The Ides of Trump Campaign was initiated by a resident of Berkeley, California who wanted to create a simple, affordable and easy way for people to show-up and be heard. To join in all you need is a postcard and a stamp. The idea is that you express your concerns with brevity on a postcard. The hope is that postcards will flood the White House on March 15, the Ides of March.
You will remember that in Shakespear’s play Julius Caesar didn’t heed the warning to beware the Ides (about mid-month) of March and was assasinated on that day. The idea here is NOT to threaten any kind of violence or other immoral behavior but to draw attention to issues of concern in a peaceful manner.
The beauty of this effort is that wherever you are in the world you too can easily have your say by sending a postcard for the Ides of Trump to:
Mr. President
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
In my neighborhood we unequivocally DO NOT endorse or encourage violence but there are issues of concern that residents want to bring to the fore. Hence, the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo began implementation of Justice Action Mondays: Flash Advocacy as part of its “Resist” efforts.
Rev. Ben Meyers and the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo (UUSM) invited San Mateo residents to join in an open, drop-in community space where people come together in a supportive environment to make their voices heard. Justice Action Mondays,every week,5:30 – 6:30 p.m., UUSM Beck Hall, 300 E. Santa Inez Avenue, San Mateo
This Week’s Flash Advocacy Theme: The “Protest by Postcard” Ides of Trump Campaign. Participants will write a postcard (or more) with a personal message letting the President know their concerns and/or position on the issues that are paramount to them. All postcards will be mailed. Cards, stamps, message ideas, snacks and the company of good people like youself are provided. A distribution list is updated weekly on Wednesdays and the theme for the following Monday is emailed to all.
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
AMETHYST ARSENIC is open submissions of poetry. Payment: $10. Featured poet receives $50. Deadline: March 31, 2017. Details HERE.
COLD CREEK REVIEW, a literary journal is a fledgling quarterly that accepts poetry, fiction, nonfiction and art. “… we are partial to submissions that demonstrate examples of troubled emotions…We want your submission to leave us paralyzed and distressed. We challenge you to alarm us.” This publication also plans to produce a special biannual – The Shallows – which does not share the same theme as the review. For details on both publications. link HERE.
ODYSSA MAGAZINE “accepts submissions for every monthly issue in the section “Story,” “Go,” “Family,” and “Think.” …. The look for fiction up to 700-1,000 words and buy first electronic and online rights exclusive for three months. Each issue has a theme. More detail HERE.
MUNSTER LITERATURE CENTRE publishes a biannual journal, Southword, which features poetry, fiction and reviews. Details HERE.
THE JOURNAL OF COMPRESSED LITERARY ARTS seeks “compressed creative arts” including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, mixed media and visual arts that are “compressed in some way. ” Publications are weekly. Details HERE.
CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL seeks submissions of poetry and story for numberous publications. Christmas and Holiday Collection – 2018, deadline October 31, 2017. Miracles and More , deadline August 31, 2017. My Crazy Family! – June 30, 2017. My Kind (of) America – March 31, 2017. Positively Happy! – May 31, 2017. Stories of Redemption – August 31, 2017. Details HERE.
PURITAN MAGAZINE seeks submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, interviews and reviews all year round and from anywhere in the world. Details HERE.
MUGWUMP, a literary revolution – Arocentric Anthology: Afrofuturism – publishes fiction stories in diverse settings, featuring diverse people. Payment: 1 cent/word. Deadline: March 31, 2017. Details HERE.
THE BeZINE, a publication of The Bardo Group Beguines, a virtual arts collective, is a digital publication that is published on the fifteenth of each month. The deadline is always on the tenth. Submit via email to bardogroup@gmail.com. Each issue is themed and the themes for each month are included in Submission Guidelines. Please read the guidelines, one or two issues AND the Mission Statement before submitting. Special issues are April for interNational Poetry Month and September when we host a virtual 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC) event for reader participation. This year 100TPC will be on September 30 and the September issue will post on the fifteenth as usual. The site was established in 2011 and the Zine is in publication now for three years. The theme for March 2017 is Science in Culture, Politics and Religion with a deadline upcoming on March 10. Submissions of poetry, essay, fiction and creative nonfiction, music videos, photography and art are welcome.
COMPETITIONS
Opportunity Knocks
THE POETRY SOCIETY (UK) “awards £16,000 in prizes each year. Poets at all stages of their careers are celebrated, and prizes also include ways to support writers’ development: courses, books, membership and publication. The competitions and prizes are a central part of The Poetry Society’s work.” Details HERE.
Award Winning British Poet, Myra Schneider (b. 1936), Writer, Writing Coach, Consultant to Second Light Network of Women Poets
SECOND LIGHT POETRY COMPETITION FOR LONG AND SHORT POEMS BY WOMEN 2017 – Deadline Tues, 15 August.
