PEN Center USA’s mission of defending freedom of expression is more important than ever. We want you to join us as we are shifting our Freedom to Write campaigns to sharply focus on domestic issues. We are excited to co-sponsor the LA event for Writers Resist with Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. If you cannot attend the event we have listed other ways you can take action below.
Writers Resist is a national event on January 15, 2017, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when writers around the world will come together for a “re- inauguration” of our shared commitment to the spirit of compassion, equality, free speech, and the fundamental ideals of democracy.
Events are planned in NYC, Houston, Austin, New Orleans, Seattle, Spokane, Los Angeles, London, Zurich, Boston, Omaha, Kansas City, Jacksonville, Madison, Milwaukee, Bloomington, Baltimore, Oakland, Tallahassee, Newport, Santa Fe, Salt Lake, and Portland (Oregon AND Maine) and many other cities. More info HERE. There are seventy-five cities in all so far.
↓ TAKE ACTION ↓
ATTEND THE EVENT
January 15, 2017
Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, California
1pm – 4pm (with an intermission)
Free and open to all R.S.V.P. on Facebook
READERS: William Archila, Ishmael Beah, Aimee Bender, Ron Carlson, Victoria Chang, Geoff Dyer, Blas Falconer, Amy Gerstler, Dana Goodyear, Naomi Hirahara, Doug Kearney, Meme Kelly, Vandana Khanna, Michele Latiolais, Douglas Manuel, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Alicia Partnoy, Mona Simpson, Christine Schutt, Safiya Sinclair, Lynne Thompson, David Ulin, Vanessa Villarreal, and Amy Wilentz.
Announcement courtesy of PEN CENTER USA
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
WRITERS AND CAFÉS go together like coffee and a biscotto. Perhaps the connection started in the place where coffee houses first evolved, Ottoman Turkey. There it is said the men met over small, sweet cups of Turkish coffee to socialize and entertain one another with backgammon and poetry.
Later, when coffee came to Europe, the Viennese cafès were de facto office sites of many well-known writers. The Austrian journalist, Alfred Polgar (1873-1955), admired for his witt at Vienna’s Café Central, wrote that coffee houses were “a place where people want to be alone, but need company to do so.” Maybe writers needed the noise and the caffeine to keep up the will and energy to face one white page after another.
CAFÈ CENTRAL, Vienna
Boris Vian (1920-1959), the French polymath (his abiiities included writing and poetry) claimed that “if there had not been any cafés, there would have been no Jean-Paul Sartre.” That’s an exaggeration of course, but one with which we might agree makes its point. I’ve read that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hung-out in Paris at Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore. The former was also a favorite of Rimbaud.
We are told that Pushkin found courage in coffee – not alcohol – before his last and fatal duel in 1837 at The Literary Café in St. Petersburg. Byron, Casanova and Henry James had their favorite coffee houses in Vienna. Lorca met Dalí at the Cafe de Oriente in Madrid, and Kafka worked on Metamorphosis at the Café Stefan in Prague. Oscar Wilde was famous in coffee houses throughout Europe, though perhaps not for having pen in hand.
HEMINGWAY, HADLEY and Friends, American Ex-pats in Paris
The connection between writers and coffee houses was well established by the time the lost generation was meeting in Paris in the 1920s. Hemingway wrote about Cafe La Rotonde and Le Dome Cafe in The Sun Also Rises. He also frequented the Dingo Bar along with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Djuna Barnes.
The Pedrocchi Cafè (1831) in Padua, like many of the old coffee houses, is still in operation and is one of the world’s largest. It was Stendhal’s home-away-from-home …
… and so the affinity continues into recent times. The Elephant House in Edinburg is the “birth place of Harry Potter.”
THE ELEPHANT HOUSE, Edinburg, “the birthplace of Harry Potter”
Detail from Peace and Prosperity (1896), Elihu Vedder, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.
Since 2011, 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) has worked with poets, writers, artists, musicians and other creatives to help organize events around the world for peace, justice and sustainability.
Now, more than ever mobilization is crucial. Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, cofounders of 100TPC, have created a GLOBAL ACTION CALENDAR open to EVERYONE to post Creative Actions around the world. Michael and Terri continue to emphasize the need for INCLUSIVITY and true DIVERSITY in our global network.
They hope this calendar will help people connect and give access to those who are often marginalized in our creative communities.
So many of you are doing so much. Thank you! and thanks to Michael and Terri.
SWIMMING WITH ELEPHANTSis a nonprofit publisher based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, working with its local community and with authors nationwide. A primary focus is poetry and this publisher has a small line of chapbooks, poetry collections and anthologies, available through Amazon and one of their local bookstores. Monthly beginning this month, Swimming With Elephants will feature a writer along with interview and samples of his or her work, all by way of helping to grow the writer’s audience. Explore the site HERE to see where your work and the publisher’s interests might intersect.
HERMENEUTIC CHAOS PRESS is largely a publisher of chapbooks – poetry, prose and hybrid. The current reading period ends on January 31. Submission guidelines HERE.
