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SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS: Opportunities, Events and Other Information and News

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CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

Opportunity Knocks

HERMENEUTIC CHAOS LITERARY JOURNAL publishes six issues a year and reviews submissions year round, including poetry, fiction and artwork. Details HERE.

GREEN LINDEN PRESS is reviewing submissions of poetry.  It’s a new magazine and this will be the second issue. There is a reading free of $2.  Details HERE.

BLUE MARBLE PRESS is a quarterly literary magazine for youth ages thirteen – twenty. It reviews submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and art on a rolling basis. Details HERE.

THE CAPRA REVIEW is biannual and publishes fiction, nonfiction and art. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.  Details HERE.

FIVE ON THE FIFTH, an online lit mag, publishes five short stories on the fifth of each month. They accept flash fiction, general fiction, horror, science fiction, and fantasy with a maximum word count of 5,000. Details HERE.

CONTEST

Opportunity Knocks

NEW YORK ENCOUNTER Poetry Contest “to celebrate the theme of its 2017 event. The Encounter is an annual three-day public cultural event in the heart of New York City. It strives to witness to the new life and knowledge generated by the faith, following Pope Benedict’s claim that ‘the intelligence of faith has to become the intelligence of reality.’ The Encounter’s poetry contest invites all poets writing in English to submit up to 3 poems (maximum 30 lines each), related in some way to the theme, Reality Has Never Betrayed Me.  Guest judge is poet, translator, editor, and essayist Christian Wiman,” the former editor of Poetry. Deadline: November 1st. Details HERE.

EVENTS

14355065_1147003192026877_873369593837549476_nOctober 21 at 7:30 PM, Stellar Gallery 202 23rd Sacramento, California “Keynote Poetry Group is proud to host Michael Ellis in a Politically Incorrect evening of Poetry. He will share poems that are intimate and usually too much for a General audience. Ellis will speak on Police Killings, Read a poem dedicated to Trayvon Martin.. He will speak on Domestic violence in a sad poem titled Daddy’s Little Girl.He will perform a Rap version of “Have You Seen her” originally by the Chi-lites and he will top that off with one of his most popular poems, Jazz Legends..Readers will see why he is so endeared by level four inmates… THE BLACK PENIS poem is highly controversial but Socially Responsible..and some may want to leave the room for fresh air when he reads this poem…No further details on this one…And you will also hear the Uncle Tom Poem, one of his latest poems.. And there might be a few surprises somewhere.. Refreshments will be provided by KEYNOTE POETS so bring your thirst…”

BLANK SPACE OPEN MIC Thursday, September 29 at 6:30 PM – 10:30 PM at the Bookmunch Cafe Bay Square, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This event is part of 100TPC. The Facebook page for it is HERE.

14390699_10202262032910271_3088773105239882108_nBOOK LAUNCH/POETRY READING, Saturday, October 8 at 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. EDT, The Hamilton Guesthouse, 148 Mary Street, Hamilton, Ontario L8L 4V8. “John Wall Barger will be launching his new book, The Book of Festus (Palimpsest Press), at the Pring on October 8, 2016, with fellow writers Autumn Getty, Lucas Kolthof, and Chris Pannell. The evening will also feature an open mic for those who would like to come and perform their own poetry or music.” More details on the Facebook page for this event HERE.

TIDBIT

Silva Zanoyan Merjanian’s Rape of Arevik read by the inimitable Eabha Rose. The music is They Have Taken the One I Love by Levon Minassian. If you are reading the Sunday Poesy from an email subscription you’ll likely have to link through to the site to view the video.

THE POET BY DAY 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.

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ON THE 101st ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: Rape of Arevik by Silva Merjanian

Armenians are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Turkish soldiers. Kharpert, Armenia, Ottoman Empire - April, 1915. *From the collection of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives. Photographed by an anonymous German traveler.

Armenians are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Turkish soldiers. Kharpert, Armenia, Ottoman Empire – April, 1915. From the collection of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives. Photographed by an anonymous German traveler.

There were moonlit nights and many moonless nights
sober and drunken in one grain of sand
in billions of grains there were filthy hands
mud and fingernails between sunburned thighs
this is not my skin with nerves inside out
not my breast squeezed into faint whimpers
like dying swallows caught in a dry mouth

soon I’ll be a memory in last verse of songs
someone meant to write on a summer night
flesh to sand and sand to a story to tell
they’ll mention tattoos* and how I was a slave
look look how many stars in one grain of sand
in a billion grains in a billion tears
screams tangled like strings through my broken ribs

you did not know me then
before much before they tore off my clothes
and the desert night shivered with their rage
you did not see how my hair flowed like silk
on soft pillows where teenage dreams were weaved
you did not know me dressed with flowers in my hair
and my fathers arm around my adolescent frame
you did not see the stars from our wide windows
above the vineyard and my feet bare on the fertile soil
in our apricot tree’s cool summer shade

I’m in the evening news – in a pile of bones
look at the skull at the very left
see the sparrow lodged between those clenched jaws
I’m in the evening news a hundred years late
in the grains of sand shifting restless with shame
in the billion stars in your sky tonight
in my mother’s voice singing kenatzir pallas*
in the moonlit nights and the moonless nights
on a dagger’s blade in the Deir ez-Zor sand

– Silva Merjanian

24 April 2016 is the 101th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, when thousands of women were dragged in the desert, raped and tortured before killed.

  • the reference to tattoos … they used to tattoo the women according to who owned them.
  • Kenatzir pallas is a lullaby very popular with Armenians and means “go to sleep my child”

“Silva’s poetry rewards the reader with the gift of exquisite lacework, adorned with choice words and skillfully wrought poetic imagery, which allow you to get a glimpse of both the intoxicating sensuality of survival and the scalpel scars on the tender skin of life. Many-layered, it excels alike in depicting the sphere of personal experience and of traumatic social issues.” – Dr. Aprilia Zank. Lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation Theory Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany in a review of Silva’s collection Rumor. Three poems rom this collection are Pushcart nominees. The net profits including the publisher’s go to The Armenian-Syrian Relief Fund. About $5,000 dollars have been raised to date.

© 2016, poem and book cover design, Silva Merjanian, All rights reserved; featured here with the permission of the poet; Silva’s website is HERE.; the header photograph is a public domian photograph courtesy of Project Save.