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The Spring 2018 issue of Paterson Literary Review includes winners and all the honorable mentions of the 2017 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards:

First Prize
Howard Berelson, Teaneck, NJ, “Last Night”
Robert A. Rosenbloom, Bound Brook, NJ, “Dear Amy”

Second Prize
Eileen Van Hook, Wanaque, NJ “Thanksgiving Memory”

Third Prize
Phillipa Scott, West Orange, NJ, “Hoboken, 1990”

For a full list of the Honorable Mentions and Editor's Choice selections, click here.

The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, honoring Allen Ginsberg’s contributions to American Literature, are given annually to poets. First prize, $1,000; second prize, $200; and third prize, $100. Winning poems are published in the following year’s issue of the Paterson Literary Review. The contest is open between June 1 and September 30 of each year.

In addition to poetry and book reviews, the Spring 2018 issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal is a special issue: "Re-triangulating Yeats, Stevens, Eliot" edited by Edward Ragg and Bart Eeckhout. Content includes: 

“Pages from Tales: Narrating Modernism's Aftermaths” by Edward Ragg
“Yeats, Stevens, Eliot: Eras and Legacies” an Interview with Marjorie Perloff
“Atlantic Triangle: Stevens, Yeats, Eliot in Time of War Ireland” by Lee M. Jenkins
“Crazy Jane and Professor Eucalyptus: Self-Dissolution in the Later Poetry of Yeats and Stevens” by Margaret Mills Harper
"’Where / Do I begin and end?’: Circular Imagery in the Revolutionary Poetics of Stevens and Yeats” by Hannah Simpson
"’Dead Opposites’ or ‘Reconciled among the Stars’?: Stevens and Eliot” by Tony Sharpe
“The Idea of a Colony: Eliot and Stevens in Australia” by Benjamin Madden
"’We reason of these things with later reason’: Plain Sense and the Poetics of Relief in Eliot and Stevens” by Sarah Kennedy

The Wallace Stevens Journal is avaialbe by subscription from John Hopkins University Press and is also available on Project Muse with article previews.

The Spring 2018 issue of The Bitter Oleander features an in-depth interview with European Editor, poet and translator John Taylor. Editor and Publisher Paul B. Roth delves into a variety of issues and interests with Taylor, including influences on his writing; his bout with polio and interest in mathematics in his youth; the value of "slow" travel - trains being a particular favorite mode of transportation and thought/work space for Taylor; the situation of being an American writer living abroad and the concepts of 'foreignness' and 'otherness'; and the "subtle positivity" of Taylor's writings. The interview is accompanied by over a dozen pages of Taylor's work.

The Gettysburg Review Spring 2018 features the fun funky mixed media collage of Margaret Rizzio both on the cover and a full-color internal portfolio. 

I love this Glimmer Train #102 cover image of fresh fruits. Though not the kind of tropical fruit we see here in Michigan, this makes me look forward to summer farmers markets. Cover art: "I Miss My Mother" by Jane Zwinger.

The bright sunshine adds to the summery feel of "White Door Bird" by Toni La Ree Bennett, a photo that spans both the front and back covers of the Winter 2018 Cimarron Review.

 

Winners and Honorable Mentions of the 2018 Bellevue Literary Review Prizes can be found in the Spring 2018 issue:

Goldenberg Prize for Fiction
Selected by Geraldine Brooks
Winner: “Atrophy” by Lauren Erin O’Brien
Honorable Mention: “Full Buck Moon” by Sheryl Louise Rivett
Honorable Mention: “Bamboo Forest” by Faith Shearin

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction
Selected by Rivka Galchen
Winner: “Cancer, So Far” by Elizabeth Crowell
Honorable Mention: “Drawing Blood” by Laura Johnsrude
Honorable Mention: “The Reluctant Sexton” by Martha Wolfe

Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry
Selected by Rachel Hadas
Winner: “Throat” by Gabriel Spera
Honorable Mention: “The Game of Catch” by Noah Stetzer

Daniel Liebowitz Prize for Student Writing
Winner: Nonfiction “Portraits” by Janna Minehart

The annual Bellevue Literary Review Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. The next contest will close on July 1, 2018.

"If a poem works it’s because you’ve made it such that other people might participate in making it meaningful, and this participation will always rest on another person’s understanding of the poem and its relationship to a world that is not your own. Your own understanding of the poem will evolve over time too, as you reread it in light of your changing world, just as you will find the world altered in light of the poem you wrote to understand a small uncertain corner of it. With poems, you never get to settle on a final meaning for your work, just as you never get to feel settled, finally, as yourself."

