It’s the first Visual Verse prompt of the year! As ever, I’d recommend you write your one-hour piece and submit it asap. Prompt and full info here. There are also some early pieces for inspiration.
Poetry
Poems on loss wanted
Sorry for the tight deadline: you have until 15August 2017 to submit your poem to Radix Media’s forthcoming anthology, Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief. Full details here
Call for Short Poems for Public Display
The BIG LIT Weekend Call for short poems:
BIG LIT The Stewartry Book Festival
April 14-17 2016
Poet Chrys Salt and her colleague Chik Duncan would be grateful for short poems of any kind (published or unpublished) to be displayed in high street windows over BIG LIT weekend in the Scottish town of Gatehouse of Fleet.
The poems: “are often left up long after the event and attract punters to The Festival.”
Send in Palatino 12 point font, with your name at the bottom and include acknowledgements for published poems.
For poem length, Chrys says: ‘Sonnet length is good; shorter is even better.’ (Apparently, the windows are small, Georgian ones!)
ASAP would be good but no later than 14 March.
Please send to Chik Duncan: chik@swet.co.uk
(P.S. I have it on good authority that, if you do send your poems, they will still be eligible for submission elsewhere, as public display does not constitute actual publication.)
Scarborough Fair anthology seeks submissions
The University of Toronto’s annual print anthology, Scarborough Fair, is accepting Writing and Visual Art through December 31, 2015.
Copied and pasted:
The STRONGEST SUBMISSIONS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN SCARBOROUGH FAIR 48
Please email your submissions to: scarfair@gmail.com with ‘2015 Submission’ and your name in the subject line.
Nine Arches Press – Magazine and Full Collection Submissions
Nine Arches Press has opened its bi-annual submissions window for poetry collections until 30 November 2015. Poets should have a record of previous publications, but should not have previously published a collection for the Nine Arches Press Debut series. Send a sample of twenty poems in one document.
Nine Arches is also looking for poems for its magazine, ‘Under the Radar’. Send up to six original, unpublished poems (or short fiction up to a max. 3,000 words) through the online submission system. Again, check the website for full details.
Please read the full information on the Nine Arches website before submitting: http://ninearchespress.com/submissions.html
(Un)natural Poetry Competition
Joint project between Nuffield Council on Bioethics and Apples and Snakes. http://nuffieldbioethics.org/project/naturalness/performance-poetry-collaboration/poetry-competition/
Deadline: Midnight on Sunday 1 November 2015. Open to poets living in the UK. The following is copied and pasted from the website:
We are looking for poems that explore, delve into and reveal the meaning of the words natural, unnatural, nature and similar words in the context of debates about science, technology and medicine.
What do people mean when they say genetic modification is wrong because it’s unnatural, or food that is natural is better for you?
We want to share these poems to engage others in the conversation, so we are looking for poets to perform their work at a public event in London on Monday 30th November 2015. The event will be filmed and shared online.
Make It Maldon Free Arts Festival
Make It Maldon is a one-off event in Maldon, Essex, England. It will run from Saturday 29th to Monday 31st August 2015 and is co-ordinated by the amazing Willow Shepstone, as her university placement project for Nottingham Trent University, where she studies product and furniture design.
I will be giving a free reading of my poetry on Saturday 29th August, at 3pm, and leading a free beginners’ poetry workshop on Sunday 30th, from 2-4pm. Both events will be at the beautiful Hayletts Gallery. The beginners poetry workshop is open to all. We’ll be using the fantastic art (in Hayletts Summer Mixed Exhibition) as our inspiration – and you really don’t have to have any experience to participate. I will be very kind and gentle.
Booking essential, by emailing me: rosiesandler@talktalk.net
Please can you share this, if you are UK-based and have friends/family in Essex? Thank you!
Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair in London 2015
For those of you based in the South of England, the Poetry Book Fair in London looks well worth a visit. (There is a poetry competition this year, but it has a fee for entry.) Visit the Fair from 10am to 4.30pm at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL. Then go to the party from 4pm to ‘late’ at The Square Pig & Pen, 30-32 Procter Street, WC1V 6NX. The event promises free entry, free poems, readings, discussions and more than 70 publishers. Find the Fair on Twitter or Facebook.
William Soutar Writing Prize 2015
The William Soutar Writing Prize is run by Perth and Kinross libraries. Now in its fourteenth year, this annual competition alternates between poetry and short stories. The competition in 2015 is for poems. Entry to this Scottish-based competition is free, and open to anyone in the world over the age of 16yrs. Individuals are limited to two poems only. Entries may be in English or Scots. First prize is an Arvon Writing Course. Second Prize: £100 Book Token. Local Prize:£50 Book Token to be awarded for the best work from a resident of Perth and Kinross in Scotland. Deadline: 23 June 2015. More details and full rules here: http://www.pkc.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=29920&p=0 (I am having trouble with this link, which seems to change to a more generic council website link as I paste it in. The best thing seems to be to click on the link, and then, if the Prize doesn’t show up, do a search on the website.)
Rattle mag ongoing submissions calls
Lovely print and digital mag, ‘Rattle’ is worth checking out: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/ There’s a weekly challenge of writing a piece in response to a news story; a monthly ‘ekphrastic’ challenge (writing a poem in response to a piece of art – in this case, a specific image, posted on the magazine’s website); and there are also the usual submissions call-outs. Feminist poets are invited to send by October 15th 2015 for the Spring 2016 issue: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/submissions/guidelines/ There’s also a pay-to-enter poetry competition, with a large cash prize.
The Poet's Resource 