There are many fine poetry sites but Poetry Translation Centre (PTC) deserves special note. It’s a good place to stop and spend time among poets from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The world-wide poetry community is certainly diverse but we in the West tend to miss a big chunk of it.
At PTC there are poet biographies and photographs along with a sampling of poems in the poet’s first language, literal translations into English, and final translations.
PTC hosts a shop where you are able to purchase the poetry collections of your favorite featured poets. These are books you’re unlikely to see on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, or in your local independent bookshop. There are also some very excellent feature articles.
“The Poetry Translation Centre was established by the poet Sarah Maguire in 2004, to introduce new audiences to leading poets from around the world, as well as better understand and celebrate the diverse communities who have made their home in the UK. We focus on poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America, working collaboratively with poets and translators to bring new work to English-speaking audiences in the UK. International poets we have worked with include Coral Bracho, Mohan Rana and Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi.” MORE
A visit to PTC is definitely recommended. You may find to your delight a whole new world opening up to you, a world of strange and beautiful poesy.
“What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?”
RINKY DINK PRESS, Micropoetry for the People “is on a mission to get poetry back into the hands (and pockets) of the people – each of our single author collections can fit in your pocket, but we never sacrifice craft, and despite the tiny format, we refuse to sacrifice style.”$4 submission fee for book submission. Deadline: November 17. Guidelines HERE.
THE CORTLAND REVIEW will consider poetry, prose, essays, translations and book reviews and will reopen for submissions in October. Check the site for updates.
DIRTY PAWS POETRY REVIEW is a fledgling with its first publication scheduled to debuted in December. The plan is biannual publication. The editors say they “want poetry unafraid of facing the truth and unashamed of having hope.” Submissions are open until November 15. Details HERE.
FLARE literary journalis published by students in Flagler College [Florida] English Department and seeks poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and art from anywhere in the U.S. It is published once a year in the fall. In the spring the publication goes online as a zine. Deadline: October 15. Submission guidelines are HERE.
BREATH & SHADOW, A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature has demographic restrictions (disability and age/21) and accepts poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Modest payment on publication. Submission guidelines HERE.
KALEIDOSCOPE of United Disabilities Service of Akron is “magazine creatively focuses on the experiences of disability through literature and the fine arts.” Considers feature articles, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and visual art. Modest payment on publication. Submission guidelines HERE.
THE BeZINE submissions for the October 2017 issue – themed Music – are open and the deadline is October 10th. Send submissions to me at bardogroup@gmail.com. Publication is October 15th. Poetry, essays, fiction and creative nonfiction, art and photography, music (videos or essays), and whatever lends itself to online presentation is welcome for consideration. Please check out a few issues first and the Intro/Mission Statement and Submission Guidelines. No demographic restrictions. We do not publish anything that promotes hate or violence. The lead for the October issue is Sheffield poet and musician, John Anstie (My Poetry Library and 42).
Heads-up on the November zine: The theme is Hunger, Poverty and Working-class Slavery. Deadline: November 10.
CONSEQUENCE MAGAZINE, published once-a-year, is about to close its reading period. End date: September 30.This magazine – an independent not-for-profit – is devoted to women writing about the culture of war. Submit short stories, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, visual art, reviews, and translations. Modest payment. Demographic restrictions. Submisson guidelines HERE.
BACKBONE PRESS – “a small press with a big vision – is a venue for ethnic poets (African-American, Latino/a, Asian and others) invites “poetry, political, evocative, social, gritty … personal and poignant.” Both emerging and established poets are encouraged. Details HERE.
CONTESTS
Opportunity Knocks
CONSEQUENCE MAGAZINE is currently accepting submissions for its 2017 Women [“and those identifying as women”] Writing War Award for fiction. $250 award. Entry fee: $10. Deadline October 1. Details HERE.
THE FAMILY NARRATIVE PROJECT invites submissions to its 2017 essay contest, themed “family” and defined broadly. 1,000 word limit. $10 entry fee. Cash prize $500. Deadline October 31, 2017. Details HERE.
THE SHARED DREAM CHAPBOOK CONTEST for immigrant poets sponsored by Backbone Press has a deadline of November 30th. No reading fee.Cash prize. Details HERE.
PHILLIP LEVINE PRIZE IN POETRY hosted by Anhinga Press and co-sponsored by California State University, Fresno is an annual book contest open to poets who are not current or former CSU, Fresno students. Entry fee $25 U.S. Award: $2,000 and publication. Deadline: September 30. Details HERE.
EVENTS
Worcestershire Poet Laureate hosts a team of poets to join a project at Hanbury Hall. Annually the Droitwich Arts Network (DAN) work with the team at Hanbury Hall (National Trust) to offer local artists a space to exhibit and sell work in the Long Gallery. October 11 – 29. Details HERE. “In the past, poets have been invited to choose art to create a poem from. ‘Fragile Houses’ included two ekphrastic poems from this event in 2014. Other years have seen poets create videos, display poetry. The possibilities are endless.”
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT, weekly by The Poet by Day, offers the opportunity to get to know other poets, share your work and get published here. The prompt is theme-based not form-based. All are welcome to join in no matter the stage of your writing career.
SEPTEMBER 30 IS 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE (100TPC): Peace, sustainability and social justice are the themes set for global 100TPC by cofounders Michael Rothenburg and Terri Carrion when the event was first started in 2011. I think the number of events scheduled at various places around the world is around 600 for 2017. To find or organize an event in your area link to 100TPC global HERE. I’ve also been posting announcements from around the world on The Poet by Day Facebook Page as they come in but you will find the most comprehensive and up-to-date info at 100TPC.
THE BeZINE 100,000 POETS AND FRIENDS FOR CHANGE (100TPC) virtual event:In honor of 100TPC annual global event, at The BeZine we are dedicating our September efforts to the interconnections/intersections of social justice, sustainability and peace and how each of these effects the others. On September 30 we invite our poetry community – including other types of artists, our readers and friends – to share their work on theme. Directions for virtual participation with be provided that day on The BeZine blog. No stress. It’s easy. Israeli-American poet, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e)/ Play), is Master of Ceremonies (a tradition). Creatives and poetry and art lovers will be joining in from all over the world. You’ll love it.Guaranteed. It will run for at least 24 hours, making it convenient for you to organize your other activities around this event.
KUDOS
Poet Linda Ibbotson for her engaging interview of Antonia Alexandra Klimenko HERE.
Eva Petropoylou Lianoy for the publication of her children’s book Adventures of Samurai Nonkasika available in Greece at
Analogion – xylokastron, Adalakēs – xylokastron and other bookstores
YOUR SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS may be emailed to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. Please do so at least a week in advance.
If you would like me to consider reviewing your book, chapbook, magazine or film, here are some general guidelines:
nothing that foments hate or misunderstanding
nothing violent or encouraging of violence
English only, though Spanish is okay if accompanied by translation
though your book or other product doesn’t have to be available through Amazon for review here, it should be easy for readers to find through your site or other venues.
DISCLAIMER
Often information is just that – information – and not necessarily recommendation. I haven’t worked with all the publications featured in Sunday Announcements or elsewhere on this site. Awards and contests are often a means to generate income and publicity for the host organizations, some of which are more reputable than others. I am homebound due to disability and no longer attend events. Please be sure to verify information for yourself before submitting work, buying products, paying fees or attending events et al.
Affiliate Links Disclosure:
Some product links within posts are Amazon affiliate links. The Poet by Day is supported in part by these links. Your use of them costs you nothing and helps to keep this site running. When you click on an affiliate link (not all links are affiliate) and/or make a purchase I sometimes receive a small percentage of the purchase price. Thank you for your support.
We invite you to share your most passionate works expressing kindness and human connection and the ways that together we might heal the degradation and devastation of wars and genocides; the heartbreak of refugees living in limbo; the desolation of hunger and famine and environmental catastrophes; the insanity of extrajudicial murders; and the disappointing growth in the West of racial and religious tensions and efforts by various administrations to chill dissent.
