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Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 10:01AM Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 11:15AM Dear poemeleon readers:
Another journal I help to edit is actively seeking work for its next issue, due out in November. Please read the call for submissions (below) and if you have anything suitable please send it to babel (at) icorn (dot) org.
Cati Porter
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Call for Submissions: Deadline October 25, 2007
babel aims to provide its readers with excellent writing by established and emerging authors.
Please note that the Voices section prioritizes work accompanied by translations. We also seek poetry and fiction related to the overall themes babel addresses.
For On Citizenship and Across Culture we welcome essays, fiction and poetry dealing with issues of identity, and on cross-cultural approaches to reading and/or writing literature.
For In Dialogue we are looking for interviews, correspondence between writers, and creative writing that speaks to classic poems.
We request that you email your submission as an attachment, .doc or .txt. Don't forget to write you name on each numbered page, and please include a brief and relevant cover letter & bio in the body of your email. Please write "submission" in the subject line and mail to babel (at) icorn (dot) org .
For tips on how to make free audio files, email ren (at) icorn (dot) org .
We are a not-for-profit organization and regret that we do not have funds to pay our contributors at this time. We hope that you will consider the right to include your work in babel as a donation to an important cause.
About babel:
ICORN's quarterly webzine babel is an extension of the network's efforts to help provide persecuted writers the freedom and opportunity to have their voices heard along with those of the best emerging and established writers working uncensored.
Perhaps Mansur Rajih's story is not typical of ICORN Guest Writers, but it does illustrate the ironic situation many of our Guest Writers face: censored, but significant in their homeland; uncensored, yet isolated abroad.
During the 15 years of his incarceration, Mansur Rajih's friends were able to smuggle his poetry out of the Yemeni prison. In this way, his work was published in the region for over a decade, his poetic voice was heard despite prison and a death sentence. However, once he had been released from prison - once he was able to write and live safely, to sleep "soundly throughout the night" (as former ICORN Guest Writer Carlos Sherman described his ICORN experience) - Rajih found himself living in a part of the world where very few people could speak or read his language, where very few people were qualified to translate his native tongue. While not impossible, publication was difficult. And his readership was geographically remote.
It is no surprise that exiled writers face unique challenges in reaching their intended audiences. This webzine is a small - but we hope significant- effort to spotlight the work and the interests of these writers.
Friday, September 7, 2007 at 05:41AM Little Fires, Christina Lovin’s second chapbook was a top ten finalist for the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Poetry Series and will be published in early 2008.
Lovin was also recently named recipient of the Southern Women Writers’ Conference Emerging Poet Award, and will participate in the SWWC at Berry College in Georgia in late September. Her sonnet crown, “Event Horizon” placed third in the Women Who Write Annual Poetry Award and will be published in the annual anthology, Calliope. Another sonnet crown, “Clear Cut” (written during her time as writer-in-residence at the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon), was “Commended” in the 2007 Margaret Reid Award for Traditional Forms.
She was recently invited to a four-week residency (May 2008) at Footpaths House Artists’ Retreat on the island of Flores in the Azores, Portugal. Lovin returns as a residence fellow to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in December of this year to continue work on her current project.
Friday, August 31, 2007 at 04:56PM Today is the last official day to submit to the prose poem issue. Please go to the submissions page to upload your document (and be sure to read the guidelines carefully).
And remember to check out the contest!
Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 09:31AM This year we nominated poems for the University of Virginia's Best New Poets series, and I am very pleased to announce that our nominee, Alex Grant, was chosen for inclusion. His poem "The Steps of Montmartre", from Volume I Issue 2 (the ekphrastic issue), will appear in the anthology.
The guest editor is Pulitzer-prize-winner Natasha Trethewey.
Congratulations, Alex!