MO' JOE Anthology Deadline, August 17

…THE CONTINUING SAGA OF JOE THE POET, VOL. 2. EDITED BY JOHN ROCHE

August 17 is the deadline for ten-line poem submissions to Mo' Joe. We have contributions from about sixty poets so far, including New Mexico stalwarts Rich Boucher, Jules Nyquist, Stewart S. Warren, Kenneth Gurney, Pamela Hirst, Deb Coy, Kathamann, and Bill Nevins.

BEATLICK PRESS (Albuquerque, New Mexico) will be publishing MO' JOE: THE ANTHOLOGY (THE CONTINUING SAGA OF JOE THE POET, VOL. 2).

You are invited to submit up to THREE POEMS in the "JOEY" form, which is exactly TEN LINES, no more than one hundred words total, exploring additional dimensions of the elusive Joe the Poet.

Deadline is AUGUST 17. 

Please send in one MS Word doc or docx file to John Roche at brooksidepoet@yahoo.com. Also include a 50-word Bio. Authors included in the anthology will receive one free copy as payment.

Examples of "joeys" can be found at at my FootHills author page:

 http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2012/id55.htm or at Big Bridge 16:

 http://www.bigbridge.org/BB16/poetry/poetjroche.htm

Joe the Poet first turned up in a poem of the same title in Rootdrinker #17: Big Powwow Issue (2009), and eventually in Road Ghosts (theenk Books, 2011; also published in Big Bridge #15). But the initial poem was a "found poem" appropriating lines from famous poems and songs, and was a commentary on Obama's election, with an epigraph parodying Blake that referenced Joe the Plumber. 

Then something extraordinary happened. Joe the Poet was not willing to stay silent, and started to assert his (and her) identity in poems set in distant lands and eras.

And Joe kept talking, kept morphing into various guises and avatars, some purely mythical and others resembling composites of poets living or dead; some disputing philosophical and political and religious ideas, and others expressing the freedom of the "open road." All embodying some sort of ideal of the Wandering   Bard/ Griot/ Troubadour/ Wilderness Poet. But all escaping such easy categorizations.

Joe earned his own book, The Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet (FootHills Publishing, 2011). But he didn't stop there—somehow compelled a number of friends and acquaintances to write their own Joe poems. Finally, I gave in and agreed to put together an anthology of Friends of Joe. Through Jules Nyquist, whose "Joe the Poet in Las Vegas (NM)," appeared in her book Appetites (Beatlick Press, 2012), I made the acquaintance of the editor/ publishers of Beatlick, Pamela Hirst and Deborah Coy, and they graciously agreed to publish the anthology. Pamela is the widow of "Beatlick" Joe Speer, noted editor of little magazines and author of Backpack Trekker: A 60's Flashback.

Pamela feels her Joe was the quintessential Joe the Poet. I feel there are many Joes throughout the galaxies of poetry. We welcome your contribution to our understanding of "Joeness."

John Roche, brooksidepoet@yahoo.com