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SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS: Calls for Submissions, Contests, and Other Information and News

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”  Bertrand Russel

CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

Opportunity Knocks

ALT-MINDS LITERARY PRESS, creativity from alt-healthy minds has an open call for fiction, non-fiction/memoir and poetry related to mental health, which will close on July 1. Payment: $50 CDN for fiction and nonfiction and $20 CDN for poetry, Details HERE.

GULF COAST, A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND FINE ARTS publishes poetry and translations of poetry, stories, essays, interviews and reviews, art and critical art writing and online “exclusives.” (There’s also a guest blogger in residence program.) Reading fee: $2.50 Details HERE.

HCE REVIEW literary and art journal is a quarterly online literary journal of students in MA and MFA Creative Writing courses at the University College of Dublin. The journal publishes fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and visual art from established and emerging and welcomes submissions from around the world. Currently they are only accepting submissions of art and the deadline is December 31, 2018. Watch for 2019 calls for writing submissions. Details HERE.

MASON JAR PRESS has an open call for submissions of novellas. $5 submissions fee or free with purchase of a Mason Jar Press book.  Submissions close on August 31. Details HERE.

NEWSTATESMAN welcome submissions from established and emerging poets. Details HERE.

NOURISH POETRY call for submissions for ballad, sonnet, couplet, tanka, tanka-sequence, villanelle, haiku and free verse closes on June 20. Details HERE. Children’s poetry is also of interest.

ONE STORY, Read Learn Connect a literary magazine, which publishes one story at a time. The next submission reading period begins on September 1st and runs through November 14th. Length: 3,000 – 8,000 words. Payment $500 and 25 contributor copies. One Story also publishes One Teen Story. Details HERE.

PLOUGHSHARES at Emerson College reads submissions of fiction, nonfiction and poetry from June 1 through January 15 each year. There is a $3 “service” fee for submissions. If you have a subscription, there is no service fee for submissions. Payment is $45 per printed page with a minimum of $90 per title and a max of $450 per author. Payment includes two contributor copies and a subscription. Details HERE.

THE REMEMBERED ARTS JOURNAL, Modern Life, Awakened Art has an open call for submissions of poetry and creative writing including poetry, short stories, and essays and performing arts, crafts and visual arts. The theme for the fall issue is: splendor.

“In the competitive, compartmentalized, modern world, it can be easy to neglect the creative impulses that make us human. We put aside our sketching and scribbling to pay our bills, raise our children, serve our communities, and pursue our ambitions. The Remembered Arts Journal is a forum for reviving almost forgotten artistry. Its purpose is to encourage readers and contributors rediscover the joy of creating and sharing works of art.”

The deadline for the fall issue is July 1. Details HERE.  This journal nominates for the Pushcart Prize.

SONORA REVIEW, a publication run by students in the MFA program at the University of Arizona. This review publishes poetry, fiction and nonfiction. $3 submission fee. Payment: two contributor copies. Details HERE.

SPRING SONG PRESS is currently open for submissions for it’s NobleBright Fantasy Anthologies: Oak and Iron/through July 1; Steam and Lace (steampunk)/opens August 1 and closes November 1. Details HERE.

STINGING FLY’s (reminder) latest reading period will close on July 12th. This journal publishes Irish and international writers of poetry and fiction. Details HERE.

TETHERED BY LETTERS (TBL), a nonprofit literary publisher and writer’s resource, describes itself as “passionate about educating budding authors and increasing literacy rates across the globe. We run several FREE programs to help cultivate the next generation of great literature: For more, visit our Education or Writing Resource Center.”  Open year-round for submissions of short fiction and creative nonfiction, poetry, and graphic stories or comics to f(r)online. Details HERE.

WILDNESS publishes poetry, fiction and nonfiction in its bimonthly online journal and reads submissions on a rolling basis. The editors nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best American and other prizes. Details HERE.

The BeZine

Call for submission for the September issue.

