Call for Submissions

We’re planning an anthology of poems about food and eating, to be published in 2015. We’re defining the theme loosely and welcome a chance to read poems on everything from the sublime to the delicious. Here’s the drill:

• Send up to 3 original poems to poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere. Previously published poems are fine too—we’ll credit the original publisher.
• Please give your full contact info, plus the titles of your poems and a brief (50-75 word) bio, in the body of the email.
• Attach your submission to the email as a .doc, docx, or .rtf document, one poem per page, with your name and email address on each page. No fancy formatting, please!
• We will review submissions as expeditiously as possible, so please don’t query us unless you haven’t heard from us in two months.
• Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2014

We’re looking forward to your poems.  

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This Writing Life

Haven’t we all felt it? The frustration of staring at a page where the words refuse to take their right places or, worse, take any place at all. Poet Brent Scott puts it well:

Frustration
Brent Scott

I destroyed a notebook.
Threw it across the room.
The papers
Fluttered around the spiral.
Ripped free.
Until the cardboard covers creased.
It hit against the wall.
I put my hand to my head.
Poems scattered on the floor.
They cowered as I approached.
One swallowed. Asked,
"What have we done?"
"Nothing.
I'm sorry.
It's me."

Brent Scott recently completed an MFA in Screenwriting at the University of New Orleans and just finished a year of teaching English in Korea. He spends a lot of his free time in the kitchen, creating new recipes.

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Women of a Certain Age

Persimmon Tree has people like me in mind. Billed as “An Online Magazine of the Arts for Women Over Sixty,” Persimmon Tree publishes fiction, nonfiction, art, and, yes, poetry. A piece of mine made it into the summer issue’s collection of poems from the southern states:

On Seeing an Unfamiliar Bird at the Feeder
Sally Zakariya

Was it you, dickcissel, with your finch
beak outside on the feeder today?

What I noticed was your slender grace
the gentle bob of your head as you pecked

the perfect seed, the flourish when you raised
your pale bill, seed displayed, prize among prizes.

How much of your small spirit you expend
each day, seed by hopeful seed, feeding

your heart, your beating wings. Was
it you, strayed off course, or your spirit

that stopped by here on your way
from one unknown to another?

'Vibrant Words'

Vibrant—isn’t that what we poets want all our words to be? We’d like to think our personal muse delivers splendid poems ready made, but the truth is, we often have to reach for words that are elusive if not downright recalcitrant.

Luckily, help is at hand in a new book, Vibrant Words: ideas and inspirations for poets, by Erica Goss. The widely published Goss, who is poet laureate of Los Gatos, California, has collected a rich trove of poem-starting ideas and strategies. As an inveterate collector of found poetry, I particularly like this prompt:

 One Word

I found the word “languish” on the sidewalk a few weeks ago. As a poet, I’m always on the hunt for that special word, the one that will trigger some kind of response in poetry. I could hardly believe my luck in finding “languish.” It made me remember the “one-word prompt,” a writing exercise that I use often. Find a word that moves you in some way. Now look it up in the dictionary and write down all of its meanings. “Languish” has these: 1. Be neglected or deprived; 2. Become less successful; 3. Pine. Aha! I see that “pine,” both a verb and a noun, has possibilities. I start to wonder about the etymology of “pine,” a word that signifies a tree and an emotional/physical state of suffering. Look for a word that moves you in some way. Look up its various meanings, in both a dictionary and thesaurus. Look it up in a foreign language dictionary and see how it’s defined in another language. Ponder its associations. Write.© Erica Goss, 2014

Other suggestions are equally compelling, as are the poems (some her own) that Goss includes in the book. Vibrant Words, published by PushPen Press, can give you a much-needed nudge when you’re staring at that blank piece of paper.

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