Poetry Bulletin: June 2024
Reading today! + over 15 deadlines + artist publishing and more
Hey poets — thank you to everyone who responded with kindness and good thoughts to last month’s bulletin. I haven’t been able to reply to all of you yet, but I’m trying, at least to say thanks.
Many of you responded in solidarity, and some folks sent me words/reframes that I didn’t know I needed. Language that steadied and surprised me, in a good way… which I guess I’m mentioning here just as an appreciation for how checking in with each other, affirming each other, saying some version of “you’re not alone” or “we’ve got this” really does matter.
As challenging as these recent months have been, there has also been so much witnessing and meeting each other with intention and clarity. Yesterday
wrote about how relieving this clarity is: “You don’t realize how relieving this is. How relieving each time it is to just know or gain clarity on someone’s politics and where they actually stand.”I hope that as you make your refusals, as you sacrifice something (relationships, institutional support, publishing opportunities, you name it) for the sake of solidarity, as you name genocide in Palestine, Sudan, Congo… you also get to feel that relief of clarity, of recognizing the others who are in the work with you.
That might read like a string of platitudes (why does email seem to have that effect?) but I mean it in a real, concrete way. I hope we keep finding each other. I hope this time keeps changing us, and changing who/what holds power and influence in our creative spaces. I hope we are relieved of false promises, prestige-seeking, gatekeeping… that’s always been part of this work with the Poetry Bulletin, but it has taken on a whole new texture in recent months.
Grateful,
Emily
Reading Today: No Pride Without Palestine
The Offing, phoebe, and So to Speak are hosting No Pride Without Palestine, a virtual reading today, June 14, at 6:30 pm EST in support of Life for Gaza. Make a minimum $5 donation to the Municipality for Gaza to join in.
In Practice
- in a great interview with the Poetry Project: “Poetry is an insurgent language in that it resists emptying by design. AI is this empty language—it can generate language that can fulfill an assignment, like marketing, or whatever. It’s designed to spit out what your prompts tell it to. It’s been emptied of meaning because no one is producing it. Poetry resists emptying because it itself challenges grammars, and relation.”
- with ten reasons to love artist publishing: “I often hear self-publishing being used as a way to diminish work that’s not made through the corporate/industrial publishing process, usually by trying to indicate it’s lower quality or made by just one person. But often artist-initiated publishing has collaborators, influences, and so much is higher quality and has more spark and zing to it. And takes more interesting shapes than what’s allowed in the corporate world.”
Appreciated the chance to tussle more with the concept of “literary citizenship,” thanks to this conversation between Alina Stefanescu and Karan Kapoor… I’ve always gotten too much of the “loyal soldier” vibe from the phrase. I’d rather be a fool than a citizen.
More on artist publishing and zines. Have you turned your poetry into a zine? Would you be open to sharing about the process? Let me know.
Creative Support: Fellowships & More
If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.
- wants to interview debut poets about the journey of publishing a first book.
Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians in Gaza. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and are looking for more folks to lead workshops.
June 24 — The Rural Regenerator Fellowship is open for applications from writers and artists in the Upper Midwest.
June 30 — The FSG Writer’s Fellowship is open for submissions.
July 3 — The Poetry Coalition is open for applications to its fellowship program.
Upcoming Deadlines
These are upcoming poetry book deadlines with publishers that have signed on to PACBI:
June 30 - Poetry Northwest - Possession Sound Poetry Series (with a free submission period for BIPOC writers)
June 30 - River River Books (full-length) (sliding scale/pay what you can submission fees)
July 15 - Diode Editions (chapbook and full-length — Diode has also lowered their fees and they’re offering fee waivers. Love to see it!)
There are about 15 deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-July. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.
The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have ideas, updates to a publisher’s listing, or want to share a resource, say hello by replying to this note.
With you. <3
thank you for this! I make a few collage poetry zines a year and would love to share more if you want :)