THE BeZINE, Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be Peace, Be. Submissions for the September issue – themed Social Justice – close on August 10 at 11:59 p.m. PDT .

Please send text in the body of the email not as an attachment. Send photographs or illustrations as attachments. No google docs or Dropbox or other such. No rich text. Send submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com.

Publication is September 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.

No demographic restrictions.

Please read at least one issue and the Intro/Mission Statement and Submission Guidelines. We DO NOT publish anything that promotes hate, divisiveness or violence or that is scornful or in any way dismissive of “other” peoples. 

  • September 2018 issue, Deadline August 10th, Theme: Human Rights/Social Justice
  • December 2018 issue, Deadline November 10th, Theme: A Life of the Spirit

The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort, a mission. It is not a paying market but neither does it charge submission or subscription fees.

Previously published work may be submitted IF you hold the copyright. Submissions from beginning and emerging artists as well as pro are encouraged and we have a special interest in getting more submissions of short stores, feature articles, music videos and art for consideration. 

The Poet by Day

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Reminder

Response deadline is Monday, June 18th at 8 p.m. PDT. All poems shared on theme will be published on this site on Tuesday, the 19th. Details HERE.

CONTESTS

Opportunity Knocks

AMBIT MAGAZINE 2018 POETRY COMPETITION is to be judged by Malika Booker. Entry deadline is July 15. Cash Awards. Publication. Details HERE.

BLUE MOUNTAIN ARTS will close this year’s first of two Poetry Card Contests on June 30/deadline. Cash awards. Online display. Details HERE.

CANTEBURY FESTIVAL POET OF THE YEAR COMPETITION 2018 closes on Monday, 18 June 2018. National and international entries are welcome. Entry fee. Cash award. Details HERE. Tight deadline but you can submit by email.

THE McLELLAN POETRY PRIZE 2018 closes on Thursday, 21 June 2018. Entry Fee. Cash award. Details HERE.

THE MASTERS REVIEW, a platform for emerging writers is hosts a summer short story award, which will close or entries on July 31, 2018. The winning story will be awarded $3000, publication, and agent review. Second and third place stories will be awarded publication and $300 and $200 respectively. Further detail HERE.

NEW AMERICAN POETRY PRIZE will open for submissions on September 1 and close on January 15.  $25 entry fee. Award: $1,000. Details HERE. Also noted: “We’re accepting submissions for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize. Winner receives $1,000, publication, and book promotion. Final judge is novelist, story writer, teacher, and memoirist John McNally. Submit at our fast and easy online submission manager.”

6th Ó BHÉAL FIVE WORDS INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITIONS is open for the current week through June 19. The five words are: terror, magpie, spot, incandescent, wall. How it works: “Every Tuesday around noon (UTC), from the 17th of April 2018 until the 29th of January 2019, five words will be posted on this competition page. Entrants have one week to compose and submit one or more poems which include all five words given for that week. The 2018/2019 (6th) competition runs for 41 weeks.”  Entry fee. Details HERE.

THE POETRY KIT SUMMER COMPETITION 2018 is open for entries through Monday, 27 August 2018. Entry fees. Cash award. Details HERE.

RUMINATE’S KALOS VISUAL ART PRIZE is open for entries. Entry fee. Cash award and publication. Deadline: September 18. Details HERE. 

WRITER’S DIGEST POETRY AWARDS – Deadline October 1. Entry fee. Cash awards. Details HERE.

OTHER NEWS & INFORMATION

Accessible anytime from anywhere in the world:

  • The Poet by Day always available online with poems, poets and writers, news and information.
  • The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, online every week (except for vacation) and all are invited to take part no matter the stage of career or status. Poems related to the challenge of the week (always theme based not form based) will be published here on the following Tuesday.
  • The Poet by Day, Sunday Announcements. Every week (except for vacation) opportunity knocks for poets and writers. Due to other Sunday commitments, this post will often go up late in the day.
  • THE BeZINE, Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be Peace, Be – always online HERE.  
  • Beguine Again, daily inspiration and spiritual practice  – always online HERE.  Beguine Again is the sister site to The BeZine.

