kanji text, we want to read your contributions! We're now calling for your best fiction, manga, creative non-fiction, and poetry to be submitted for issue #001, which will be internationally distributed come late-2009.

In 1992, William Gibson released 'Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)', a haunting poem about loss and memory that came on a floppy disc that erased itself as you played it.

Matthew Buchanan in The Sydney Morning Herald: "The Australian arts community is mourning the unexpected loss of one its true originals, the writer and poet Dorothy Porter, who died yesterday morning in Melbourne, aged 54, from complications from breast cancer."

• Vale, Dorothy Porter
• Dorothy Porter dies
• dorothy porter - an inspiration
• Godspeed, Dorothy
• Dorothy Porter
• Vale Dorothy Porter
• Vale Dorothy Porter 1954-2008
• From Johanna Featherstone to Dorothy Featherstone Porter
• Hard Time for Breast Cancer Survivors
• "Undoubtedly Dorothy Porter is a hero in this household."

Like most poets I was sick of not being read. I was sick of my books not being on display in bookshops — either hidden away so successfully that not even I, their vain and insecure author, could find them or simply not there at all. To be honest vanity was one of the most combustible ingredients in what fuelled — and fuels — my desire to write verse novels.

This is poetry of full frontal assault; like Amis in Money, a barrage approach is deemed most efficacious. For those of us who live right on the post-modern edge, this feels more right, more apropos, more direct, and more pertinent than what has been standard in post-avant up to this point.

At one point in the article, Smith asks why all the “indisputably” great 20th century poets are either American or Irish.

Cordite 29.0 ('Pastoral') guest editor Stuart Cooke: "The pastoral poem has never been anything if not a response to the changing of the times; this issue of Cordite goes a long way towards showing that pastoral can consist of much more than just sheep and shepherds. At its very core, a poetics of farm and bush is an exploration of Western experience at the limits: taken from its urban confines, it is poetry of the human confronted with the far-more-than-itself."

In my innocence, I assumed that the bulk of the work would be in reading the several thousand poems that are submitted for each issue, selecting the strongest ones, then trying to create a coherent whole out of them. Laurie and I had several intense email debates about certain poems; each of us had the experience of changing our minds about poems after slugging it out for a few virtual rounds. Which makes you realise how subjective the whole business can be.

However, I was to discover that the selection of poems, although one major part of the process, is only one dimension. Poems alone do not a Magma make.

Much thought and debate went into deciding on the prose articles. Laurie and I each wrote one, and others were commissioned. And I haven’t even begun to list the administrative tasks - things like getting hold of poets’ addresses and biographies and photographs. Never mind that, actually getting hold of certain poets at all could sometimes be a tortuous business.

dumbfoundry is lucky to have Stu Hatton, particularly since he's been kind enough to agree not only to contribute with blog posts, but to spring-clean the blogroll as well. [There's an email address on the dumbfoundry blog, in case we've missed anybody out or you see a defunct link.]

Here's Stu's bio:

Born in Boston, England, I moved to Melbourne in 1986 and have lived there ever since. My poetry has been published in a range of print and online journals. I've also performed my work on radio, at spoken word events around Melbourne, and at various poetry festivals, including the Melbourne Writers' Festival, Overload Poetry Festival and the Montsalvat Festival of Poetry and Song. I recently completed an MA at Deakin University, where I teach professional and creative writing. In 2006, I was awarded a mentorship through the Australian Society of Authors, which I undertook in 2007 with Dorothy Porter.

Please make him feel welcome. Thank you! And thanks, Stu.

Alison Brackenbury explores the impact John Clare, the poet of nature, enclosure and song, has had on her writing. [BBC audio]

Bernardine Evaristo: "(With hindsight, re-reading this article eight years later, I ask myself, did we really laugh for six weeks? I also remember the stress of always being in a massive group of about 140 people all told, being shepherded hither and thither, without any of my good mates to accompany me - someone who knows me so well that we don’t notice our silences. I also remember feeling very insecure at times, and pissed off that I had to speak all the time, be social. That’s what you have to do in large groups - talk to people. There wasn’t a single day when I could retreat and re-charge my batteries. I need some silence in my life. I’m a writer, for God’s sake, my inner life is often more vivid than my outer one.)

"One writer made it his mission to have a different woman in every city. Sadly, he only made it to 15 (poor boy). In many hotels prostitutes were persistently offered at rock-bottom prices to the male writers, leading some of the women to complain about discrimination. How times have changed."

Amy Wack: "Too often, poetry anthologies pay lip service to our talented female poets. So I decided to compile one myself."

Javier Huerta: "More and more I am convinced that what we need now is a revival of bad poetry. So I’m working on a book of bad poems."

"Read poetry by Emily Lloyd, Mark Kanak, Ofelia Hunt, Nick Bruno, Eddie Kilowatt, Kristen Kaschook, Stephen Ellis, Rochelle Ratner.

"Also included in this issue is the amazing photography of Paal Bentdal and the stunning art of Debbie T. Davies."