JUDGE MYRA SCHNEIDER will read all entries. Myra Schneider’s latest and recent books are Persephone in Finsbury Park (SLP), The Door to Colour (Enitharmon); What Women Want (SLP); and the writing resource, Writing Your Self(with John Killick). Myra is a Poetry School and Second Light regular tutor. More at Myra Schneider website. £300 First Prize for each of Long (no upper limit) and Short (max 50 lines) poems. £150 Second Prize (1 poem from either category). £75 Third Prize (1 poem from either category) Winning & Commended Poets published (in full or extract) in ARTEMISpoetry. Winners offered a London reading.
Entry: £6 each per long poem. Short poems: £4 each or £9 for 3, £14 for 8. Enter by post (2 copies) or online.
**Members are entitled to one free entry into the competition. Join now to be eligible.** (See About Second Light/Joining. Recommended ladies. I’m a member.) more: Rules & Entry direct link to payment at [Anne Stewart’s] poetry p f online shop, The results of the competitions will be posted on the website by 30th September. Once winning poems (or extracts) are published in ARTEMISpoetry. Second Light Network was founded and is managed by Dilys Wood.
EVENTS
THE THIRD DUBLIN WRITERS CONFERENCE sponsored by The Society of Authors is scheduled to be held at The Gresham Hotel, O’Connell Street, Dublin 1 from the 23rd-25th of June 2017. Seventeen speakers are scheduled. Details on conference, programme and to purchase tickets are HERE. The Society is offering a lower early-bird registration rate.
HALI POETRY WORKSHOP WITH RUSS GREEN hosted by Long Island Poetry on March 8, 150 Brightside Aven, Central Islp, New York 11722. Russ Green is a guest poet with The BeZine.
SECOND SATURDAYS AT CYRUS with Terri Muuss and Patricia Spears Jones, hosted by the featured poets and Matt Pasca.March 11, Cyrus: Chai & Coffee Company, 1 Railroad Plz., Bay Shore, New York 11706.
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH is celebrated on April in the United States. Look for announcements of events and celebrations on this site throughout the rest of this month.
interNATIONAL POETRY MONTH at The BeZineis April. We will feature a special issue and submissions are encouraged. Deadline is April 10.
The recommended read for this week is Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfastby Pulitzer Prize winning Megan Marshall who studied with Bishop at Harvard. This biography is richly spun, energetic, engaging and even inspirational despite the breathtaking depth of Bishop’s losses, her sense of marginalization and her head-long push into alcoholism. Indeed, some of the inspiration comes because with all her loses, Bishop managed to hold poetry tight. Her poems were for her a charm “against the loneliness they often expressed.” The book covers Bishop’s relationships with other poets and her romantic interests, the last was for me the singular wearisome downside, much overrided though by the book’s pleasures and values. It is laced with Marshall’s own stories and together the lives of these two bare witness to the power of words to give shape, sense and meaning to life. We come away with a strong sense of Elizabeth Bishop, one of America’s most extraordinary poets. A page-turner. A must read or everyone who loves and writes poetry.
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Given the current divisive atmosphere and mean narratives, I feel compelled some evenings to share information and inspiration on topics other than poetry, which support our shared ideals.
In a courageous and compassionate move two faith organizations in my neighborhood just announced that their congregations have voted by overwhelming majorities to give physical sanctuary to vulnerable neighbors, the kind of move that has growing support across the United States under the banner of The New Sanctuary Movement, a movement with historic roots in human sanctuary (as opposed to spiritual sanctuary) in England, 600 A.D. This latest revival is a renewal of the 80s Sanctuary Movement in the U.S.
In the 1980s faith organizations were responsible for transporting and sheltering some 500,000 escaping the violence in Central America. Hundreds of congregations sheltered refugees and moved them to the U.S. and Canada.
Why give sanctuary:
The Rev. Ben Meyers minister of the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo states: “Our Unitarian Universalist principles call us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all people; to seek justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, and to create world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. We commit our values to action as we work with other people of faith and moral conscience congruent with these principles and this purpose. Deportation of our neighbors and the breaking up of immigrant families in our communities are among the most compelling social justice issues of our time. Standing together on the side of love, our faith communities can make a real difference.”
and …
The Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon, senior minister of the Congregational Church of San Mateo says: “Each week we gather in our beautiful sanctuary to remember who we are as a people of faith who follow the teachings of Jesus. For us, providing refuge means opening that sanctuary as a “safe place” to those who are an integral part of our community, and providing a haven for families to stay together.” –The Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon, senior minister of the Congregational Church of San Mateo
I do not represent either of the churches featured here this evening nor speak for their ministers and congregations, but this story is compelling. I hope that by featuring their justice efforts other faith organizations that haven’t picked up the banner will do so. If your synagogue, church, temple or mosque is not in the process of becoming sanctuary, then please consider initiating that conversation. If you are the leader in a faith organization or a professional journalist who would like more information, contact the ministers at clergyhousingsummit2@gmail.com or contact me via direct message on Facebook or thepoetbyday@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to connect you.
Gary Bowers (One With Clay) is one of our triple-threat poets: poetry, art and humor. Words like “quick-witted” and “pithy” come to mind. He is adapt at combing his talents and this is a post he created, which I will cherish. It’s always nice to be acknowledged and Gary is particularly kind to me. Thank you, Gary! This is sweet and clever. There’s a lot more of Gary’s poetry, art and unique style to be enjoyed on Gary’s blog,where he often acknowledges other creatives. Recommended. J.D.