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:

  • send PDF to jamiededes@gmail.com (Note: I have a backlog of six or seven months, so at this writing I suggest you wait until June 2018 to forward anything.Thank you!)
  • nothing that foments hate or misunderstanding
  • nothing violent or encouraging of violence
  • English only, though Spanish is okay if accompanied by translation
  • your book or other product  should be easy for readers to find through your site or other venues.

TO CONTACT ME WITH ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OTHER INFORMATION FOR THE POET BY DAY: thepoetbyday@gmail.com

TO CONTACT ME REGARDING SUBMISSIONS FOR THE BeZINE: bardogroup@gmail.com

PLEASE do not mix the communications between the two.

Often information is just that–information– and not necessarily recommendation. I haven’t worked with all the publications or other organizations featured in my regular Sunday Announcements or other announcements shared on this site. Awards and contests are often (generally) a means to generate income, publicity and marketing mailing lists for the host organizations, some of which are more reputable than others. I rarely attend events anymore. Caveat Emptor: Please be sure to verify information for yourself before submitting work, buying products, paying fees or attending events et al.

ABOUT

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Then and Now, a poem by Debbie Felio

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein

Then and Now

 
That was then – 
   those people killed – wrong religion –
    those hangings – wrong color
 
    that war
 
that was then –
  those people killed – wrong country  
      those beheadings – wrong beliefs 
 
        that war
 
that was then 
  those people killed – wrong place 
   those raped and pummeled – wrong gender 
 
     that war
 
that was then
    those people killed – in utero
      those shootings – protected second amendment rights
 
        that war
 
that was then
       those people killed – thousands
         those imprisonments – thousands
 
           those wars
 
that was then
        hard to believe
           newspaper, radio
             those indescribable acts
 
   this is now –
         hard to believe
           live coverage
             devastation / destruction
 
    then – over and over
 
         again
 
               this war and
                   the next
.
© 2018, Debbie Felio, All rights reserved
 
 
DEBBIE FELIO is a poet/witness living and writing in Boulder, Colorado. This poem – profound for the way it showcases the insanity –  is Debbie’s response to Baruch, The Baker. 
.
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THE BeZINE: Vol. 5, Issue 2, Theme: Sustainability, Subtheme: Readers and Writers Speak Out on Abuse

June 15, 2018

“Having the right priorities in a wrong world will humble you with a journey that only love can sustain.”  Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

As I sorted through the sustainability submissions for this issue, I was struck by two things: a preponderance of both love and sadness. The love with which so many of us – I’d like to think most of us – have for this planet, its natural beauties, and its voluptuous generosities and a sadness for the issues we largely lay at the feet of unenlightened irresponsible corporate and government policies. The former combined with our willingness to speak up and speak out gives me hope that we will overcome the profound challenges of our day. We have after all the power to unite our voices, vote with our dollars, and refuse to play the games.

You’ll find here this quarter a collection of works on nature and the environment that encourages and admonishes, that makes love to the earth and its natural beauties, that shares frustrations and anger, and that hearten us with their very breath of awareness.

Special thanks to team member, Priscilla Galasso, for our lovely cover photo this quarter.

We’ve also included a profoundly moving collection of work on abuse, mainly domestic. This section is published in response to reader requests and together the collection affirms courage and provides confirmation, insight and information. We are honored to have England’s Emergency Poet, Deborah Alma, introduce this section. Deborah is the editor of #MeToo, rallying against sexual assault and harassment, a women’s poetry anthology.

We welcome contributions from all over the world and know that you will appreciate the work of our new guest contributors (writers, photographers, and artists) this month as well as old friends and our core team members. Please support them with your “likes” and comments. This year in October we plan to nominate writers (guests, not team members) for Pushcart, so do please leave notes to let us know your faves. Thank you! 

