Poets and Writers Picnic

Saturday, Jan28: Potluck Peace Party and Volunteer Drive

2012-01-24T17:58:00.001-08:00

A poetry event announcement from Zachary Kluckman via Elaine Schwartz' excellent and indispensable mailing list

Potluck Peace Party and Volunteer Drive

Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice

202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87112

Saturday, January 28, 2012, 7:00-10:00pm

Join us for first in a new series of monthly events celebrating peace, sustainability and community! Featuring plenty of local poetry, music and food for everyone as well as some great opportunities to join the center as a member or as a volunteer.

Poets scheduled to perform include Zachary Kluckman, Damien Chavez, Julie Brokken, Sal Treppiedi, Nate Maxson, Marilena Vargas and more!

This is a potluck event so everyone is invited to bring something to share and anyone who wants to share a poem or song on the mic is invited as well!

For more information, contact Zachary at the Peace Center, 268-9557

Kery's List: Month-end Reminder

2012-01-22T12:28:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, January 25, MVS Studios, 535 N. Main Street, 6:00 p.m.

Poetry reading by Sheila Black, Billy Garrett, Joe Somoza, and Dick Thomas. (MVS Studios is just north of the Branigan Cultural Center.)

ImmaStar College Scholarship « ImmaStar Productions

2012-01-22T02:53:00.000-08:00

Build yourself some 1st rate good karma (you can never have too much): support, promote and contribute to ImmaStar(t) Up College Scholarship. Below are the scholarship Guidelines. For more details, to offer support or if you need a PDF of the guidelines, please email Carlos Contreras directly at soothxsayer@yahoo.com

Urban Verbers, Carlos and Hakim

IMMASTAR(T) UP COLLEGE FUND NOMINATION GUIDELINES

ImmaStar Productions is a locally run performance oriented collective, headed up by nationally awarded performance poet and educator Carlos Contreras. Carlos has dreamt up the first inaugural ImmaStar Productions Scholarship giveaway, and coined it the “Immastar(t) Up College Scholarship,” as a way of giving back to our Albuquerque Community. ImmaStar Productions strives to be a force within its community that provides opportunities for people of all ages, socio-economic backgrounds, and creative abilities. Through the avenues of : Visual, Performance, and Literary Arts, Carlos Contreras and ImmaStar Productions will continue to focus on the importance of Education, and creative expression. We at ImmaStar Productions believe that “There is no wrong, Just Write!”

ImmaStar College Scholarship « ImmaStar Productions

'via Blog this'

Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize

2012-01-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

Just in from Santa Fe Poetry and Prose...

Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize announces: It's time to be preparing your manuscript! Red Mountain Press will award a prize for poetry in 2012 with the publication of a full length book and a 2 week residency in Santa Fe. Please see the website http://www.redmountainpress.us for full information.

The submission period is now through March 1, 2012. Early submissions are appreciated. The judging, by Red Mountain authors, is through electronic submission and blind. See Guidelines online. Contact: Red Mountain Press, redmtnpress@gmail.com

via Paul White (white@grappawireless.com) from Santa Fe Poetry and Prose Meetup Group.

STOP SOPA: #SOPASTRIKE Jan18

2012-01-18T07:28:00.001-08:00

My favorire "stop sopa" page is Zachary Johnson's shadowbox with the moving light (just move your cursor) on Zachstronaut. Adding this one to my feed reader... tomorrow. Today .....

Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can and drive contacts to Congress. *Put the source code for this page your site* ~ it's my main page at Mountainair Online (the web page). I have no control over blog policies. I'm not really up to tinker with source code to show a black out page on my blogs. So I am settling for posting information and exhortations (like this one). Except for following #sopastrike on Twitter and @fightfortheftr) and Reddit, I'm staying off public pages today. No Facebook or

Personal blackouts seem to be running either 24 hours (midnight to midnight) or 8AM EST to 8PM EST. Major supporting sites like Wikipedia, WordPress, Google, Internet Archive (+ Wayback Machine), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tucows and many, many more are striking for 24 hours. Looked like a major slow down on Facebook when I checked (before 8 am).

What can you do to support the strike if you don't have a blog or web page, can't blog and RT #sopastrike stories? Make a call; sign the petition; learn more; the action of the hour is to speak out. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, opposing the bills. Contact local news stations and let them know that this is an issue worth covering. And there is still email, what they could be coming after next...

Today's Google search page:

Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!

Poem: Justice

2012-01-17T10:09:00.001-08:00

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Langston Hughes

Circa 1960

Fixed & Free Anthology 2011 Available at January 26 Reading

2012-01-14T17:15:00.001-08:00

Billy Brown writes,

I am VERY pleased to report that the Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology 2011 is now a reality ... today I approved the proofs and ordered a bunch of copies to be available for sale at the January 26 Fixed and Free reading!

The list price for the anthology is $15.00. The book has a beautiful design, created by Stewart Warren, and contains 79 poems by 79 Fixed and Free poets -- poets who all have read at one or more Fixed and Free readings since Fixed and Free began more than three years ago.

We included a poem by every Fixed and Free poet who submitted their poetry for the anthology. I am very grateful to Greg Candela and Elaine Schwartz for their excellent and indispensable work choosing which poems are included. (I helped mostly in cases of ties ... :-)

I am confident that everyone will be very pleased with this volume, and that the Fixed and Free community will be proud to be represented by the poems contained in it. All of the beyond-cost proceeds from the sale of copies of this anthology will be used to support the Fixed and Free community activities: to pay for our monthly venue and to pay our featured poets.

Therefore I encourage each member of the Fixed and Free poetry community to purchase a copy for her/his own use and perhaps additional copies as gifts. Here is the plan for sales/distribution of our anthology within our community:

One free copy will go to each of the four members of the anthology editorial/publication team: Billy Brown, Greg Candela, Elaine Schwartz, and Stewart Warren
One copy at a discount price of $ 10 will be available to each poet with a poem in the anthology, and to each of the poets who "blurbed" the book (wrote a "blurb" for the back cover or 2-3 pages inside the front cover).
All other copies will be sold at the list price of $ 15.

People can purchase the anthology at all future Fixed and Free monthly readings,

and for a limited time, can obtain copies from me at my home (you just need to arrange a pick up time with me by calling 401-8139). I plan to schedule a release party & reading for the anthology in the near future. Stay tuned for an announcement.

Other plans for sharing our anthology in the wider Albuquerque and New Mexico communities will be formulated and carried out by a team which I hope to form in the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in working with me on this team, please let me know ASAP, by emailing me at welbert53@aol.com, and including your phone number.

I shall contact those who will serve on this team soon to begin our planning process.

I am very excited by the quality of the design of this anthology, and I am very inspired by the excellent poetry therein.

As I said in my Introduction:

"I am grateful to all the poets who have read at Fixed and Free. My life is enriched by your poetry. I trust that this collection honors you, represents your talents to the wider poetry world and strengthens our Fixed and Free community."

I'll see many of you at the Fixed and Free reading on Thursday, January 26, with plenty of books in hand ... :-) We shall not have featured poets, but rather take that time to distribute and discuss the book!

Yours for powerful poetry, Billy Brown,401-8139

Friendship in the time of terror

2012-01-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

Portrait by Nathan Altman, 1912

Nadezhda Mandelstam's unique personal tribute to poet Anna Akhmatova

Although the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) never received the highest literary honour, the Nobel Prize, the veneration she enjoyed during her lifetime as well as her ever increasing posthumous fame have made her one of the luminary figures of modern Europe. Few authors of the past century have been portrayed more often in paintings, sculptures or photographs; few bodies of poetry has been more extensively translated, interpreted, recorded and illustrated; few individuals have featured more in the letters, journals or memoirs of her contemporaries. The extensive biographical chronicles of Lydia Chukovskaya, Emma Gerstein, Mikhail Ardov and other associates have helped create a larger-than-life and almost heroic image of the poet, which has become inseparable from her work.

Read the rest of Friendship in the time of terror in signandsight, 9/19/2012, originally published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1/3/2012.

'via Blog this'

Poem: "Poppies"

2012-01-08T08:56:00.001-08:00

"Poppies" by Jennifer Grotz:

There is a sadness everywhere present
but impossible to point to, a sadness that hides in the world
and lingers. You look for it because it is everywhere.
When you give up, it haunts your dreams
with black pepper and blood and when you wake
you don't know where you are.
But then you see the poppies, a disheveled stand of them.
And the sun shining down like God, loving all of us equally,
mountain and valley, plant, animal, human, and therefore
shouldn't we love all things equally back?
And then you see the clouds.
The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.

The poem continues. TNC shares his appreciation:

Grotz writes of our constant desire to tame the world, and even the righteousness of that desire ("shouldn't we love all things equally back?"). She writes of the anguish that ultimately comes from trying (the poppies are beautiful but only "like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg / But will scratch if you touch back") and then, finally, our sadness at the whole thing. "Love is letting the world be half-tamed," Grotz writes. I think you could say that about a lot more than just the natural world that she is addressing. That's a lesson we're constantly learning.

(Photo by Jura Wanderer)

A Poem For Sunday from The Daily Dish | by Andrew Sullivan

Broadsided, January 2012

2012-01-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

What is Broadsided? Think of it as web-enhanced grassroots guerilla art. On the first of every month, a new art/poetry collaboration is posted for you to download. Free. Broadsided Press hopes you'll print it and post it in your local haunts— coffee shops, libraries, office doors, telephone poles, etc. That will make you a Vector. Vectors are posting around the world. This plog is an eVector. Help us and Broadsided put literature and art on the streets.

Writing by Peter Kline, Steve Brightman & Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn
Art by Kara Searcy, Caleb Brown, Jennifer Moses, Kevin Morrow
Broadsided January 1, 2012

Download the Broadsided file
to print & post (488kb PDF)

Meet The Collaborators

WINTER

Writer Peter Kline's recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco.

Artist Kara Searcy is a multi-media artist from Iowa. Examples of her work can be found at http://fallstraightback.deviantart.com/. She loves constellations, Jesus, and the word "ricochet."

SPRING

Writer Steve Brightman lives in Kent, Ohio. His poems have been featured in Pudding House, Origami Condom, A Trunk of Delirium and he was included in the Ohio Bicentennial Anthology titled I Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems about Ohio.

Artist Caleb Brown is an artist who works on software interfaces. He lives in Groton, MA with his wife, puppy and two tween twins, See more at www.caleb-brown.com.

SUMMER

Writer Peter Kline's recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco.

Artist Jennifer Moses is a painter living in Boston. She is also a professor of art at the University of New Hampshire. She has exhibited her work throughout New England. More at her website.

FALL

Writer Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn is a recent graduate of the MFA at the University of Arkansas. Her poems have appeared most recently in Unsplendid, Hayden's Ferry Review, and the Sugar House Review.

Artist Kevin Morrow is a native of Wisconsin who received his MFA degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand where he studied in the Contemporary Maori Department (Te Toi Hou). Morrow now lives and works in New York. Images of other work atkpmorrow.viewbook.com/

January literary events, Southern NM

2012-01-03T04:48:00.001-08:00

A monthly list of Literary events in southern New Mexico, carrying on the work of Wayne Crawford.

Sunday, January 8, Black Cat Books & Coffee, T or C, 1:00 p.m.

Open reading, moderated by Carol Borsello. Come before 1:00 p.m. to sign up.

Tuesday, January 17, Palacio Bar, Mesilla, 7:30 p.m.

SPLAT Open Reading. Bring up to three poems or five minutes of prose.

Saturday, January 21, 2012, Cultural Center de Mesilla, 2231 Calle de Parian, 2-4:00 p.m.