From On Poetry and Uncertain Subjects: Learning from the unknown by Jack Underwood in the May 2018 issue of Poetry. Read the rest here.

Last month, DM O'Connor reviewed EJ Koh’s collection of poems Lesser Love. In addition to being selected winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry in 2017, O’Connor offers this praise: “It is clear that each page stands alone as an example of true contemporary poetry. It is clear you should buy this book, memorize all the poems, then give it to a friend who need to be affirmed that poetry is far from dead.”

At the close of the review, O’Connor notes that Koh will even write love letters to her readers, just for the asking. Intrigued, I visited her website, where she states, “I am writing a thousand love letters to strangers by hand.”

Her July 26, 2016 blog post entitled, “It’s Okay, I Love You” explains how she came to this task, beginning the entry with:

“The past nine months, my life has become unrecognizable. When I say this out loud, it means who I am is unrecognizable. But I now see myself for the first time.

“In February, I hoped to write again; beginning was also deciding. I’d once said, 'I’m sick of writing because I’m sick of myself.' To be kinder towards my person, I didn’t go back to that place. On a Friday evening, I was pressed for new perspective. I decided to handwrite a thousand love letters.”

She goes on to explain why the handwriting, why the love – which seems it needs less explaining in our current world that feels imbued with endless hate.

So, I wrote to EJ. I sent her an e-mail, including some details about myself, as she requests, “& add a struggle,” which I did. A couple weeks later, I received a hand-addressed envelope postmarked from Seattle. By then, I had forgotten about my request, and didn’t know EJ was on the west coast, so I was pleasantly surprised to open the envelope and find a two-page, handwritten “love letter.” Mine was numbered 62, and included thoughtful commentary and insight gleaned from information I had shared with her, including my struggle.

A love letter? If love means reaching out to a total stranger, to recognize the work they do, what they care about and what they are struggling with; to treat someone with concern and care and affirmation; to not judge and to just be kind and share in someone’s perspective with seriousness and some humor – then yes. This was the best love letter I’ve ever received.

What a difference writers can make in another person’s life. And all it takes is who we are and what we have, shared with another. So simple, so (nearly) free, and yet – so profound.

My thanks to EJ. I hope others who share in this experience have as great an appreciation. May we all “promise to notice our light every day.”

From the creators of Creative Nonfiction magazine, True Story provides a monthly home for longform (5000-10000 words) nonfiction narratives. This pocket-sized publication showcases one exceptional essay by one exceptional author at a time. Are you perhaps the next exceptional author to be featured? True Story is looking for a wide variety of voices, styles and subjects, and of course, readers who would enjoy the same. Subscriptions offer this gem delivered to your mailbox each month - perfect for your beach bag and road trip packing. And not just for you, True Story would be a fabulous gift for the readers in your life. For less than a date to the movies, you can send someone True Story for a year. Also available (for even less!) on Kindle. Just want to sample it? There's a grab bag of back issues available here.

What better way to usher in summer than to introduce SWWIM Every Day? SWWIM actually stands for Supporting Women Writers in Miami, and although it retains its origin’s namesake, everyone is invited to enjoy the international reach of contributors included in this daily online publication of poetry by women, women-identifying and femme-presenting writers.

Three poems by Elizabeth Hoover, winner of the Boulevard 2017 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets, as selected by Contest Judge Edward Nobles, are featured in the newest Spring 2018 issue. Works by honorable mention poets Lea Anderson and Elizabeth Eagle are also included.

This annual contest awards $1,000 and publication for the winning group of three poems by a poet who has not yet published a book of poetry with a nationally distributed press. The current contest is open until June 1, 2018.

The Greensboro Review Spring 2018 issue features the winners of The Robert Watson Literary Prizes:

Eli Cranor for his story, "Don't Know Tough"

Alison Powell [pictured] for her poem "from The Book of Revelation"

This annual contest awards $1000 for both fiction and poetry as well as publication and closes each year on September 15.

The most recent issue of Michigan Quarterly Review (Winter 2018) opens with Associate Editor Keith Taylor's "What is Found There: Poetry at Michigan," commenting on this issue's special feature. He recounts the Spring 2017 200th anniversary celebration at University of Michigan, which included a day-long conference entitled "Poetry at Michigan." This was a "continuation of two symposia done over the previous few years: one on Theodore Roethke, and the other focising on Robert Hayden and his work."