In closing, once again I share this quotation (as I did in the last edition of The BeZine) from L.R. Knots. It seems to encapsulate the best rallying cry for our times.

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.
All things break. And all things can be mended.
Not with time, as they say, but with intention.
So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.
The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”
—Author and counselor, L.R. Knost

In the spirit of peace, love (respect), and community
and on behalf of The Bardo Group Bequines,
Jamie Dedes
Founding and Managing Editor, The BeZine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to read this issue of THE BeZINE: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.

NATURE and SUSTAINABILITY

SPECIAL FEATURE

What Fossil Fuels and Factor Farms Have in Common / Hint: They’re both issues of environmental injustice, Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch and Food and Water Action, Originally published in Yes! Magazine

BeATTITUDES

Crossing the Great Divide, John Anstie
Shkinah III: My beloved whispers in my ear, Michael Dickel
Insatiable =/= Sustantable, Corina Ravenscraft
Sustain What?, Steve Wiencek

POETRY and ART/PHOTOGRAPHY

Hypocrite DespOILer, Gary W. Bowers
Earthquake and devastation, Michael Dickel
Multiplying Media, four poems, Michael Dickel
Gertrude’s Poem, Michael Dickel
Sustainability Should Be Our Creed, Mark Andrew Heathcote
When NASA Finishes Mining & Carbon Footprint, Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
Clear the Brush, Ursula Jacobs
Climate Changes, Patricia Leighton
Life Eternal, Patricia Leighton
Gifts to the Poet’s Newborn Child, Patricia Leighton
Species Sustainability, Carolyn O’Connell
Evil Ones, Eliza Segiet

ABUSE and HOPE

We all know the wisdoms around why it is so important to speak up about any form of abuse; the reasons are many and various. But often our abusers are close to us, members of our own family or community and so speaking out is a great act of bravery. It may be difficult because we may also carry feelings of guilt, responsibility or shame. But if we can overcome such strong reasons to be silent, we are hugely empowered; we are made stronger by facing our fears.

It can also help to turn the abuse into a narrative that distances us from the pain in each retelling; an act that helps us to understand, to process and then to move beyond it; and in an act of alchemy to turn it into the piece of art that is the poem; that gives us gold out of the dirt. We ourselves as writer are transformed by it and for those who come after as readers, the work can hold out its hand from those who have been there before, who have worked something out for us.

To read the stories and poetry of those who have been abused can also act as a warning or a flag that says ‘Yes this IS abuse. Take care! This is how I made myself safe or sane again.’

– Deborah Alma, Poet and Editor

#MeToo Anthology, The Back Story, Deborah Alma, poems by Sheila Jacob, Jane Commane, and Roberta Beary, and an introduction to Persephone’s Daughters
Hell Prefers Unaware, Susie Clevenger
Never Had a Chance, Isadora de la Vega
a man, a woman and a stick, Jamie Dedes
Closed Doors to Hotel Rooms, Michael Dickel
When Sexual Harassment Goes Public, Michael Watson

SPECIAL FEATURE

Wild Women in Art, Poetry and Community featuring Gretchen Del Rio’s Art and Victoria Bennett’s “The Howl or How Wild Women Press Came to Be”

EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE NOTED,
ALL WORKS IN “THE BEZINE” ©2018 BY THE AUTHOR / CREATOR

CONNECT WITH US

The BeZine: Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be Peace, Be (the subscription feature is below and to your left.)

Daily Spiritual Practice: Beguine Again, a community of Like-Minded People

Facebook, The Bardo Group Beguines

Twitter, The Bardo Group Beguines

SUBMISSIONS:

Read Info/Missions Statement, Submission Guidelines, and at least one issue before you submit. Updates on Calls for Submissions and other activities are posted every Sunday in Sunday Announcements on The Poet by Day.