GUERNICA / a magazine of global art & politics was founded in 2004, staffed by volunteers, and supported by federal and private funding sources. It is a free online publication with contributors from all over the world and featuring essays, art, poetry (verse, prose poetry and hybrid) and fiction from emerging and established writers, poets and multimedia producers. It is published twice monthly with quarterly special issues. Take the time to check it out HERE as both reader and writer.
NO DEAR is a Brooklyn-based poetry journalthat comes out each fall and spring, accompanied by issue release readings for the featured poets. Submissions for the next issue (theme: Republic) are being accepted through February 15th. No My Dear also publishes chapbooks. Details HERE. NYC poets only.
THE BeZINE‘s January issue comes out on the 15th. You still have two days (deadline end-of-day January 10) in which to submit work – poetry, essay, short fiction, music videos, art and photography on this month’s theme, which is “Resist.” Details HERE.
JAMII PUBLISHING “seeks to foster the communion of writers by gifting books to authors who are out there shaking up the world . . . we believe that poetry is not a solitary art. Poetry is an art form that brings people together.” Jamii forms a community in San Bernadino as well as a publishing house. It is open for literary submission until January 31. Jamii offers detailed guidelines on submissions HERE. Read carefully. The focus now is women and minorities, non-academic.
MISTAKE HOUSE MAGAZINE “is committed to creative and intellectual refreshment in the form of poetry, fiction, and visual art.” Reading period ends on March 5th. It “welcomes graduate and undergraduate writers from around the world, including work by previously unpublished writers”. English only. Details HERE. There is a nominal reading free.
DRAGON POET REVIEW is an eJournal that features poetry, flash fiction, short memoir, photograpy, art and reviews. It is published twice a year and the deadline for the summer issue is March 1. Submission guidelines HERE.
Please be sure to check information on all sites. Literary publications often come and go and sometimes close for short periods of time.
EVENTS
DODGE POETRY FESTIVAL 2017will be held in October in Newark, New Jersey. Exact dates are not posted yet. Watch the site if you have an interest in attending what is the largest and most exciting poetry festival in the U.S. Each year the Dodge Poetry Festival reportedly attracts from 14,000 – 17,000 attendies. It was founded in 1985 and is funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The website is HERE.
READINGS AT McNALLY JOHNSON on January 10 at 7 p.m. with Joshua Bennett (The Sobbing School, Part of the National Poetry Series ) and Jennifer Kronovet (The Wug Tes, Part of the National Poetry Series) . Admission is free.McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
POETRY IN DELHI announces seventeen events. “Passionately in love with a language, poets unite pleasure with truth. Poetry is considered the crown of literature and being poetic is more a condition than a profession. Poets the ever dramatic, most romantic and not much realistic, play with words and make beautiful verses. Poetry readings, open mic poetry and poetry recitation as part of a play, keep the art & heart alive.” (The emphasis above is mine. Love it.) Details HERE.
interNATIONAL POETRY MONTH, thinking ahead to April, which is National Poetry Month in the United States. At The BeZine we celebrate it every year as interNational Poetry Month. Think about some things you’d like to do to celebrate: a poem in your pocket, meeting with friends and sharing a poem at lunch or after work, writing about what poetry means to you on your blog, If you want to submit something for poetry month publication, now would be the time to consider what and to which publications you want to submit.
If you are reading Sunday Announcement from an email subscription, you will have to link to this site to hear Linda Gregerson read her poem for Dear Poet 2016.
KUDOS
Congrats to:
M. Zane McClellan for two poems selected as contest winners for a chapbook being published by Praxis Magazine for Arts & Literature. “Tear Down These Walls,” and “And Still I Shrive” are two of seventeen selected out of 163 poems sent to the final judge for selection. Michael is also the newest member of the The BeZineCore Team.
Michael Dickel on the publication of his newest book, The Palm Reading After the Toad’s Garden, available now in paperback. “Michael Dickel’s highly engaging fourth book gathers flash fiction written in recent years–from a series of surreal memoryscapes to flash thrillers to psychological experiments. This hybrid writing blurs genre lines across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and cultural criticism in an entertaining montage of imagery.”
Aprilia Zank for the remarkable number of recent photographs chosen as cover photos for magazines.
Silva Merjanian for the money raised on behalf of Armenian-Syrian refugees. Silva writes that “To date Rumor (alone, without Uncoil a Night) has raised one book short of $5K for refugees.” Silva is a shining example of the many poets working hard for the greater good. xo
Sharon Frye for her lovely poem Last Night in Dublin published in Anu 52/A New Ulster
SPECIAL NEWS
Coffee, Tea and Poetry
I am currently developing a new website that will celebrate the simple soulful things in life. In a world gone mad we still have morning coffee, afternoon tea, kindly baked goods (no animals harmed), gardens and nature in all her glory. Though Coffee, Tea and Poetry hasn’t gone live yet you can bookmark it for future reference. I hope you do. When It does launch in a week or two, I’d value your opinions. Thank you!
SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS
Submit your event, book launch and other announcements at least fourteen days in advance to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. Publication is subject to editorial discretion.
EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 11, 2016 Posts on this web/zine include links to The Poet by Day store (The WordPlay Shop, an Amazon Affiliate), a natural extension in support of this site’s mission to champion poets and writers and to broaden and continue to offer resources and inspiration, including information on opportunities for writers.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 