The Bowl of Life/La Cazuela de la Vida: A Workshop of Transition and Transformation with Carlos Aceves will apply the Aztec Calendar to daily life. The cost of the workshop is $25 and includes a copy of Nine Seasons—Beyond 2012: A Manual of Ancient Aztec and Mayan Wisdom by Carlos Aceves.

Cultural Center de Mesilla

Wednesday, January 25, MVS Studios, 535 N. Main Street, 6:00 p.m.

Poetry reading by Sheila Black, Billy Garrett, Joe Somoza, and Dick Thomas

To announce an event or subscribe to the list, contact K. Ellen Roberts Young at keryslist@cs.com

About Poetry Newsletter: New Year's Poems

2011-12-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

From Bob Holman & Margery Snyder, your Guide to Poetry

Our New Year’s Anthology

The turning of the calendar from one year to the next has always been a time for summing up past experience, bidding farewell to those we have lost, renewing old friendships, making plans and resolutions, and expressing our hopes for the future.

See More About: new year's poems classic poems auld lang syne

“Auld Lang Syne”

This is the first in our collection—the traditional ballad written down by Robert Burns in the 18th century, and sung ever since to mark the coming of the New Year. Print it out to share if you want to sing all the verses for real on Saturday night!

See More About: robert burns ballads auld lang syne

Thomas Hardy’s New Year’s Poems

Two of Hardy’s poems are in our collection, both 100-year-old parables of despair. “The Darkling Thrush” is one of Hardy’s best-known poems, a meditation on the dark and listless beginning of the 20th century—“The land’s sharp features seemed to be / The Century's corpse outleant”—into which birdsong casts a single ray of hopeful light. Newly added to our anthology is “New Year’s Eve,” in which the poet questions an uncaring, “logicless... unweeting” god, and receives no good answer—an existential downer if ever there was one, and a good example of Hardy’s dour despair.

See More About: new year's poems thomas hardy 20th century british poetry

D.H. Lawrence’s New Year’s Poems

Perhaps this pair of poems, also from the early 20th century and newly added to the collection, will act as counterweights to Hardy’s dark tones. Both are from his 1917 collection, Look! We Have Come Through!: “New Year’s Eve,” a sensual appreciation of his new wife by the firelight of midwinter, and “New Year’s Night,” in which his wife plays the allegorical role of sacrificial dove.

See More About: new year's poems d.h. lawrence

Adobe Walls deadline reminder

2011-12-28T04:56:00.000-08:00

A timely Adobe Walls submissions reminder, plus guidelines. Does anyone else have deadline reminders to post? Other 2011 poetry house keeping ~ calls, due dates, reminders, announcements, events, workshops, launches, new blogs, open mics, even shameless self-promotion? Post them as comments here or on Picnic's Facebook wall. Send them on by email. Suggestions for both 2012 Virtual Picnic and poetry / writing resolutions are also invited.

Kenneth Gurney writes...

Hello

A simple reminder that the deadline for Adobe Walls submissions is that last instant of 31 December, which is Saturday just before it becomes Sunday. As long as your submission is time stamped on or before that last moment of 2011, your work will be considered.

If you have sent in work, but have not heard back from me, the submission may have been lost in the emailing. Several Taos and vicinity people and I have discovered that their submissions did not make it to me on the first attempt and they had to submit a second time. I do not know how or why the internet sometimes loses email. I only know it does.

Happy season of sun's return festivals....

Kenneth P. Gurney, editor
Adobe Walls

On ad-speak and poetry

2011-12-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

On ad-speak and poetry shamelessly re-posted in toto from Harriet the Blog at the Poetry Foundation

Ian Daly — a “planning director and cultural strategist” at a marketing firm in New York called Anomaly — recently compiled a list of words and phrases that he titled “Shit I Never Said Before Working in Advertising.” A sampling:

Blow it out
Ladder it up
Tease it out
Bullet it out
Build it out
Build affinity
Soft launch
Hard stop
Fair push
Push back
Reach out
Touch base
Connect around
Loop in
Circle back
Topline
Top-of-mind
Share of mind
Are you tracking? I’m tracking.

And it goes on, reading a little like a weirdly intricate instruction manual, a little like half-baked inspirational literature, and maybe a little like… poetry?

We’re reminded of Robert Archambeau’s recent essay on the various ways that advertising has co-opted (unwittingly?) the language and approach of Symbolist poetry. Writing about Lexicon — the company behind such evocative product names as “Blackberry,” “Swiffer,” and “Pentium Chip” — Archambeau says:

The greatest of Symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé, in his Crise de vers describes the poetry he admires as… “verse that from its constituents makes up a total word, new, strange to the language and like an incantation”. For him, the poem itself was a single word. And like the words coined by the people at Lexicon, Mallarmé’s total word gives us “an array of specific, resonant meanings and associations” rather than something more defined and limited.

Read Ian Daly’s full list and Robert Archambeau’s full article.

about Nicanor Parra + 2 poems

2011-12-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra wins 2011 Miguel de Cervantes Prize (CBC article); Nicanor Parra, University of Chile website; about his technique of anti-poetry (English); and the ubiquitous Wikipedia on Parra

Young Poets
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.

Test
What is an anti-poet
Someone who deals in coffins and urns?
A general who’s not sure of himself?
A priest who believes in nothing?
A drifter who finds everything funny
Even old age and death?
A speaker you can’t trust?
A dancer at the edge of a cliff?
A narcissist who loves everyone?
A joker who goes for the jugular
And is mean just for the hell of it?
A poet who sleeps in a chair?
A modern-day alchemist?
An armchair revolutionary?
A petit-bourgeois?
A fake?
a god?
a naive person?
A peasant from Santiago, Chile?
Underline the right answer.

What is antipoetry
A tempest in a teapot?
A spot of snow on a rock?
A tray piled high with human shit
As Father Salvatierra believes?
A mirror that doesn’t lie?
A slap in the face
Of the president of the Writers’ Society?
(God save his soul)
A warning to young poets?
A jet-propelled coffin?
A coffin in centrifugal orbit?
A coffin run on kerosene?
A funeral parlor without a corpse?
Put an X
Next to the right answer.

Translated by David Unger

Test
Qué es un antipoeta:

Un comerciante en urnas y ataúdes?
Un sacerdote que no cree en nada?
Un general que duda de sí mismo?
Un vagabundo que se ríe de todo
Hasta de la vejez y de la muerte?
Un interlocutor de mal carácter?
Un bailarín al borde del abismo?
Un narciso que ama a todo el mundo?
Un bromista sangriento
Deliberadamente miserable?
Un poeta que duerme en una silla?
Un alquimista de los tiempos modernos?
Un revolucionario de bolsillo?
Un pequeño burgués?
Un charlatán?
Un dios?
Un inocente?
Un aldeano de Santiago de Chile?

Subraye la frase que considere correcta.

Qué es la antipoesía:

Un temporal en una taza de té?
Una mancha de nieve en una roca?
Un azafate lleno de excrementos humanos
Como lo cree el padre Salvatierra?
Un espejo que dice la verdad?
Un bofetón al rostro
Del presidente de la Sociedad de Escritores?
(Dios lo tenga en su santo reino)
una advertencia a los poetas jóvenes?
Un ataúd a chorro?
Un ataúd a fuerza centrífuga?
Un ataúd a fuerza centrífuga?
Un ataúd a gas de parafina?
Una capilla ardiente sin difunto?
Marque con una cruz

La definición que considere correcta.

“¿Qué es poesía?” , se pregunta Parra. El mismo se responde:
“La fundación del ser por la palabra
Todo lo que se mueve es poesía
Lo que no cambia de lugar es prosa
Pero ¿qué es poesía? Todo lo que nos une es poesía
Sólo la prosa puede separarnos
Sí, pero ¿qué es poesía?

Vida en palabras
Un enigma que se niega a ser descifrado
Por los profesores
Un poco de verdad y una aspirina

Antipoesía eres tú”

ImmaStar call for submissions

2011-12-07T09:20:00.001-08:00

Carlos (aka @soothxsayer) writes, "Send me some love, Send me your #NMPoetry" and blogs:

WordPress.com

on ImmaStar Productions

Send me some love, Send me your #Poetry, call for submissions by ImmaStar Productions

I am super stoked to be having such a large amount of site traffic lately. I am attributing this, not to myself, but of course to those that have joined me in the courageous act of posting their poetry on this site. If you are a contributing writer via: Escritores de Esperanza, a "staff writer," or someone who sent in an online submission, please continue to do so!

Together, we can build a community of writers, where folks feel comfortable being open, honest, vulnerable, and exposed. If you would like to submit poetry to Immastar, please look for my (Carlos C's) email, in the Bio(s) section, and send it on over.

We are moving into the holidays and I expect that folks will get busy, however sometimes we need to slow down, reflect and appreciate. Sometimes we need to make time to thank, remember, forget, or enlighten... So, take that time and spend it here with us.

If you have friends, family, or students who write poetry, please feel free to submit! Immastar is a free speech, equal opportunity kind of blog for poets - very rarely will I ever not post someone's writing. The rare instance of not being posted would have to include writing that I feel is harmful to the poet or the audience - hate speech... Otherwise, all is fair game! Gimme whatchu got yall! This is about to get real fun!

So send him some.... 'tis the season, giving, sharing and all that. If you haven't been following his blog, poetry, projects and such, give yourself the gift of doing so.

Dec3 Los Lunas Authors Day

2011-12-01T14:16:00.001-08:00

from Debbi Miller Gutierrez (via Elaine Schwartz)

Shirley Blackwell and Debbi Miller Gutierrez will both appear, along with other local authors, at the first ever Los Lunas Authors' Day (sponsored by the Valencia County Historical Society), Sunday December 4, 2-4 pm, to talk about their craft and sell and sign books.

Shirley Blackwell, poet & NMSPS President

Shirley will be presenting her new book of 100 poems, Already There, and Debbi will lave three of her picture books, The Pinecone Problem, Why Baby Sister Woke Up From Her Nap, and Horse's Horrible Halloween on hand, as well as her new middle grade reader chapter book Cactus Factory. Of course, all these books are available on Amazon.com, but it's so much more fun to have the author sign them in person,

The event will be at the Los Lunas Transportation Center (also known as the Los Lunas Rail Runner Station) at Highway 314 & Court House Road in Los Lunas. Follow link above for directions. Read more about Local Writers Speak about their Books at First Authors' Day in Valencia County News-Bulletin. Also, NMSPS member Mary Fogarty will also be there, presenting her poetry collections. If you know anyone else who would be interested, please share this information,

PS Virtual Picnic (that's us) would also like to draw your attention to the NM State Poetry Society's outstanding calendar. Read the Fall 2011 NMSPS Newsletter online

Norway on Poetry International Web, December 2011

2011-12-01T12:11:00.001-08:00

PIW 1 December 2011

In our latest issue of Poetry International Web, we are delighted to launch a Norwegian domain under the editorship of Liesbeth Huijer, who has chosen three poets whose work gives a taste of the excellent poetry being written in Norway at the moment: Rune Christiansen, Cecilie Løveid and Ingrid Storholmen. We also present German poet Barbara Köhler, whose experimental writing probes the limits and possibilities of language in expressing human experience.

For the editorial, articles, poems and translations, see: www.poetryinternationalweb.org

Archive Tour

'PHOTOS FROM NORWAY': Poems from the PIW archive that touch on Norway, from its fjords to its knitwear, its language to its landscape. Selected by PIW Norway editor Liesbeth Huijer.

Clip of the Month: ROSE I, Øyvind Rimbereid (Norway)

Follow Poetry International Web on Twitter and Facebook

Dec1: Poetry and Tapas

2011-11-30T09:55:00.001-08:00

#ABQ #NMpoetry: Cosmo Tapas Poetry Reading, Thurs, 5-10 pm, via Bill Nevins, NM Slam group. Just a reminder to Bill that he can post this directly on the Poets and Writers Picnic Facebook wall. So here's the information. Please let me know if this will be a regular event and if so, whether weekly or monthly, to add to the calendar.

The Cosmo Tapas Poetry Reading, hosted by Gina Marselle (ginamarselle@gmail.com), will be (no surprise there) at Cosmo Tapas Restaurant & Bar, 4200 Central Avenue Southeast, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1163, on the corner of Sierra and Central, phone: 505.232.0535

Original art, crafts (homemade belt buckles for instance), poetry books, CDs, chapbooks, etc, will be for purchase. Poets and performance times scheduled so far:

5:10 to 5:30 pm, Merimee Moffitt
5:40 to 5:50 pm, Bill Nevins
5:50 to 6:00 pm, Maria Gallegos
6:10 to 6:30 pm, Zachary Kluckman
6:40 to 7:00 pm, Sara Roman
7:10 to 7:30 pm,. Stewart S. Warren
7:40 to 8:00 pm, Rich Boucher
8:10 p.m. to 8:30 pm, Andrea Serrano
8:40 p.m. to 9:00 pm, Julie Brokken
9:10 p.m. to 9:30 pm, Katrina K Guarascio
9:40 p.m. to 10:00 pm, Jazz Cuffee

Cosmo Tapas ~ Shop and Stroll. Please note: Central will be blocked off from Girard to Washington, so use back streets...

ABQ Slams page + on MySpace and Facebook

PIW: A short history of Polar exploration

2011-11-29T09:50:00.001-08:00

A short history of Polar exploration, Poetry International Web

The snowlines, moving in, and light failing fast
as aurora borealis throbs there like a walrus heart,
all the land so wide, so all around; so vast as to
haunt. Mythology, the oil flares far away. Lightning
down the pipeline, a shiver down the spine of Alaska.
The Arctic poppy, ambergris, a narwhal tusk, and all
the massive muskoxen delineate the one soft curve
when moving. Further out the pack ice is a camel caravan.

A snooker table built from blocks of ice (we do not
want the men to go insane, have hooked up mirrors
at the cabin doors, to catch what little sun there is,
this for the worst of the scurvies.) At night my dreams
are green, blue, gold: hues I cannot see out there. The bear
is white, the land is too. Nothing to name into existence.

Poem of the week, Luke Davies page on PIW (listen to the poet) and more about Australian poetry and poets

Follow PIW on Twitter and Facebook

Posted via email from Just Writing

Adobe Walls #4 submission call

2011-11-25T17:44:00.001-08:00

Adobe Walls will open to submissions for volume #4 on 1 DEC 2011 and close on 31 DEC 2011.

Since there are now a great number of poets submitting work, there have been changes made in the submission guidelines. Please visit and review the new guidelines.

If you have questions, please direct your queries to me.

Kenneth P. Gurney, editor

kpgurney@mac.com

Adobe Walls

A Poem For Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T19:14:00.001-08:00

One Blessing had I than the rest
So larger to my Eyes
That I stopped gauging--satisfied--
For this enchanted size--

It was the limit of my Dream--
The focus of my Prayer--
A perfect--paralyzing Bliss--
Contented as Despair--

I knew no more of Want--or Cold--
Phantasms both become
For this new Value in the Soul--
Supremest Earthly Sum--

The Heaven below the Heaven above--
Obscured with ruddier Blue--
Life's Latitudes leant over--full--
The Judgment perished--too--

Why Bliss so scantily disburse--
Why Paradise defer--
Why Floods be served to Us--in Bowls--
I speculate no more--

-- Emily Dickinson.

Final Reminder: Fixed & Free Poetry

2011-11-22T17:15:00.001-08:00

Thu Nov24, #NMpoetry featuring Priscilla Baca y Candelaria, 6:45-9 pm, at The Source, 1111 Carlisle SE. Host Billy Brown writes,

Dear Poets and Poetry Lovers,

I know, I know ... we're scheduled for Thanksgiving evening ... what BETTER time to share poetry than on the one day of the year when we are reminded just how much we can be thankful for?

( Parenthetically, even though our suggested theme is "Celebrating Gratitude" I want to be sure that anyone NOT feeling particularly grateful that evening will be welcomed with open arms, as will be poems of anger or sadness or any other negative sort of emotion. After all, if we are not angry or sad about something, then perhaps we are not paying attention ... :-)

(PS I can't be there but as someone who has spent years, albeit different sets of them ~ no T.A.R.D.I.S. at my disposal ~ traversing both Tahrir Square and the UC Davis Quad on a daily basis, I hope that someone or several ones will have poems for both)

I know, I know ... many people have other plans ... travel, being with family and friends, watching football ... no one is expecting anyone to drop their long-existing Thanksgiving plans! (No one is being asked to feel guilty if you cannot make it ... :-)

BUT IF you ARE available on Thanksgiving evening, then please come on out to what promises to be

a wonderful, warm gathering of lovely poets and inspirational poetry! We will love to see you ... and hear you.

AND, perhaps your family and friends would APPRECIATE a change of pace ... some uplifting, passionate, inspirational poetry, instead of sleeping on the couch or watching football! (Personally, I would LOVE to see more non-poets attend our readings ... or are we only interested in preaching to the poetic choir?)

⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘

I am pleased to remind you of the November 2011 Fixed and Free poetry reading, Thursday, November 24, 6:45-9 pm, at The Source, with featured poet Priscilla Baca y Candelaria. This is NOT a double feature, though we shall have an early start time of 6:45 pm, as previous publicity indicated.

Please come out and hear an enormously accomplished poeta and performer. I know that you will be delighted by her poetry, and while you are at it, we all would love to hear you read some of your own poems and/or poems by favorite poets.

Also, please invite friends who love poetry. Yours for Powerful Poetry, Billy Brown 401-8139

⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘ ⌘

Schedule:

6:30 pm open mic sign-up

6:45 - open mike

7:30 - Priscilla Baca y Candelaria's feature, followed by a 5-10 minute break

8:00 - open mike till the end!

Location:

The Source, 1111 Carlisle Blvd SE, SW corner of Carlisle & Anderson. If the weather allows, we'll meet on the Source's deck; otherwise, in the Garden Room.

Free admissions but donations are gratefully accepted for pastries, to cover the $ 20 charge for the venue, and to pay the featured poet! 5 minute limit on the open "mike"

There will be pastries for sale – 50¢ each, probably to involve some pumpkin ... and maybe some chocolate :-) Water is available in the Source's kitchen for tea.

Love & Death: Greatest Hits Wins NM Book Award

2011-11-19T23:57:00.001-08:00

via Elaine's excellent email list

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here

Excerpts from the poems:

i'm too busy being born to die,/and anyway death will come./It will be quiet and rigorous/and ask something of me/I had not thought to ask myself.

-Renée Gregorio, "The Question of Death"

Torch singers, contortionists,/all of us came from this,/sacred asembly of skin./Shot full of stars, I enter him./Something larger and larger/takes up the room. Open/the windows, he calls./ Open them.

-Joan Logghe, "I Don't Know Wide But I Know Deep"

At the wedding
The guests argued about love
Versus lust
I looked at you in your hat,
Felt both.

-Miriam Sagan

ANNOUNCING!

Tres Chicas Books wins the New Mexico Book Award for poetry for

Love & Death: Greatest Hits selected poems by Renée Gregorio, Joan Logghe & Miriam Sagan. Please purchase locally at:

Collected Works Bookstore,

202 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe

order directly from the chicas at:

reneeclaire@cybermesa.com

$15, plus $3 postage

We are happy to share the good news with you that our tenth title, LOVE & DEATH: GREATEST HITS, just won the New Mexico book award for poetry! We tied with Veronica Golos of Taos, who also won the book award for poetry for her VOCABULARY OF SILENCE from Red Hen Press.

The poems in LOVE AND DEATH: GREATEST HITS are selections from three bodies of work and represent the poets' intertwined geographies, friendships, and loves. It's a collaborative effort, much like the press we founded together.

"The poems show the way love and death have been our companions, how much we've fallen in love, how we have mourned the deaths of husbands and lovers together, and how passion has informed our poetry, " the chicas say. In addition, "Seeing the ways in which death has startled, then enriched us, then revisiting our favorite love poems has made us fall in love all over again. It is our wish that you fall in love, too."

Thursday Poem & a Weekend Performance

2011-11-17T04:52:00.000-08:00

... and more... from one poem to an expanded Antonio Machado post with bio, links, video clip, context (Generation of 98, French Symbolists - but still best to read the poets themselves, the Spanish Civil War, exile), etc. Selected Machado poems translated by A. S. Kline © 2004. Poems from I Never Wanted Fame, translated by Robert Bly, on Issa's Untidy Hut. Even a Wikipedia visit to Soria alto y frio.

Serendipity.. or morphic resonance? Whatever... a timely reminder by any other name. Somehow I missed the notice on my feed reader but 3quarks in cyberspace brought it to my attention: Teatro Paraguas presents Machado y Lorca (info, flyer + more poems) this weekend in Albuquerque at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Wells Fargo Theater, 1701 4th NW, Albuquerque, November 18th and 19th at 8:00 pm and November 20th at 2:00 pm. Admission free.

more Antonio Machado poetry videos on YouTube

Doesn't that eye in #1 remind you of Emerson?

Seeing Making Waking by Antonio Machado

1

The eye you see is not

an eye because you see it;

it is an eye because it sees you.

8

Form your letters slowly and well:

making things well is more important

than making them.

10

Beyond living and dreaming

there is something more important:

waking up.

by Antonio Machado, from Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs, 14 poems in Times Alone anthology, translated by Robert Bly, via 3 quarks daily's Thursday Poem (a starting point to embellish and expand)

#OWS Poetry Anthology, created & maintained by Occupy Language

2011-11-12T18:14:00.001-08:00

Hey, poets. To place your poem in the Poetry Anthology, which is cataloged in the Occupy Wall Street library and maintained by the Occupy Language (formerly Occupy Poetry) group . . . email a poem (attachment fine) to Stephen Boyer at stephenjboyer [@] gmail. com.

You will receive an automated response. Like everything else I've seen at Zucotti Park, the project is extremely well-organized. You can trust your poem will be included. Right now the Anthology is organized in binders, by week. Portions or all will or probably will migrate to the Web.

Occupy Language is also defining its Dissemination Project. One member showed us origami-like handouts with word placements (on it). Some members have/will read to each other on a subway or bus.

Their choice of text. Yesterday there was a marathon reading of Bartleby the Scrivener in an indoor galleria/coffee place with tables (I cannot find the noun) in a big bldg. at 55 Wall Street about seven
blocks from the park. No mic. (No mic, to keep it from being shut down, not that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has a stated aversion to Melville but you never know.)

Sarah Sarai

The Poetics List is moderated & does not accept all posts. Check guidelines

So you want to be a writer: A Poem For Saturday

2011-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

A Picnic dish from the Daily Dish, a late #whyiwrite entry, words for the Manzano Mountain Scribes, wisdom for NaNoWriMo and more. Yes, I know.... woefully behind on the daily dutiful of reposting area poetry announcements, updating calendar, sorting Buffalo Poetics and issuing reminders about events, deadlines, etc. How could I resist this? Could you?

"So You Want To Be A Writer" by Charles Bukowski:

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.

The poem continues.

(A Poem For Saturday; Image: By Andre Petterson via My Modern Met)

Poets in the Occupy Movement

2011-11-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

We've been following these as they turned up. Here's an overview ~ even it missed the NM poets at the Albuquerque (no problem though, already amply covered on Facebook). Add it (if you're bookmarking or bundling poets and poetry of occupy. Google "occupy poetry" for more. Find the Occupy Poetry Project on Facebook and in the blogosphere

"Scanning the news from Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy protests in cities across the US over the last few weeks, we can’t help but notice, there are poets and poems in the mix, often right in the center of whatever action is happening:"

Read the rest of Poetry.About's Poets in the Occupy Movement

'via Blog this'

Spooky! Lit Mag News @TheReviewReview

2011-10-31T21:44:00.001-07:00

Hey all you ghouls and goblins!

What's scarier than a killer clown? More horrifying than an invasive blob? Could it be...Lit mags charging submission fees? A recent article on Forbes reveals how more lit mags plan to combat financial challenges by charging writers who submit work. Certainly such a move offers many advantages, including writers being more careful about where they submit, which may in turn decrease the average slush pile, which is good for editors and writers alike. Writers also might take more care in polishing their work if they know they are paying for submissions. On the downside, having to pay money for anything limits the population which participates. Making writers pay to have their work read could end up alienating the very people whose stories most need to be heard. That, friends, is scary indeed.

Care to weigh in? Post a comment on Twitter with the hashtag #LitMagFees. Make sure to include @TheReviewReview so we can see it. We will try to respond to all comments, and will include some in next week's newsletter. We're curious how you all feel about this, so do join the discussion!

Reposted from the review review newsletter. There's much more... read it here and then subscribe, friend, fan, follow and all that.

Guardian Review: New Poetries V

2011-10-25T07:07:00.001-07:00

Edited by Michale Schmidt and Eleanor Crawforth, reviewed by Nicholas Lezard. Don't you love the opening? Sets the tone. Sometimes I get so occupied with keeping track of local poetry events that I lose track of the other reason Picnic stayed virtual when IRL folded its tent: to read more poetry from everywhere. I may not be a legalPoetryland resident but am a fair dab at the lit game, informed consumer and trained reader.

These editors know their onions when it comes to poetry

Come off it, I can hear many of you cry. An anthology of new poetry – no, worse, new poetries – for £12.95? That's two bottles of OK wine, or a good main course at a gastropub. Like a confit of duck leg or something. I know, poetry is a hard sell. And I must confess that I picked this up with more of a sense of duty than of pleasure, and maybe a nagging sense of guilt that I had done, once again, absolutely nothing for National Poetry day.

But look at it this way: the pleasure afforded by even two bottles of wine, or a duck confit, is passing, and, in time, not even the memory of it remains. Yet the pleasure I have gained from William Letford's poems alone will, I am confident, stay with me for ever. I can honestly say that on reading his 14 very short poems here, I feel just as Keats did when he read Chapman's Homer: that a new planet has come into the sky. How can you not smile – or indeed, as I did, laugh out loud – at his poem "Moths", which begins with the word "moths" dotted about the page, like, of course, a cloud of moths (the title forming an extra-large moth), and then has, as its first proper line, the words "fucking moths"? Or "It's aboot the labour" whose central section goes like this:

heh Casey did ah tell ye a goat
a couple a poems published
widizthatmean
widayyemean
dizthatmeanyegetanymoneyfurrit
eh naw
aw right

....

Indeed, Schmidt provides a very good short introduction in which the work of a poetry editor is brought to life. "Editors who are not promoting a movement or a group, when they tear open an envelope or click an email attachment, hope to be surprised by the shape on the page, by syntax, by the unexpected sounds a poem makes, sometimes with old, proven instruments used in new ways. They might hope to find evidence of intelligence." (I love that bit.) "And they respect creative disobedience. Where there are schools they look out for the truants."

And so there will be something for all tastes here, and, as I have discovered, one's own tastes can be more catholic than one might have imagined....

Read the entire review here. Then do yourself a favor: check out The Guardian's book and poetry sections

Posted via email from Just Writing

Reminder - Oct27 Fixed & Free Poetry, features Merimeé Moffitt

2011-10-24T17:25:00.001-07:00

Billy Brown reminds area poets and poetry lovers,

... of the October 2011 Fixed and Free poetry reading, Thursday, October 27, 6:45-9 pm, at The Source, 1111 Carlisle SE with featured poet Merimeé Moffitt.

ALL donations gathered at this special Fixed and Free reading will be donated to the new Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program (APLP) which is planning to name Albuquerque's first Poet Laureate on April 1, 2012! So, please bring some extra money and give generously

Stewart Warren, one of the APL planning committee members, will begin the reading with a short introduction to the APLP as well as answer any questions you may have.

This is NOT a double feature, though we shall have an early start time of 6:45 pm, as previous publicity indicated.

Merimeé Moffitt is a very active Albuquerque poet, with activities ranging from: teaching outstanding poets at CNM (Jessica Helen Lopez and Zach Kluckman); hosting many poetry events at her lovely Nob Hill home; co-editing the monthly poetry broadsheet The Rag; being present at the early organizing meeting for Fixed and Free, and writing lots of very creative poems focused upon family, feminism, peace-and-justice.

Please come out and hear a marvelous, energetic, committed poet! I know that you will be delighted by her poetry, and while you are at it, we all would love to hear you read some of your own poems and/or poems by favorite poets. Also, please invite friends who love poetry.

Yours for Powerful Poetry,

Billy Brown, 401-8139

LAST MONTH: Thanks to Shirley Balance Blackwell for a delightful reading from her new book!
What a creative way to select which poems to read: she asked audience members to call out page numbers!
NEXT MONTH (November 24, 2011): Priscilla Baca y Candelaria will be our special featured poet. We are all looking forward to Priscilla's marvelous poetry!
2011 FIXED AND FREE – REMAINING LINEUP: (Suggested themes are NOT requirements, either of featured or open mic poets.), December 22, 2011, Rich Boucher and his guest – Celebrating Peace and Light

If you would like to be a featured poet at Fixed & Free in the future, please let Billy know.

Posted via email from Just Writing

Sunday Poetry: CoB Oct23 & Duende Oct30

2011-10-21T14:33:00.001-07:00

OCTOBER_30_DUENDE_POETRY_SERIES_OF_PLACITAS_READING.docx Download this file

Via Billy Brown (and Elaine Schwartz), Billy writes...

Friends, I am forwarding this as requested by Gary Brower, one of the Duende organizers. The featured poet, Howard McCord, is a major American poet. Please see the embedded flyer for details. This event looks so good, maybe I'll skip my Madrigal Singers rehearsal to attend!

Howard McCord

Embedding the flyer is an experiment. My primary blogging platform does not accept documents. The alternate platform does and, furthermore, will post to the other platform. The experiment is to post Billy's message, document and all, to the alternate with reposting command coded into "To:" line. My apologies if all this sounds unnecessarily convoluted. If it works, then I have a major blogging time saver. If not, the Duende flyer will arrive in a separate post.

BTW, Gary will also be reading at this Sunday's Church of Beethoven (COB), 10:30-11:30.

Gary's reading is part of an October-long set of features at COB: "Double Tongue: Theme and Variation," with the following simple premise: Poets respond with words to music. Gary will be responding to the piece, "John's Book of Alleged Dances," by John Adams.

Gary's ten short poems have the same titles Adams gave to his movements: Judah to Ocean, Toot Nipple, Dogjam, Pavane: She's so Fine, Rag the Bone, Habanera, Stubble Crochet, Hammer & Chisel, Standchen: The Little Serenade.

COB Co-Artistic Director James Shields describes Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Adams as "sort of the new Dean of American Music (Copeland being maybe the first dean). "John's Book of Alleged Dances" is like a set of musical haikus, ranging in character from whimsey to scathing sarcasm to intense sweetness and lyricism. Each movement is a short exploration of a single musical character ... from the funky to the sublime."

Posted via email from Just Writing

Wonderful Centipedes: The Poetry of Tomas Tranströmer

2011-10-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

Revisiting the 2011 Nobel and perhaps adding a poet to your transnational reading list, try this article from Berfrois, Niklas Schiöler on Tomas Tranströmer:

Franz Schubert’s handwritten sheet music

The opening lines of Tomas Tranströmer’s poem ”Schubertiana” from 1978 are:

In the evening darkness at a place outside New York, an outlook where
you can perceive eight million people’s homes in
a single glance.
The giant city there is a long flickering drift, a spiral galaxy
from the side.

But soon, after the snapshots of the grim and chilly human conditions of the giant city, the first part of the poem ends with these relief-giving lines:

I know too – without statistics – that Schubert’s being played in
some room there and for someone the tones at this moment
are more real than anything else.

Read the rest of Niklas Schiöler on Tomas Tranströmer. I still haven't gotten around to posting the promised "Tranströmer reader." This will help fill that procrastination gap. Mind you, I have yet to return to the Laureate reader (also promised). Whatever. Take what you can get and a look at the Berfrois poetry section while you are there. Besides, how can you resist a site subtitled "Intellectual Jousting in the Republic of Letters"?

'via Blog this'

Las Cruces October Lit Events

2011-10-04T17:25:00.001-07:00

A monthly list of Las Cruces literary events, carrying on the work begun by Wayne Crawford.

Note: There is no first Friday open reading at the Rio Grande this month.

Friday, October 7, Beverly Hills Hall, 150 N. Hermosa

La Sociedad Para Las Artes Annual Hunger Benefit.

Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door. Readings from "Beauty is a Verb"; followed by featured speaker Juliana Spahr. Silent auction, reception, cash bar, family oriented games.

Sunday, October 9, 1:00 p.m., Black Cat Books and Coffee, T or C

Open mic. Come before 1:00 to sign up if you'd like to read.

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30 p.m., Palacio Bar, Mesilla

Open mic hosted by one of the Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders folks. Reading begins about 8:00 p.m. Three poems or a piece of prose, up to five minutes.

Friday, October 21, 7:30 p.m., Hardman Hall

Distinguished writers series will feature Jose de Pierola, Peruvian fiction writer now teaching at UTEP. MFA Candidate reader will be Joshua Bowen.

Friday, October 21 through Sunday, October 23, Mikey's Place, 3100 Harrelson

World Premiere of Online, play by Alan Riehl. Times vary; call 312-8760 for info.

Kery's List is put together by K. Ellen Roberts Young. Send information to Keryslist [at] cs [dot] com.

ABQ Poetry Fundraiser TONIGHT Oct 4, 7pm at Winnings

2011-10-04T10:30:00.001-07:00

A last-minute notice via Billy Brown. I'm assuming "Winnnings" refers to Winning Coffee Co. Re-posting policy is WIGSIWIP or What I Get Sent Is What I Post (minus excess exclamation marks)

Celebrate Female Power! Come out TONIGHT to Winnings: help NM Nurse-Midwives raise money to enable them to better serve NM women on Medicaid.

See attached embedded image, click to view larger version. Is there an FB event page for this? If so sharing to the Picnic wall would be most appreciated. If not, then maybe next time.

Posted via email from Just Writing

Last Minute reminder - Poetry Workshop & Open Mic Tonight!

2011-10-02T13:33:00.001-07:00

Just a quick last minute reminder from Zach,

Join us tonight as we bring 3 of the most talented writers and performers in the nation to Albuquerque for a writing workshop and performance (plus an open mic for you all to share your work and maybe win $200 worth of prizes!)

I cannot say enough about my respects for these three women and their fire tongues~ poetry dances from them like small flames in the fireplace on winter evenings- you don't want to miss it!

$5 suggested donation each for the workshop and the showcase- a great way to spend your sunday and start the week off with verse!

Hope to see you there!

Writing Workshop with Suzi Q, Isis and Bianca Mikahn

Sunday, October 2nd
5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
The Projects
3614 High Street (one block east of Edith on Candelaria)

This is your chance to spend an afternoon with 3 of the most accomplished voices in poetry today. All three ladies are national and regional champions, as well as widely published poets who have shared the stage with everyone from Amiri Baraka to Gil Scott Heron and more. The ladies will be sharing their experience, perspective and passion for this all ages workshop for a mere $5 suggested donation. This is a great chance to support touring artists and gain some new insights into modern poetics at the same time! Be sure to stick around after for the showcase and People's Choice Open Mic.

3 Lady Champions from Denver (...And Their Words Were Dancing)

Sunday, October 2nd
7 pm to 9 pm
The Projects
3614 High Street (one block east of Edith on Candelaria)

3 of the nation's hottest poetic voices arrive in Albuquerque with a blend of passionate performance and lyrical craft like nothing you've seen before! Suzi Q, Isis and Bianca Mikahn will showcase their talents and new work for you. Opening for them is our own linguistic luminary, Jessica Helen Lopez. Poets are invited to sign up for the People's Choice Open Mic also, and share their work with the audience. Just for fun we will be offering a prize pack (worth over $200) full of art, poetry, free massage and more for the audience's favorite poem to be decided by a vote.

Come out and support these traveling artists~ I have no doubt you'll be blown away by the diversity and dynamics of the fire they bring and we're looking forward to hearing from you local poets as well!

Zachary Kluckman
Spoken Word Editor - The Pedestal Magazine
Associate Editor - The Journal of Truth and Consequence
Albuquerque Slam Poet Laureate Program Director

Incongruous Quarterly: Call for Submissions

2011-10-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Incongruous Quarterly is seeking submissions of unpublishable poetry, fiction and art for our fourth issue. The deadline for submissions is November 13^th, 2011.

Poems, fiction and art can be considered “unpublishable” for reasons like content, length, form and subject matter. But what about work that cannot be published in a print magazine? Where does it fit, and how?

We are seeking literary and artistic work that takes into account, and advantage of, the fact that we are an online publication rather than a printed one.

We’re interested in figuring out what we can offer our contributors and readers that a print publication might not be able to. We are not bound by concerns of page or word count; we can feature audio and video files, hyperlinks, any kind of image, downloadable files, interactive or collaborative works, as well as our usual, more basic format of simple text or image on a page. We love work that explores, exploits or messes with different media and the boundaries between them is awesome; work that doesn’t do any of that stuff (more “traditional” stories and poems) but is concerned with the same ideas or themes we’re interested in (innovation, communication, connection, alienation, etc.) is great too.

Above all, we are looking to learn things. Surprise us. Challenge us. Show us something new.

Fiction submissions should be sent to incongruousfiction@gmail.com
Poetry submissions should be sent to incongruouspoetry@gmail.com
Submissions of art, or queries of any kind, should be sent to incongruousquarterly@gmail.com

Love, IQ

www.incongruousquarterly.com/submissions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE Issue #4 – Call for Submissions

October Broadsided: Hot off the Virtual Presses

2011-10-01T15:50:00.001-07:00

Getting on top of October Broadsiding early, often and as redundantly as bearable.... one hopes there is a future for art and poetry spam. Coals to Newcastle again, I am starting with poets.

Broadsided October 1, 2011: 'Searching for Poems on Grief'

Dear Vectors and Friends of Broadsided,

We need your help! You're already reading and sharing Broadsided, which is critical to getting literature and art on the streets. But consider a donation.
Your gift of $5, $50, or even $500 will help immensely. Until now, Broadsided has been funded by its editors and run entirely by the donated time of its staff and contributors. We'd like to do more, and with your help, we can. Visit our help page and use the convenient PayPal button.

With Thanks, The Broadsided Editorial Team

"Searching for Poems on Grief"

Poem by Lisa Ortiz
Art by Kevin Morrow

~ Visit www.broadsidedpress.org to get the full broadside

Writer Lisa Ortiz has had poems appear in Zyzzyva, The Literary Review, Crab Creek Review and Comstock Review and have been featured on Verse Daily. She was a 2007 and 2008 recipient of Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes. Her chapbook Turns Out is available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

Artist Kevin Morrow received his MFA degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand where he studied in the Contemporary Maori Department (Te Toi Hou). Upon completion, Morrow returned to the U.S. to live and work in Austin, Texas where he spent a year or so concentrating on earthworks. Morrow now lives and works in New York.

Collaborators' Q&A:
...the poem gave me this country, barn, plains feel. I can't say exactly why that is, but that is the beauty of writing.

Read more of what the poet and artist had to say about their Broadsided experience ~ Visit www.broadsidedpress.org to get the full broadside

ON THE STREETS
Broadsided alongside graffiti, right where it belongs. Where do you Vectorize? Send us your pictures from Vectorhood!

Broadsided: Putting Literature and Art on the Streets - Vectorize Your Town!

Posted via email from Just Writing

Essay on Benjamin & the digital reproduction of literature

2011-09-30T21:50:00.001-07:00

Adam Fieled's essay, "Benjamin's Desktop: Unpacking the Phenomena of Literature Online," continues developing the ideas that originated in the Argotist piece "Composite Ideologies...", and engages Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), Barthes, and Bataille in the process.

via Poetics List. Check guidelines to subscribe and submit

Elaine's Excellent List: Calls for Submissions, etcetera

2011-09-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: TURNING THE PAGE, POEMS OF TRAUMA, HEALING, AND TRANSCENDENCE.

Tentative publication date, Spring 2012.

The Fearless Poetry Series is currently accepting submissions of poems and prose-poems for its next anthology. Full details and submission options www.fearlessbooks.com/Poetry.htm

***************************************

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES, A NON-PROFIT ARTS AND CULTURAL MAGAZINE

Their emphasis is on multiculturalism and diversity. They publish both established and emergent writers and artists. Interested in all disciplines of art; music, dance, conceptual art, video, etc.

The upcoming issue will include poetry, visual art, and criticism (short essays, interviews, reviews). Send to tribes.editor@gmail.com. For further information: http://www.tribes.org/web/

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: LEXI RUDNITSKY FIRST BOOK PRIZE IN POETRY

Award: $1,000, Publication by Persea Books

Also, the option of an all-expense-paid residency at Civitella Ranieri, a glorious artist colony in Umbria, Italy. For details and guidelines, visit Persea's web site.

http://www.perseabooks.com/poetryprize.php

perseabooks.brownrice.com

Persea Books, Independent publishers of fiction and nonfiction, New York

***************************************

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: FIFTH ANNUAL TROUBADOUR INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE

Prizes: 1st £2,500, 2nd £500, 3rd £250 & 20 prizes of £20 each

Plus a Spring 2012 Coffee-House-Poetry Season Ticket, a prizewinners' Coffee-House Poetry reading with Susan Wicks & David Harsent on Mon November 28, 2011

for all prize-winning poets

Deadline for Submissions: by Mon 17th Oct 2011

For submission guidelines: http://www.coffeehousepoetry.org/prizes

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: DEMETER PRESS IS SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR A COLLECTION ENTITLED DISABLED MOTHERS, EDITED BY GLORIA FILAX AND DENA TAYLOR

Deadline for abstracts (250 words): December 31, 2011

Deadline for completed pieces (up to 20 pages): October 15, 2012.

While there are several books on raising children with disabilities, the literature is scant on experiences of disabled women who are raising children OR the experiences of those parented by a woman with disabilities. This collection will contain stories by disabled mothers or their children as well as chapters of scholarly research and theorizing. Whether a birth mother, an adoptive mother, a foster mother, a co-mother, someone mothered by a disabled woman, or someone whose research explores disabled mothering, we invite you to submit to this collection. Email detaylor@cabrillo.edu for more information.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ARKTOI BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF RED HEN PRESS, BOOK BY LESBIAN POET

Deadline: November 30, 2011

They publish high-quality literary fiction and poetry by lesbian writers. Manuscripts should be between 50 to 80 pages and should be sent directly to the Editor, Eloise Klein Healy. eloisekleinhealy@mac.com

For guidelines: http://www.arktoi.com/submissions.shtml

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: OPEN CALL FOR AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRANS & GENDERQUEER POETRY

Deadline for Submissions: November 30, 2011

What to Submit: 7-10 pages of poetry, and a prose "poetics" statement. The book will feature the work from approximately 35 poets and will be the first anthology to foreground the poetic writings of trans and genderqueer authors.

Where to Submit: email us at transanthology@gmail.com

More information at http://tendenciespoetics.com

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: 2012 SAN FRANCISCO BOOK FESTIVAL

Grand prize $1500 cash and a flight to San Francisco for our gala awards ceremony and day festival.

Deadline submissions in each category must be received by the close of business on April 25, 2012.

This competition honors the best books of the spring season. They will consider non-fiction, fiction, biography/autobiography, children's books, compilations/anthologies, teenage, how-to, cookbooks, science fiction, audio/spoken word, history, wild card, gay, photography/art, poetry, unpublished, travel and spiritual works.

For guidelines: http://www.diyconvention.com. Scroll down on the right hand side of the website to The 2012 San Francisco Book Festival.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: FOR POETRY SEEKS NEW POEMS

Work from new or established poets appreciated.

Jackie Marcus, Editor jack@forpoetry.com

ForPoetry.com

http://www.ForPoetry.com

For visionary poets dedicated to protecting nature.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: POETRY ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS ABOUT SISTERS

Deadline, November 15, 2011

Liz Nakazawa is compiling the poems that can be in any form. She is looking for submissions of up to one page. Previously published poems okay. Liz is an experienced anthologist (she edited Deer Drink the Moon, an anthology of Oregon poets several years ago). Please contact Liz for questions and submissions. liznakazawa@gmail.com

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WINGBEATS: A BOOK FEATURING EXERCISES AND PRACTICE IN POETRY

Fifty-eight poets, including Ellen Bass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Scott Wiggerman, Matthew Zapruder, Georgia Popoff, Ellaraine Lockie, Annie Finch, David Kirby, and many more, have contributed sixty-one exercises ranging from quick and simple to involved and multi-layered. In seven chapters, ranging from "Springboards to Imagination" to "Chancing the Accidental" to "Complicating the Poem," each exercise includes not only clear step-by-step instructions but numerous poems that exemplify the successful completion of the exercise. The book includes exercises for working in pairs and/or groups, for incorporating research and/or the Internet, for writing outdoors, for creating a hands-on experience. Of course, traditional poetic techniques covering metaphor, persona, forms, and revision are also included.

Edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen

Dos Gatos Press, http://dosgatospress.org/?page_id=13#1

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THE MACHU PICCHU WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP JOURNEY WITH ELIZABETH BECKER

August 15 -December 15, 2011 (4 on-line sessions)

Travel: October 14-26

Join former Wednesday poetry student, Elizabeth Becker and a group of outstanding women business and community leaders on the journey of a lifetime. 12 women, 12 days in Peru hiking the hidden trail to Machu Picchu on the trek National Geographic Traveler calls one of the Top 50 Tours of a Lifetime. Program convening now with on-line meetings, coaching, hikes, exclusive meetings with business leaders – and lots of poetry! 2 spots available. For more information visit: www.beckercompany.com

Elizabeth is donating a portion of the revenues to the colorectal cancer Cause. Anyone who mentions Ellen Bass or the colorectal Cancer cause gets $500 off.

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NEW ONLINE COURSE: WRITING AS A WAY OF HEALING OURSELVES & OTHERS

September 12 – November 8, 2011

Through dialogue and written work, we'll explore together why—and how-- writing is healing. Taught by Sharon Bray, Ed.D., author of When Words Heal and A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Breast Cancer. Join us and discover how writing can be a way of healing, a powerful way of expressing our humanity. Visit www.tlanetwork.org to register.

Transformative Language Arts Network, http://www.tlanetwork.org/online-courses/writing-as-a-way-of-healing-ourselves-others/

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ImmaStar relaunch, Permanent Ink series & more

2011-09-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

Immastar creator / publisher / editor / writer, Carlos Contreras introduces the relaunch, explaining,

www.immastar.com [the web site] has gone through a re-design, and is now a blog site. I am hoping that those of you out there interested in what's gong on in OUR community, will visit the site, and or subscribe. Those that subscribe will recieve an instant (or semi-instant) email gift from lil ol me! I'll be well, take care and write on!

I've been waiting for this since the first article I read about and blogged Urban Verbs. So I subscribed for email updates even though I already have the blog on my rss reader... by they way, does that mean two email gifts? Over on the relaunched blog (a lot of poetry there you'll want to read), C tells us more about Immastar and himself before introducing Permanent Ink, his latest project. So many projects already: the scholarship project is on my list for regular nudges. At this rate, I'm going to need a checklist just to keep up.

Permanent Ink Poetry Series – coming soon!

That’s right, there will be a new poetry show in town. I know, I know, some of you are probably thinking, “more poetry, in Albuquerque!” Well, the answer is, yes, more poetry! The Permanent Ink Poetry Series is coming to a local tattoo shop in town. Myself, Carlos Contreras, in cooperation with Jespah Torres, owner and curator of Archetype Dermagraphics Tattoo Studio and Gallery (Lomas and Adams), will be organizing a series of readers, hopefully before the end of the year.

This project has been a brain child of Jespah’s and mine, for quite some time now. It is time to bring it to light. So stay tuned, and stand by my friends, before the year of 2012, we will have at least one instance of PIP. It will take place on a night to be determined, and will co-host some of the “usual suspects.” Expect, Hakim Bellamy to be in tha’ house! Colin Diles Hazelbaker will join us from time to time; and of course, when he is willing, shop owner Jespah Torres will grace us with some words, and verse!

PIP will be a venue where the audience will get an intimate window into the lives of artists who are writing and working in Albuquerque, and around the nation. This venue is small, and inviting. It has art and life on and in the walls. The staff is kind, funny, engaged, and interested in building something to be sustained in Albuquerque. Dermagraphics just celebrated their 1-yr anniversary as a shop in Albuquerque, and is now looking to step it up a notch and offer something new to our community.

If you have an interest in being a PIP featured performer, please contact me. The info to do so can be found in the BIO/CV section of this site. PIP will be a “pay a small fee at the door” event, in order to encourage our artists to continue doing what they do - eating Ramen, and wowing crowds (myself included, love me some Ramen, LOL). Merchandise will be for sale at every PIP event, and those that attend are encouraged to support by buying a piece of poetry history. Thanks for your attention and stay tuned!

C

photo by Barry McCormick, El Palacio Magazine

Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Oct 1 deadline

2011-09-27T15:35:00.001-07:00

Just in from Elaine Schwartz

2011 JOY HARJO POETRY PRIZE & RICK DEMARINIS SHORT FICTION PRIZE

$1250 1^ST and $250 2^ND Plus Publication

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JUDGES:

Alison Hawthorne Deming/ POETRY
Luis Alberto Urrea/ FICITON

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GENERAL GUIDELINES:
Contest Deadline is October 1^st. Send up to 3 poems (100 line limit/one poem per page) or a short story (5000 word limit/double-spaced) in 12 point font
Unpublished work only: no prior ezine or paper publication allowed. No author name may appear anywhere on manuscript. Enter as often and in as many genres as you wish.
Multiple submissions are permitted, but writers must inform us of acceptances elsewhere. Finalists considered for publication.
All winners published in CUTTHROAT and announced on website, in POETS & WRITERS and in the AWP CHRONICLE. For further information, go to: www.cutthroatmag.com or call 970-903-7914. No relative or staff member or students of judges for CUTTHROAT are eligible to enter .

Online: Go to our website, www.cutthroatmag.com   and click on the contest button. On the contest page are guidelines. Click on our submissions manager to enter your contest submission. Pay online. There is a $17 reading fee.

By Mail: Include a cover sheet with name, address, phone & email, SASE for announcement of winners and a $15 reading fee per submission made to Raven’s Word Writers Center postmarked by Oct. 1, 2011. See our web site for complete guidelines: www.cutthroatmag.com

Posted via email from Just Writing

Superdooper Superhero Poetry Contest

2011-09-26T10:43:00.001-07:00

Superdooper Superhero Poetry Contest... Write now!

Local Poets Guild is sponsoring a poetry competition in conjunction with 516 ARTS and their exhibition: Superheroes: Icons of Good, Evil & Everything in Between which opens Saturday, October 1, 6-8pm.

Hosts Hakim Bellamy, Gary Jackson, and Lisa Gill correlated five superheroes with different categories of poetry and invite ALBUQUERQUE-AREA POETS to submit poems on the themes (listed below) to localpoetsguild@yahoo.com or lisa@516arts.org by October 1st at 5 pm. The prizes will be fantabulous, perhaps comix-al and include participation in a costumes-encouraged 516 WORDS: Superheroes Poetry, which will take place on Halloween weekend.

HERE ARE YOUR CATEGORIES:

PRIZE #1: Shade the Changing Man Award will be offered to: The best GLBTQ poem

PRIZE #2: The Flash Award will be offered to: The best super-short superhero poem

Prize #3: The Dynamic Duo Award will be offered to: The best collaborative duet on any subject

Prize #4: The Captain America Award will be offered to: The best historical tribute poem

Prize #5 The Dr. Doom Award will be offered to: The most villainous poem

Get writing! Enjoy! This show will be a blast and we hope you’ll chime in… Remember Deadline Oct 1, show October 28. Ability to be present at the show is required for receiving an award –LG

[All images are taken from Wikipedia and are believed to qualify as fair use under United States Copyright Law by engaging in critical commentary on the works of art in question and the artists]

Hakim sent this so visit him @ WWW.HAKIMBE.COM

Posted via email from Just Writing

NM Updates: 100 Thousand Poets for Change Event

2011-09-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Bringing us up to date on plans for #100T Poets & this weekend's #NMpoetry mega-event, Zach K writes

Just wanted to hit you with a couple of exciting announcements and updates as we get closer to the global phenomenon of 100 Thousand Poets for Change ~

First off, be sure to visit our local website: it has the schedule and details of what's going down in Albuquerque and the rest of NM, including Santa Fe and the Tijeras Poets Picnic sponsored by the NM State Poetry Society

All weekend we are hosting a food drive and donation drive, so please bring non-perishable food items, men’s coats, blankets, white tube socks or other clothing for distribution through Roadrunner Food Bank and St. Martin’s. We are also accepting cash gifts throughout the weekend to be distributed back into the community.
If you haven’t seen the website or have had trouble with the menus- click on Schedule for event outlines and details. Click on the Saturday button for the list of performers, bios and workshop schedules. Please arrive a few minutes early for workshops and be sure to sign in so we have a record for the future!

We have some great workshops coming into development that I think you will love with facilitators like Debbi Brody, E.A. Tony Mares, Mudman Johnson, and many more. So plan to spend a couple hours at the Projects taking these free workshops and immersing yourself in the social dialogue!

Secondly, we have just partnered with MoveOn, a tremendous non-partisan political change group that many of you may already know. What this mean is that they will be joining us for our Game Changer event on Friday September 23 (a lead in event). For those of you who don't know, we will be building a giant living chess board out of poets on the Civic Plaza from 6 to 7 pm. Poets will read from their work and create a striking visual metaphor..and MoveOn will be there leading a rally and supporting us as well.

We're expecting a huge turn-out for this event so poets should expect to have their work heard by a lot of people, meaning we can reach a lot of people at once and share some insights, solutions and hope for sustainability and peace.

I am asking poets and audience, anyone who is willing to do so, to dress in black or white, so we can really turn the levels up and make this metaphor as stunning as possible. MoveOn will also be around on Saturday with great insights into the political and social changes happening around the state and the world.

If you want to participate or help with donations and still haven't signed up, please contact me immediately! Remember, all these events are free of charge...so bring a pen and a mindful heart and join us for the largest poetry reading in history and a beautiful day of community!

Last but not least - we will be gathering a collection of poems for the website, which will become part of the historical record through Stanford University so if you have a poem about change to share with the world, send it to me at zgkluckman@msn.com with the subject line “Poem for the Record - Your Name”

Zachary Kluckman, Artistica
Spoken Word Editor - The Pedestal Magazine
Associate Editor - The Journal of Truth and Consequence
Albuquerque Slam Poet Laureate Program Director

September Broadsided Collaboration: Vectorize!

2011-09-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

Broadside: 'Dear Johnny'

Dear Vectors and Friends of Broadsided,

Thank you for your feedback last month - it sounds like many of you are excited about the idea of a Flickr account for Broadsided where you can share your Vectorizing adventures. We think it's a great idea! After our summer hiatus, we'll be opening the door for submissions again on the 15th of this month. Please send good writing - yours or that of people you know - our way.

With Thanks, The Broadsided Editorial Team

Download the Broadsided fileto print & post (629kb PDF)

"Dear Johnny"

Poem by Angela Veronica Wong

Art by Se Thut Quon

Writer Angela Veronica Wong is the author of two chapbooks, 'All th Little Red Girls' on Flying Guillotine Press and 'to know this' on Cy Gist Press. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, and Vanitas. She lives in Manhattan.

Artist Meghan Keane's formative training includes fashion design and architecture/i.d. studies at Parsons School of Design, drawing at Musee du Louvre, and painting at Universidad de San Francisco de Quito. Keane exhibits nationally and internationally. Keane is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio (meghankeanestudio.com). She is also currently a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

Collaborators' Q&A:
...I think that the artistic response showed me how much of the poem has imagery of parting, of coming together, of lifelines and the uncertainty of reaching out. The image brings to mind roads and pathways, of course, but also tributaries, roots, veins, the heart...

Read more of what the poet and artist had to say about their Broadsided experience and visit www.broadsidedpress.org to get the full broadside.

ON THE STREETS

Broadsided at the door of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Where do you Vectorize? Send us your pictures from Vectorhood!

Local Poets Guild: Sunday and Beyond

2011-09-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

Lisa Gill is here with an update and says hello from Local Poets Guild. There's a lot to tell you about the coming of months ~ so this is as succinct as possible but with links to blog posts for more information. Passing on the usual graphics too since I'm already late getting this out...well, maybe just a couple so the post won't go out into cyberspace buck naked

P(EAR) (sorry - late but read about it and plan to make the next one)

First, I want to invite you to come out and hear Santa Fe poet Barbara Rockman speak alongside 17-year-old ABQ poet Reed Adair Bobroff for P(EAR) poetics and poems at Acequia Booksellers Sunday Sept 4th at 3:00 pm. See

EAST OF EDITH

We have also fully launched featured readers at our Monday night open mic, East of Edith. Our organizing committee (to plan featured readers and guest hosts) consists of Eric Bodwell, Jennifer Krohn, Cathy Arellano and Lisa Gill. Next up: we feature Aaron Trumm with his band on September 5th at 7:00pm at the Projects 3614 High Street NE. More here. And September 12th will be Don McIver with a one-man show about being a poet.