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One of a Kind, a poem by John Anstie

(for Myrra)

Is she the last of a generation,
who lived through two centuries
of cataclysmic events and change;
a century that felt the consequence
of moving territories and boundaries.
From crowns to oligarchical republics,
from rags to riches beyond counting,
technological revolution, the benefits
of science, engineering and medicine,
a system of healthcare and welfare that,
despite the imposed failings of ideology,
looked after her so well … until she left.

Is she the last of a generation,
of whom we’ll be able to say:
“She’s the last of her generation”,
who fought childhood infection
by their own in-built immunity
– no pharmaceutical intervention
to compromise nature’s ways –
who fought for their country
with hope, fear and courage
as their constant companions
without leave for counsel or therapy
to help them through their days.

Malevolent, engineered conflict,
driven by and driving the revolution,
through deeply rooted anxiety
that keeps us at war with others,
with each other, with ourselves …
a continuum of change, so rapid
that we had no time to reflect on
its merits (or not) leading headlong,
steadily, insidiously, irreversibly..?
to a virtual, digital, designer world,
addicted to things that loosen our grip
on a life that once was, not so long ago.

A life more in touch with nature
in which they could roam free;
step out and walk wild for the day
in casual clothes and wellies, with a tin,
a packed lunch, made by their mums;
play games, whose names we forgot.
Walk shoulder to shoulder with a friend,
make daisy chains, mud pies and fish
with a stick in streams and wild rivers,
but virtual games carry young lives away,
so our smart phones all too often convey
in a digest of news, twenty four hours a day.

Is she the last of her generation,
gifted with ‘freedom’ from the toxic
stale air of hyperventilating media
or will we one day be able to say
in the eternity of time and space:
we are all unique, each one of us
was born of a time, from a special
exotic recipe of genes and place,
bringing our gift to the world by
the pull of the moon and the stars,
the physics and chemistry of life
that mould us into what we are …

… one of a kind.

© March 2018,John Anstie, Shared here with permission. All rights reserved.  You can visit John at My Poetry Library. John is also a member of The BeZine core team and you will find a piece by him in the June 15 issue when it is published.

[In her own words: “Born in Yorkshire in March 1919, Myrra Robb Anstie was educated at Southport Girls’ High School. She then won a scholarship for three years at Southport School of Art. She worked as a draughts-woman until the outbreak of WW2, when she enlisted to serve in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (A.T.S.). She lived, from the early 1960’s, in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, where she worked as a teacher of Art, exhibited and sold her work. She returned to the U.K. in 1986, spending a few years teaching portraiture and oil painting for Adult Education in Leicestershire, before settling in Devon in 1991. She was then a member of the Exmouth Art Group. Her hobbies are golf, bridge, computers and sewing. Her favourite subject in art is portraiture.”

My words: Myrra was my step-mother, ‘mum’, and part of my life for nearly fifty years. She married my Father in 1963. I first met her in 1971. Born only a year after the end of WW1, she died in February just three weeks short of her 99th Birthday. She was a woman with a strength of character and opinion that made her a force of nature. She cites her hobbies as including golf. To say it was a hobby is a slight understatement. She was a very competitive golfer, in fact she was competitive at almost everything she did. She shared her passion for the game with my father for the 42 years they were married. Both of them had played from a very young age. She was also competitive as a Bridge player. Her mainstay, her profession, throughout her life was that she established herself as a talented artist, specialising in portraiture. She was a teacher as well as a practitioner of her art. My children and grandchildren benefitted from her teaching. She became a particularly major part of our lives after my Father died in 2005. She will be missed.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem for her that she was very rude about and told me never to write another one about her! I was offended, but, with hindsight, I confess and concede that particular poem was not my best work. To be kind, I guess she was applying her own high standards to my art, as she applied to her own. To honour her wishes, this poem is not about her; it’s about the age through which she lived. It is, nevertheless, dedicated to her.]

John Anstie

JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer, poet and musician –  a multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. He’s been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).

Recent publications are anthologies resulting from online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group (Petrichor* Rising. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.

* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY