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Call for Submissions – Rattle’s Ekphrasis challenge, DEADLINE: March 31, 2016

Unknown's avatarTrish Hopkinson

Rattle has recently decided to run a series of ekphrastic prompts and publish the winning poets, one poem selected by the artist, another by their editors.

THE PROMPT: “For the month of March, our image is the collage below, “Metamorphosis” by Thomas Terceira (click for a larger version). You can find more of his work at his website, but only write your poems after the image below. Good luck!”

DEADLINE: March 31, 2016

CLICK HERE TO READ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

For more information on ekphrastic poetry, see Notes on Ekphrasis by Alfred Corn on Poets.org.

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Happy St Patrick’s Day 2016

Happy St Patrick’s Day 2016

Seren Books's avatarSeren Books Blog

Happy St Patrick’s Day to every one of you, far and wide.

St Patrick's Day 2016

And here’s our bookish Irish flag in honour of the day, pieced together using just a few of our green, white and orange books.

Here is the full list of titles featured in our St Patrick’s Day ‘flag’:

Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry;
The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess;
The Scattering;
The Dragon and the Crescent;
Crossing Over;
Masculine Happiness;
Bilbao – New York – Bilbao;
The Woman at the Window;
All the Souls;
The Hitting Game;
Dirt Roads;
Big Low Tide;
Zen-Cymru;
Christmas in Wales;
The Shop;
If You Fall I Will Catch You;
Midas’ Daughter;
Eros Proposes a Toast;
The Visitations;
Playing House;
Midnight, Dhaka;
Daniel’s Beetles.

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Refugee Woman in Calais by Liza Wolff-Francis

reubenwoolley's avatarI am not a silent poet

In the jungle, I always

disappear before dark.

Even if I still wait

in the six hour queue

for the last drop of shower

or for the soup kitchen.

If there is liquor, I am gone

or if there are too many men,

you will not see me

because the men here

are desperate to have control

over something

and I aim to not be the cold rain

collected in leftover plastic.

This jungle is tarp tents

and whimper sob tears.

It is a desperation like mud

trying to be brick.

I run from one point to another

so no one has time to stop me.

In my tent, I boobey-trap

the space around me with tin cans

in the hope that I will hear them

if they come for me.

In the day sometimes, I go

to the area for women and children

so I can feel safe enough

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POET, TEACHER, INSPIRATION: Dilys Wood & the Latter-day Sapphos

This is lovely and a great resource for women poets… Dilys and Anne deserve recognition for their fantastic work over many years and marvellous poetry.

Jamie Dedes's avatarJamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine

Sappho (/ˈsæfoʊ/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔ̌ː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω, Psappho [psápːʰɔː]) was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. She was born sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she died around 570 BCE, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost; however, her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments. “Sappho (/ˈsæfoʊ/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔ̌ː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω, Psappho [psápːʰɔː]) was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. She was born sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she died around 570 BCE, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost; however, her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.” [Wikipedia] Sunday: I began my dive into Dilys Wood’s Antarctica* (Greendale Press, 2008), spending my discretionary time engaged by this collection, which includes The South Pole Inn, a novella in verse.

“I dreamt I gave you the white continent
I wrapped it in white wedding wrap, embossed
with silver penguins and skiis …”
from Her Birthday Present in the section Love in…

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Crossing the Prairie by Geraldine Green

Another fine poem from an Indigo Dreams poet ,Geraldine Green beautifully capturing a lost landscape and wild species.

reubenwoolley's avatarI am not a silent poet

There goes green corn
fierce as tornadoes
her cougar skin rippled
her bright eyes dazed with
dust-storms and headlights
she crosses the prairie on
her greencorn song of misery
upright as telegraph poles
lining the freeways.

Boy whistles wind
wind comes running
wind combs her back
of greengold corn
for a hundred miles
combs greencorn hair.

Nightstars crackle
moonwafer breaks open.

At dawn, a deluge of buffalo
at dawn, their ghosts cross the plain
at dawn, their notorious herd of steam
their outrageous breath
their sweat and blood
their sinews and bones.

These ghosts of buffalo.
These man-haunting bison.

Ghost bison pound earth
their hooves the pestle
this land their mortar.

Look! a city catapults
itself across the sky:

a wave of cities
a deluge of buffalo
a rivering of ghosts.

Grass cracked moons
grass tricky as coyote
grass spilling greengold
handsome as cougar

moon mirror cracks
buffalo stampede
into…

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No Spring Chickens

Save

Judi Sutherland's avatarThe Stare's Nest

Don’t you hate it that the young get all the chances? That there are so many poetry awards for people under 18, under 25, under 30? What if you spent the first part of your life not writing poetry but gathering material for poems that only came later, when you had a bit more time to reflect?

Well, now it’s your turn. The Stare’s Nest is sponsoring a competition for older writers to get their moment in the spotlight. The brand new Fledgling Award celebrates debut pamphlets and collections by poets over the age of 40. And I’m delighted to say that the judge is none other than Martin “too old for a Gregory, to young to die” Figura!

So these are the rules:

  1. Eligible books must be the first solo book of poetry (whether a pamphlet or a full collection) from a poet who was 40 or older…

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International Women’s Day: celebrating Seren’s female fiction writers

International Women’s Day: celebrating Seren’s female fiction writers

Seren Books's avatarSeren Books Blog

International Women’s Day 2016 has arrived. We celebrate this year by highlighting just a few of the talented women we’ve been fortunate enough to publish. There will always be more names to mention and more works to appreciate, and you can find countless gorgeous books written by women on our website. But none-the-less, we hope you enjoy hearing about just a few of the Seren women writers and their achievements.

In this second International Women’s Day blog post, Fiction Editor Penny Thomas highlights just a few of the novels and short story collections by women we have published over the years. Penny has a talent for finding gorgeously written fiction, much of which is written by female authors.

Penny: Over the past few years at Seren we’ve had the pleasure to publish many wonderful women fiction writers from Leonora Brito to Sian James, from Francesca Rhydderch to Jo…

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