Please take this opportunity to join hands and hearts in peace and love: TEAM WITH US for The BeZine100TPC online “live” event this September 30th (our 6th year) to address peace, sustainability, and social justice through poetry, music (videos), art and anything artistic that can be posted online and accessed through a url link or by responding in the comments section of the event post. The BeZine 100TPC is one of hundreds of events that will be held around the world on September 30 under the rubric of Global 100TPC founded by poets Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion.
WE ACKNOWLEDGE that there are enormous theological differences and historical resentments that carve wedges among and within the traditions and ethnic or national groups, but we believe that ultimately self-preservation, common sense, and human solidarity will empower connections and collaboration and overcome division and disorder.
100TPC is just one effort that illustrates the higher possibilities of the human heart.
Let us ply our art, meditations, and prayer toward that tipping point when compromise – an admittedly imperfect peace – will overcome war and respect for life will topple resentments and greed. That may not happen in our time, but it has to start somewhere and sometime. Together let this be our modest contribution toward an end for which diverse people the world over are working and praying.
HOW THE BeZINE “VIRTUAL” 100TPC WORKS … It’s easy and will be intuitively obvious, though we will provide instruction. A blog post will go up at The BeZine blog on September 30 with some introductory material and directions. As with any other blog post, you can respond by putting your poem or other work in the comments section. There will also be “Mister Linky” … a way to put in a link to relevant work on your site. It’s easy to use but if you don’t like it, you can just put your link in the comments section. That works!
American-Isreali Poet, Michael Dickel
American-Israeli poet,Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phore(e)/ Play), is an extraordinary – and at this point very experienced – Master of Ceremonies. He’ll maintain a rolling commentary in the comments section. I’ll be online to fill in for Michael when he takes a break and also to extend the length of the event.We’re in different time zones, though this year not half-a-day apart since he will be in the States. The idea is convenience and inclusively.
All types of artists and friends can participate no matter where they live in the world even if there is no event going on in their neighborhood and even if like me they are pretty much or completely home bound (which was the inspiration for the virtual event). You can participate in our virtual event even if you are at an off-line event. You can do both. We hope that you will not only share your artistry but also enjoy the artistry of others, which is what makes it like a live event. See you then … 🙂 We also hope that you’ll visit The BeZine to read our September edition, a prequel to the 100TPC event.
On behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines (publishers of The BeZine) and in the spirit of love (respect) and community, Jamie Dedes
Founding and Managing Editor The BeZine
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Fragments—
Reflecting on anger
a sort of Introduction
i
I am trying to write a social justice-sustainability-peace song. This is as far as I have gotten.
Where have all the flowers gone, since the election? Where has the dialogue gone, now that we yell and scream? You may say it’s social media, typing, and not raised voices, But you know we’re all making some dissonant choices.
This divisiveness, it’s like some sort of infection, All the medicine won’t do any good, not pill or cream, You may say it’s someone else, spreading these angry voices, But you know we’re all making these dissonant choices.
Take care of others now, it’s time to give a helping hand, Find the empathy in your heart, spread it through the land, Stand up for justice, peace, sustainability, while you can, Find the common ground where all of us can stand…
ii
I am searching for interconnections and intersectionality between social justice, sustainability, and peace—how each affects the other. I don’t want to focus on the negative, but I do feel a need to say something that would get at the role of divisiveness and hate in our current anxieties and politics—not just in the November 2016 elections, not just between the camps, not just within the left. It is everywhere, infused with out morning hot drink.
iii
We must reach out our hands to each other. Yes, we can and should express our differences, speak our anger, listen to the anger of others. However, we cannot afford to weaponize that anger, to externalize it into missiles and nuclear warheads. Don’t let anger shoot, stab, run us over in an un-civil war of accusations and blame that wounds our souls. We cannot let this roiling rage keep us from joining together in common cause, which we all have—the need for peace, social justice, and environmentally-sustainable practices. We must use our real angers, somehow, as building tools, to join together to create more humane, just, sustainable, and peaceful structures in our world. We must harness the anger to make love, not war.
Even so, it will be an imperfect world.
But, if we find a way to work together, through our differences, it will be a better world, too.
Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives.
I have seen situations where white women hear a racist remark, resent what has been said, become filled with fury, and remain silent because they are afraid. That unexpressed anger lies within them like an undetonated device, usually to be hurled at the first woman of Color who talks about racism.
But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.
Anger is loaded with information and energy. When I speak of women of Color, I do not only mean Black women. The woman of Color who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us. If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister’s oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman’s voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed.
Why has this passage come to mind? Besides the fact that it remains relevant about privilege, more than 35 years later, it also speaks to the in-fighting among people who want to change the world positively, who have shared goals in making change—activists, if you will. The need to share our “grave differences,” but at the same time to work together as allies to resist—and overcome—”our genuine enemies.”
It seems to me that these are some of the tools and forces of our genuine enemies: greed, oppression, racism, ethnocentricity, genders-based bias, unfettered capitalism, and fascism. Also: war, famine, and destruction of resources. Also: hatred, division, rage. Also…
vi
Right now, my Facebook feed streams with angry posts between Clinton and Sanders supporters and third camp—fourth, fifth, sixth… camps—who attack both and each other, all arguing an election nearly a year old and few looking for ways to work together for the mid-term elections a little over a year away. People argue about the best way to resist, all the while they criticize and attack each other for not approaching a particular issue in the “correct” way.
What I don’t feel is a constructive analysis and dialogue emerging from this divisiveness. I don’t feel that the anger focuses on the genuine enemies. Instead, the angry posts shred our (potential) allies against those who would divide us on the way to grinding us up. At times, my paranoia rings its tocsin, suggesting that those who oppose positive, life-and-humanity affirming change—my genuine enemies—foment the pitched battles (especially those in social media). I feel that too many of us (yes, I would include myself) think we “understand” the problems we face, and that others “don’t get it.” We want to be correct. My way or the highway.
That path only leads to traffic jams.
vii
Lorde tells us, “Anger is loaded with information and energy.” Are we listening? I often bristle and respond with anger—I fire off a few well-aimed zingers, a few capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Or else, I turn away and don’t listen. I miss the opportunity to learn from the information in the anger.
I fight against the energy in the anger, draining us both, as I argue my point of righteousness. I don’t take in the energy in the “anger expressed” to help energize our (potential) alliance. I don’t look for ways to translate it “into action in the service of our vision and our future.”
Thus, by not listening and firing my “defensive” missiles, I miss opportunities for “a liberating and strengthening act of clarification.”
This is critical when listening across the social, racial, economic, regional, generational, religious, gendered, and so many other divides of the world. It is as critical when listening to the anger that appears ready to pull apart groups of people who want to make a positive difference. When we are torn apart from each other. Divided, we will fall.
Yet, to stand together, we will have to listen to each other, to engage in learning from each other, and to find ways to translate our anger, our pain, our fear for the future into “… the painful process” of this translation, so that we identify who are “our allies with whom we have grave differences,” and who are “our genuine enemies.”
viii
A storm hammers my brain—this tide of attacks without engaged dialogue hammers my brain—my brain hammers against the ways in which I fail to do all of the many right things that need doing. And in my frustration, I forget to try to do just some of those many right things as well as I can—even if not to the level of an ideal and perfect world.
And here is where I end up, stalled, frustrated, angry. But where I want to end up is caring for humanity with empathy at the intersections of social justice, sustainability, and peace. The writing, music, and photographs in this issue have at their heart, I believe, empathic caring for all of our fellow humans. This caring motivates the work you will find ahead. Yes, you will feel anger. Yes, you will hear anguish. But all of it comes from hearts full of a desire to create “liberating and strengthening act[s] of clarification.”
—Michael Dickel, Contributing Editor
100TPC PREQUEL ISSUE: PEACE, SUSTAINABILITY, SOCIAL JUSTICE
How to read this issue of THE BeZINE:
Click HERE to read the entire magazine by scrolling, or
You can read each piece individually by clicking the links in the Table of Contents.
To learn more about our guests contributors, please link HERE.
To learn more about our core team members, please link HERE.
September 15, 2017
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 