Jamie Dedes is alive, though she was given but two years to live in a prognosis delivered before the end of the last century. She credits her son and “an extraordinary medical team” for her continued existence. Though I don’t know her well–I don’t even know how many syllables are in her last name, much less how to pronounce it–I would venture to add that Moxie also has something to it.
For she has Moxie in abundance. She cares enough about poetry and its practitioners to have created and maintained an outstanding resource-blog called THE POET BY DAY, which connects poets via showcased poet exemplars, essays, links to items of interest to poets, her own poems, and on Wednesdays, those springboarding challenges known as prompts, which are invitations to write about a specific thing, or on a certain theme, or some other limiting, focusing factor.
And it was a week ago Wednesday that I responded to one such prompt. This one:
Write a poem, a fiction or a creative nonfiction piece telling us how you envision a feminine God or about the feminine side of God. What might S/he be like? Does/would such a view change the way you feel about yourself and the world? Would it change the world? How? You don’t need to believe in God or in a feminine aspect of God. This is an exercise in imagination not faith. Have fun with the exercise and if you feel comfortable, share the piece or the link to the piece below so that we might all enjoy.
For some reason this prompt struck a chord and got me going. I don’t know if there is a Supreme Being. I have certain feelings but I don’t trust them, being a rationalizer and wishful-thinker. A much more intelligent man than I am, Stephen Hawking, envisions a cosmology that, in the words of Carl Sagan in his introduction to Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, gives “nothing for a Creator to do.” In other words, Hawking’s universe has no need for a Creator.
But if there IS a Supreme Being, it makes sense to me, since the Supreme Being brought us all to be, that since that Being birthed us all, that She be a mother. And so I took a weird word from a conspiracy theory about our 44th President, Barack Obama, for a title, and was off to the races imagining God as Mom:
*****
birther
o god
thou residest betwixt r and t
god s be thy name
birther of us all
mixmistress of galaxies
crecher of clusters
ovulatrix of ylem
thy mother’s care is in the dew
thy admonishment is in the don’t
and when we want to play in the woods of reckless fun
thou respondest “we’ll see”
which almost always means “fat chance”
thy human smartalecks speak of heat death
it is merely a pause
in thy menopause
and soon thou’lt bake us cosmic cookies again
thanks for Ever
y
Thing,
maman
*****
Sure was fun to write, and oddly, bouncily, spiritually uplifting. Things just seemed to naturally occur: the Heat Death of the Universe resonates with the “hot flash” of menopause–hey how bout that, menoPAUSE–perhaps prelusive of the Big Crunch and the next Bang–and double up on “baking us cosmic cookies” with us being some of the cosmic cookies She bakes–and Everything with the y, possibly the Spanish “and,” joining Ever and Thing–and the French word for Mama, maman, slightly hinting at both “amen” and “ma MAN.” Wrote it first, realized it later. Could it be that She helped? Fun to think so.
I posted “birther” in the Comments section of Jamie’s post, and she replied that she loved it and wanted to include it in her following-Tuesday post. I happily agreed, and supplied a photo and my poet’s curriculum vitae at her request. She published my and three other poets’ responses to her prompt last Tuesday, and I was proud and happy enough to be in such august company that I put a link to her post on my Facebook Timeline.
As fate would have it, the next day was Jamie’s Birthday, and it was there I learned about her “Sixty-seven Years on the Razor’s Edge.” You can too, and I think you should. HERE is a link.
One thing I’d left out of my poet’s biography was the fact that my specialty is Acrostic poetry, i.e. poems where the first and/or last and/or midstream letters of the poem form words. In my gratitude to Jamie, and wanting to show off a little of this weird skill, I composed and illustrated a birthday acrostic for her, thus:
Here are the words of what may be the first birthday-occasion, acrostic, limerickal, end-words-all-rhyme-or-nearly-so poem in human history:
Jamaica may thrill, undenied,
And Nawlins is burstful with pride;
MARVEL at, though, who’s hied
In the clouds with her stride,
Energetically shifting the tides.
The recommended read for this week is Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. There’s so much I like about this manual. For one thing, Ted assumes that if you are a heavy-duty reader, you already know quite a bit. After all, one of the best ways to learn to write is to read. He operates on the moral principle that if you have a gift then you have the obligation to offer something by way of giving back. He says, “I hope I won’t exhaust your patience” and he doesn’t. He assumes that our ultimate goal is to reach others and to move them, so there is a great deal of emphasis on the relationship between the poet and her reader. He discusses our job as poet – not money, not fame – but “to serve the poems we write.” This perspective makes reading and working with Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manualan refreshing guide to the poetic terrain for both budding and experienced writers interested in creating work that is fulfilling and truly artistic.
By shopping at Amazon through The Word Play Shopandusing the book links embedded in posts, you help to support the maintenance of this site. Thank you! (Some book links will just lead to info about the book or poet/author and not to Amazon.)
The WordPlay Shop offers books and other tools especially selected for poets and writers.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 