THE ROOST

The Roost collaboration with Local Poets Guild continues and this Sunday features Now Playing (a trio) alongside Katrina Guarascio, Jessica Helen Lopez, and Zachary Kluckman. A fun series which has just reached the halfway point. See

SUPERHEROES POETRY COMPETITION

We are happy to have a solid partnership working in an advisory capacity for 516 ARTS, and this next exhibition cycle we will be sponsoring a writing competition related to superheroes. Deadline Oct.1. For more info, read up here

WORLD MUSIC AND LANGUAGES
For Globalquerque, we are offering "Hand-to-Tongue: A Celebration of Threatened Languages" featuring Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Reed Adair Bobroff, and Tanaya Winder at 1 pm on Saturday September 17th during the free global fiesta. Our event takes place in the Wells Fargo Theater at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. This event is fully interpreted into American Sign Language. See the Globalquerque page for information about the day and click around to see the whole amazing weekend of world music.

BIONEERS IN 'BURQUE

With the help of Yasmeen Najmi and Lisa Gill, LPG will be participating in Burque Bioneers and offering a small taste of a form called the Poet's Diner, which Lisa Gill developed in 1995. Other poetry components will also be happening at the conference Oct 21 and 22. Tickets are on sale now. See

DOUBLE TONGUE AT CHURCH

In October, Local Poets Guild has a collaboration called Double Tongue with Church of Beethoven which features five poets writing directly in response to the music and includes Amy Beeder, Jennifer Frank, Tanaya Winder, Gary Brower, and Hakim Bellamy. This project is funded by a grant from New Mexico Humanities Council and for more information watch the website. (We will also be publishing a broadside for that, and at the end of the month, there will be a panel discussion.)

TRANSITIONS

We are undergoing some transitions and will be changing email listserves and creating a new website in the next couple of months. Consequently, expect some changes, including how you receive your newsletter, as well as small (and large) shifts to mission and website. We are also bringing someone on board to handle bookings for our LAND IS retreat, and will be changing the application process to quarterly within the next month. Read more about what's up in general.

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT...
and we hope to keep finding ways to nurture poetry in Albuquerque...

Sunday Sept 11, 3pm: Duende Poetry Series Reading

2011-09-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

at the Anasazi Fields Winery in Placitas Village presents Alvaro Cardona-Hine and Amalio Madueno

The third reading of 2011 sponsored by the Duende Poetry Series (which still does not have a web site to call its own) of Placitas will be Sunday, September 11th 3pm, at the local Anasazi Fields Winery. The featured poets will be two of New Mexico's major writers: Alvaro Cardona-Hine of Truchas and Amalio Madueno of Embudo.

Alvaro Cardona-Hine, born in 1926, now runs the Alvaro Cardona-Hine Gallery in Truchas. He has published nineteen books of poetry, prose and literary translations, and he is also a playwright, composer and a visual artist. He is, in fact, a sort of Renaissance Man and publishes both in Spanish and English. His poetry has appeared in many well known poetry journals and anthologies such as Contemporary World Poetry; The Pushcart Prize Anthology (IV).

He has also been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Minnesota State Arts Council. Books include: The Gathering Wave, Agapito, Four Poems about Sparrows; A History of Light; Spring has Come (A translation of Pre-Renaissance Spanish poetry); The Curvature of the Earth which he published with his friend, the late poet Gene Frumkin (UNM Press, 2007); and a memoir, Thirteen Tangos for Stravinsky (link to interview about memoir). Do not miss Alvaro. This is a spectacular event.

Amalio Madueno lives on the Embudo River near where it connects with the Rio Grande. He was associated with The Taos Poetry Circus during the entire 1990s, and performs his work in readings throughout the West. He has published in many poetry journals. His last book, Lost in the Chamiso, was published by Wild Embers Press (2006). His next book, Spider Road, is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in El Paso. He is the founder of Ranchos Press and the Border Poets Consortium, and grew up on the U.S. side of the Tijuana/San Ysidro, California border, and considers himself a fronterizo (border) poet. His latest book is Corua, which, like many of his works, is in a mixture of Spanish and English. He directs a new poetry series at the Vivac Winery in Embudo. Amalio is refreshing, funny, exact, satiric, playful and important as a poet in our state.

For all Duende readings, wine, free snacks, and nonalcoholic drinks are available to the audience. The event is free, though we encourage donations for the poets. For more information about the event, contact Jim Fish at the winery (505) 867-3062 or by email at fish@anasazifieldswinery.com.

The Duende Poetry Series (pdf) of Placitas sponsors four readings a year and the last reading of this year will be held in October (details forthcoming at a later date). To reach the winery, turn onto Camino de los Pueblitos from Highway 165 in the old village of Placitas, across from the Presbyterian Church, drive past two stop signs, and then turn left into the winery parking lot. From outside Placitas, take I-25 to Exit 242, drive six miles to Placitas, and follow Camino de los Pueblitos through two stop signs to the winery.

People Doing it Right: The TouchPress Waste Land Poem/App

2011-09-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

Take an app-walk through TS Eliot's Wasteland. Sybils aren't what they used to be. Tag this "poetry and technology" or lit-tech ~ both zeugmas (from the Greek: ζεῦγμα, meaning "yoke") , unlikely yokings. A blog about legal education and a free online poetry workshop (members only) both sail cyberspace under the ζεῦγμα flag. Worst Prof (not) asks....

Have y’all seen this app? It’s beautiful, and I know that because it enchanted a programmer AND a literature buff simultaneously....

Some say keeping literature cheap is the key to its survival; I don’t entirely agree. This app feels like the perfect literature delivery system for today’s reader / vaguely interested browser under thirty.

Read the rest of People Doing it Right: The TouchPress Waste Land Poem/App and so much more at Worst Professor Ever (not really but a great title)

More Calls: Deadlines Sep25-Dec15

2011-09-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

Whistling Fire

Submissions are still open for our October Guest Editor who will be accepting nonfiction until September 25. To find out more about both Guest Editors please visit www.whistlingfire.com. November Guest Editor, Albert Abonado (submission Deadline: October 23, 2011) writes...

Dear Writers

The commonly held perception of the writer is that of the soloist, operating inisolation, probably dressed in black with a bottle of whiskey within arm'sreach. The act of writing is often perceived at its most romantic a pursuitoften done best in solitude so that a person can assert one's independentvoice.

But the truth for me is that writing is as much a social act as it is aindividual one, a product of our myriad influences, from stock market crashes tothe song a father sings to his daughter to an ant floating on a leaf in apuddle. What about those writers who take this notion of writing as a social actone step further, who choose instead to emphasize a sense of community andeschew this tradition of individuality by working collaboratively with others toproduce a poem? The Surrealists are famous for employing this tactic, but othermore contemporary examples exist: Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton, JohnGallaher and G.C. Waldrep.

Ms. Duhamel talks about a third voice, "a voice that is neither Maureen's normine, but rather some poetic hybrid." This month I'm interested in poetrywritten by two or more authors. No particular theme required. Send me poems that neither you nor your co-author(s) can claim as being wholly your own, butinstead appears to exist outside of you - a mysterious, strangely cohesive,other voice that contains its own sensibilities. I'm open to any subject. Sopass the bottle of whiskey around to your friends and let's see what happens.

Good Luck!
Albert Abonado

Rules: Accepting poetry ONLY! Please send your submissions to whistlingfire@gmail.com. Please include the words "November Editor" in your subject line. No more than five submission per writing duo or group, individuals can submit multiple times with different writing partners. Must be sent as an attachment (MS WORD preferred). Simultaneous submissions accepted. Previously published work is also allowed as long as the author retains the rights. Please include a short third person bio for each author. Submissions Close: October 23rd

About the Editor: Albert Abonado lives in Rochester, NY, the 10th smartest city in the US with his wife who is unhappy with the fact that he is allergic to cats. He is the Associate Director of Marketing and Production for BOA Editions. He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, Rattle, Anti-, Gargoyle, Washington Square, New Ohio Review, No Tell Motel, and The Collagist

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Missouri Review's Jeffrey E. Smith Editor's Prize Competition, Deadline: October 1, 2011

The Missouri Review wants your best fiction, poetry, and nonfiction for our 21st annual Editor's Prize competition! We offer over $15,000 in awards. First-place winners in each category receive $5,000, publication in The Missouri Review, and paid travel to our prizewinners' gala in the spring. Select runners up will also receive cash prizes and have their work published in The Missouri Review. Past winning entries have been selected for the Best American series.

Your submission fee includes a one-year (4 issue) subscription to The Missouri Review. Subscriptions are available in print and digital. Our high-quality, downloadable digital subscription includes a full audio edition of each issue.

Submissions: simultaneous submissions accepted. Winners announced in early January, 2012. For more information, a printable entry form, or online submission, please see submissions on our website:

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Sliver of Stone is proud to announce that its third issue is now available online. We are a bi-annual, online literary magazine dedicated to the publication of work from both emerging and established poets, writers, and visual artists from all parts of the globe.

Authors featured in this issue include Lori Jakiela (nonfiction) , Geoffrey Philp (poetry), and Preston Allen (fiction). Interviews with Louis Lowy and Lynne Barrett.

Check out our past contributors, such as Kim BarDec15nes, John Dufresne, and Denise Duhamel (Issue One); Allison Joseph, Matthew Sharpe, and Dan Wakefield (Issue Two); and many talented others. Past interviews with Susan Orlean, Les Standiford, Mark Vonnegut, and Dan Wakefield.

We're now looking for submissions for our fourth issue! DEADLINE: December 15, 2011

Las Cruces Literary Events

2011-09-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

This list of literary and related events is an effort to carry on the work of Wayne Crawford on behalf of the literary community of Las Cruces and beyond by K. Ellen Roberts Young (hence, Kery’s List). We hope to expand Las Cruces and other "south of 'burque" coverage.

Friday, September 2, Rio Grande Theater, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Open Mic for poets and prose writers. Bring 3 poems or five minutes of prose. Ellen Young with be MC.

Friday, September 9, Hardman Hall, NMSU, 7:30 p.m. Sociedad Para Las Artes reading will feature Lee K. Abbott, fiction writer who has published seven collections of short stories, including The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, Living After Midnight, and Wet Places at Noon. The MFA Candidate reader will be Floydd Michael Elliott.

Sunday, September 11, Black Cat Books and Coffee, T or C, NM, 1:00 p.m. Open Reading, hosted alternately by Terry Blanchard and Jeff Luftus.

Please send information for future events to: KerysList@cs.com

Calls for Submissions

2011-08-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

+ Online sources to subscribe to and render this feature obsolete:

P&W Magazine
Buffalo ~ Poetics List (not just calls but interesting discussions too)
Creative Writing Opportunities (Announcement List, YahooGroups)
The Poetry Kit
places for writers
NewPages Classifieds ~ Calls

Got suggestions? PS: we want to sites for prose calls. Lists, groups or online pubs/blogs to recommend? Please share.

Until then…

Seeking 9/11 Anniversary Poems : Your reflections, a decade later
The deadline for submissions to the Alibi haiku contest has passed, but there’s still a chance to get your words out. The Alibi is seeking short poems about 9/11: tributes, reactions, aftermath and related angles. Editorial staff will choose a smattering of the best and publish them in the haiku issue, which happens to come out a few days before the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. Email your poems to summer@alibi.com by Saturday, Sept. 3.

The Rag, an Albuquerque monthly poetry broadside which has been distributed free at coffee houses and bookstores throughout the city for over 10 years, is seeking submissions.

Guidelines: Poems should be no longer than thirty lines including stanza breaks. Previously published poems are OK. Rhyming poetry is not generally published excerpt for form poems. We are looking for new poets as well as previously published poets. Email submissions to mtheragabq@yahoo.com or snail to Karin Bradberry, 11322 Campo del Sol NE, Albuquerque, NM 87123. Authors receive 2 copies of the Rag as payment for published poems. Subscriptions also available for $15/yr. Send check to Karin Bradberry at above address.

The P&J's Nuclear Resistance Calendar deadline has been extended to September 9, 2011. Send submissions and questions to lovarchy@gmail.com

Please spread the word immediately to your circles of creative folks who'd like to submit their work for this publication. It will be printed by the end of October, ready to help everyone organize their schedules for 2012 and put a peaceful end to the nuclear age eventually.

Submission Guidelines

Submit a .jpg of art/photography by email with size, medium and date produced.
For the poetry, please state the year the poem was penned.
For art or poetry, PLEASE include the artist's/poet's name.
The 2012 day-planner will have a focus on the disasters of 2011 as a reminder of the work needed to achieve a nuclear-free future. (Disasters of Fukushima/nuclear power plants; March 2011, Las Conchas/ NM pueblos; June-August 2011, & potential East Coast USA/nuclear; September 2011). This year's calendar is dedicated to Tony GA, Don TH and Ed Grothus. Examples include an on-line version, 2006; Info/art from a few years ago; last year's Catholic Worker cover

Please spread the word immediately to your circles of creative folks who'd like to submit their work for this publication. It will be printed by the end of October, ready to help everyone organize their schedules for 2012 and put a peaceful end to the nuclear age eventually.

Anderbo Novel Contest Deadline September 21st, 2011

ANDERBO SEEKS NOVELIST for its 2nd Biannual No-Fee Novel Contest, The Mercer Street Books Fiction Prize. Anderbo.com wishes to post up to the first 36 manuscript pages of an unpublished novel on its website by December 21st, 2011 for at least the following six months. We will look at the FIRST 36 PAGES (up to 9,000 words) of your e-manuscript submitted to editors@anderbo.com. com and decide within 60 days of its arrival if we want to see more.

YOU MUST SUBMIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT ENTRY WITHIN THE BODY OF THE E-MAIL—NO ATTACHMENTS! THERE IS NO READING FEE and all literary rights will remain with the author. NO NOVEL SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER SEPTEMBER 21st, 2011. This contest is not open to anyone previously published on anderbo.com at any time.

This Anderbo No-Fee Novel Contest will be judged by the anderbo.com editorial staff; Anderbo guarantees to choose and use one manuscript-excerpt. There will be an honorarium of $500 paid by the sponsor of this contest, Mercer Street Books & Records, to the winning author upon publication on Anderbo.

Writing Class: Home(y)lands at UNM

2011-08-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

Something resembling a "publishing policy" is gradually shaping up. Writing classes, workshops, calls are blog fodder. The last time someone had the temerity to ask about policy,

I described it as a "grey goose that wakes up in a new world every morning." Just when I think there might be one, it changes on me.

To each medium, go inherent limitations, built-in advantages and conventions. Picnic has three ~ five if I count the calendar and static page. That complicates policy." And may more if I add another application (yes, under consideration). Each overlaps but not completely and has different restraints, requirements, genre conventions. Imagine the animated gif of a
drunk Venn Diagram. I'll try for a more sober and coherent in a separate post.

Recently, I blogged Bill Nevins' creative writing class that starts Monday at UNM Valencia.
This one came in my reader. I also posted Zach's call for submissions. Writing class or course, workshop, calls for submissions, conferences, detailed event descriptions and reviews all need more information ~ and space, possibly a link of their own ~ than fit in 140 characters or even the 500+ character status update on Facebook. Oddly, comments have no limit and now even format/embed links with an image. Events with pages are easy to share and likely to end up on Facebook. Overlap.

Thank you Kenn Rodriguez, Richard Vargas, Hakim Be and others for those handy dandy event page and ready to post copy time savers. Likewise to Miriam Sagan and Lisa Gill for easy to share

blog post pages. Anything I have to hunt down and/or download and reformat takes more time. Come either a time crunch or bout of absent-mindedness, more likely to be overlooked. Nothing personal... just sayin'

At Local Poets Guild, Lisa Gill writes about Cathy Arellano’s upcoming NM creative writing class

'I’m a fan of Cathy Arellano’s poetry, love her energy and heart, and am so pleased to learn that she’ll be teaching a class at UNM. This is the woman who blogs under the title: Home(y)lands. I’m psyched she has this opportunity to teach and know every student will benefit tremendously–and enjoy. You can also check out Cathy’s personal blog .

I also checked out the syllabus and give it a huge, holy wow, this looks great.

Cathy writes:
What makes one place just a house and another a home?
What happened there? What was found there? Who knows?
What are you willing to do for the place you love?

Now is the time to write those stories you keep telling.

Now is the time to write those stories you won’t tell, but they keep haunting you.

The class is titled (W)riting Home: Place and Ritual in Creative Writing and Literature and check out this reading list.

A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet – Jimmy Santiago Baca
Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works – Levi Romero
The Toughest Indian in the World – Sherman Alexie
Their Dogs Came with Them – Helena Maria Viramontes
Watsonville: Some Place Not Here – Cherríe Moraga (in town for Cultural Conference)
In Mad Love and War – Joy Harjo

WRITE YOUR OWN POEMS AND STORIES!
The course is divided into five thematic sections: Enchantment and Disenchantment; Urban, Rural, Rez; Changes and Outside Influences; Personal and Political; and War at Home.
Thursdays, 5:30-8:00 pm in DSH 234 / 3 units / University of New Mexico, Fall 2011 / CHMS 393 Section 7 / English 315 Section 1 /American Studies 310 Section 7
Home(y)lands Class at UNM

Call for Submissions: Artistica

2011-08-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

photo from The Pedestal Magazine

Just wanted to let you know about my new project (yes, another one!). I hope to see your stories and poems being submitted so here's the idea: I am starting a small 'zine called Artistica and I am excited about including work from everyone in the state!

The 'zine will be a small, chapbook sized publication, printed on 24 weight paper. It will include art, poetry, flash fiction and/or fiction installments and comics or graphic fiction - mostly in black and white, but with some color, especially on the cover. The theme is very loose, but think back to the underground art zines of the 60s and 70's.

Guidelines

Previously published work and simultaneous submissions are welcome!
Fiction should be between one and two pages in most cases.
Longer stories we're willing to print in installments like the old dime story/pulp fiction model.
Submit up to three stories for consideration.
Poetry should be no more than one page, roughly 30 -35 lines.
Submit up to five poems.
Simultaneous submissions and previously published work are fine, but please indicate where the poem appeared previously so we can credit them.
Artwork and comic strip submissions should be sent in jpeg or jpg format and we prefer the resolution to be at least 300 dpi.
Submit up to five pieces for considration in the issue or for the cover.
Black and white preferred for the interior and color for the cover.

We'll be reading submissions continually but the deadline for the first issue is August 25th so we can produce the first one by September 1st. After that the zine will come out on a monthly basis.

Contributors recieve one free copy and the zines will be distributed throughout the state, mainly in Albuquerque. We will hand them out at readings and venues as a way to promote the artists and writers in the state.

Questions, comments and alien propaganda should be sent to me directly at zgkluckman@msn.com, as should all submissions.

Thank you all and I hope to see your work soon!

Light, love and respect,

Zach

Zachary Kluckman
Spoken Word Editor - The Pedestal Magazine
Associate Editor - The Journal of Truth and Consequence
Albuquerque Slam Poet Laureate Program Director

Creative Writing Class: UNM Valencia

2011-08-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

English 224: Introduction to Creative Writing with Writing for Film is a three credit course offered by UNM Valencia Campus in Tome this Fall term, Aug 22-Dec 5 2011.

The class meets each Monday 5-8:45 pm. No previous writing experience is required; all level writers are welcome. The course is in a supportive workshop format and taught by Bill Nevins, an Albuquerque based film maker, journalist and published author of poetry and fiction.

There is still space for a few more students to join this class. Questions? wnevins@unm.edu.

Poem of the week: When summer's end is nighing by AE Housman

2011-08-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in not sharing the Guardian Poem of the week more often, let alone recommending it and the Guardian's poetry pages to all and sundry. With local poetry news and announcements covered by @PWPicnic, Picnic on Facebook and the poetry calendar that I have the best of intentions to keep up, I hope (another good intention) to devote more plog (= poetry blog) space to such and similar according to my mood and fancy. I started a list of that but it was running too long and without the saving grace of coherence, so I relegated it to the in-progress/under-consideration file. Suggestions invited.

And now to Houseman, followed by a detailed analysis, because a) I too am aging, b) and mostly Welsh (Dylan Thomas series can't be far behind), c) summer is ending, and d) who among has not long ago memorized a Houseman poem. Mine was "when I was one and twenty," so "Summer's end" makes a fitting counterpoint. Impatient, I reversed the Guardian Poem of the Week's usual order to start with poem rather than analysis.

summer's end, flickriver, Wales

XXXIX (from Last Poems by A.E. Houseman)

When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.
The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.
From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.
And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.
The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of those.
They came and were and are not
And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.
So here's an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer's parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.

Analysis by Carol Rumens

A characteristically melancholy lyric on ageing, Housman's huge skill brings memorable music to his theme

This week's poem is my favourite of AE Housman's superbly melancholy lyrics. The poem beginning 'When summer's end is nighing' is numbered but untitled, like all the others in the 1922 collection, Last Poems, Housman compiled and published this collection specifically so it could be read by Moses Jackson, the object of his life-long, probably unrequited love, who, by this time, lay terminally ill in Canada.

The metre is typical of Housman's most sigh-laden style: iambic trimeter, with alternating feminine and masculine endings. His stanza form of choice is often the quatrain, rhyming a/b/c/b or a/b/a/b. But, in the current poem, he expands the a/b/c/b unit to five lines. And his 'b' rhyme gets a further rhyme, so each stanza, in effect, ends on a couplet. This extra rhyme-line gives him scope to widen the thought or heighten the emotion of the particular stanza, and to avoid the patness that a neat quatrain can have. It's the same stanzaic form he uses for the much-loved earlier lyric, 'On Bredon Hill'.

The fifth line may also signal a new direction, and work against the cadence to look forward to the subsequent stanza. 'When I was young and proud,' the first stanza's last line, connects us to the next episode, and a remembered experience of watching the sun go down, sketched in wonderfully compressed images of the weathercock losing 'the slanted ray', and the young speaker climbing the hill for a larger view.

Housman is a poet who often seems to be on the verge of saying the conventional poetic thing, and then, in a flash, turns it in a new direction.

Read the rest of the analysis of When summer's end is nighing by AE Housman at guardian.co.uk ©

Poem of the day by Philip Levine

2011-08-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

We have a new U.S. poet laureate, Philip Levine (more poems there too). If this poem is anything to go by, he is uniquely attuned to the times. Now, if we could only resurrect Georg Grosz as artist of the times. David Ruccio's blog "occasional links & commentary" are a daily feed reader don't miss for ideas and graphics ~ art, political cartoons, public art, vintage graphics. Poetry may be a first but not, I hope, a last. I'll check the archives. I subscribed because of this being an adjunct blog and that being an advocacy bent. I kept reading because the content stood on its own. Worlds intersect. Now with poetry and letters. Not so odd though when you consider how many poets' day job ~ New Mexico and elsewhere ~ is teaching, and if college, more likely than not, as adjuncts, lecturers or guests. David, FWIW, is an economist but the radical kind unlikely to hired by the average think tank or sent to Florida by the Brothers Koch.

An Abandoned Factory, Detroit

The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.
Beyond, through broken windows one can see
Where the great presses paused between their strokes
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught
In the sure margin of eternity.
The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes
Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,
And estimates the loss of human power,
Experienced and slow, the loss of years,
The gradual decay of dignity.
Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;
Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears
Which might have served to grind their eulogy

Poem of the day