This issue of MQR has now become the even larger discussion of poets and their connections to UofM, including: Donald Hall, "an important professor" at UofM for almost twenty years; an unpublished interview with Seamus Heaney "a regular visitor for almost a quarter of a century, both before and after his Nobel Prize"; Francey Oscherwitz, and undergraduate at the university thirty-five years ago; Hannah Webster, "a recent graduate of the Zell Writing Program," who "writes about her experience with the Prison Creative Arts Project," including works from Michigan prison students; and Bob Hicock, not a UofM grad, but who lived in Ann Arbor for some twenty years, has contributed "a provocative essay on the necessary and inevitable changes happening in contemporary American poetry."

“Anger is an energy, according to Johnny Lydon. Who am I to argue?” comments Drew B. David, sole editor and “energy” behind Angry Old Man, a new print and online quarterly publishing all textual and visual forms, with mixed media (or intermedia) especially encouraged. Angry Old Man is a lit mag dedicated to textual-visual hybridization and true aesthetic experimentation.

The Spring/Summer 2018 issue of Black Warrior Review features the winners of their annual writing contest:

Nonfiction Contest Winner
Judge: Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
"The Best Lighting for My Body Was at the White Horse Inn and Bar, Oakland, California" by Tony Wei Ling

Flash Prose Contest Winner
Judge: Joyelle McSweeney
"Auto-Da-Fé: Confession And Camouflauge" by M.J. Gette

Fiction Contest Winner
Judge: Nicola Griffith
"The World Holds What It Remembers Most" by Tess Allard

Poetry Contest Winner
Judge: Rachel McKibbens
"From a Poet to her Rumbero" by Sarah María Medina

Cover Art: "Undomesticated Interior No. 7" by Lisa Krannichfeld

Every year, the National Writing Project selects five outstanding student writers, grades 10 and 11, who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. These Student Poets are invited to share in a conversation and read their poetry. This year's event, NWP Radio - A Conversation with National Student Poets, will take place Thursday, April 12 at 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT. The audio for event will be available the day of on the NWP Radio page along with their full archive of NWP Radio programs.

Journal of the Month is an incredible resource for writers, readers, teachers, students, librarians – does that leave anyone out?

As a general subscriber, you will receive a new literary journal by the tenth of each month, never receiving the same publication twice during your subscription. If you already subscribe to some journals, you just let them know, and they will choose others for you. Yes, there are human beings making these selections, not automated machines!

For teachers, Co-Founder Jenn Scheck-Kahn (aka one of the humans behind this marvelous enterprise), will work with you to select four magazines you’d like to teach. Each student will then receive one publication a month – based on a delivery schedule you develop together, so that the publications arrive in advance of when you plan to teach them. Instructors receive a free set of the copies they plan to teach. Now is the time to plan those readings for the next school year!

Journal of the Month is a super easy gift idea! If you have writers or readers on your holiday or birthday list, what better way to support their interests!

Subscribers can select from 4, 6, 8, 12, and even 24 months.

Try it! See if you like it (how could you not?!), then sign up for more!

FIELD Magazine Editor David Young writes:

"As FIELD 98, our Spring 2018 issue, arrives, it's time to let you know that just two more numbers are scheduled: #99, Fall 2018, and #100, Spring 2019. Many have expressed dismay at learning that FIELD will close down, but both David Walker and I feel the need to free ourselves from the burden of editorship. Nobody thought, when the magazine began in 1969, that it would last this long and become such an institution. All good things eventually terminate, however, and fifty years and one hundred issues make for good round numbers.

"We're hoping to organize a farewell event at next year's AWP meeting. Meanwhile, we're very grateful to our fellow editors, our contributors, and our subscribers for their support and enthusiasm. Also, of course, to Oberlin College for its hospitality. It isn't easy to say goodbye. Thank you for caring and for loving FIELD all these many years."

Thank you David Young (top photo), David Walker, and all the staff, writers, and readers through the years who helped make FIELD a vital voice in our literary community.

Monolith by Jeanne Borofsky on the cover of Volume 29 Number 1 2018 welcomes readers to the party celebrating New England Review's forty years of publication.

Kourtney Roy's pouting princess portrait entitled "Mythology" from autopotraits I is an intriguing cover choice for Hotel Amerika's Spring 2018 issue.

Croatian-born artist Moondrusannah's artwork, featured in the online 8.1 issue of New Delta Review, is from her Illustrated Dreams Diary, of which she says, "Any clue to What Girls Really Dream About? I’m just starting to find that out myself, and I like what I see."

 

Join in National Poetry Month celebrations!

While supplies last, you can request a free copy of the 2018 National Poetry Month poster from the Academy of American Poets, designed by AIGA Medal and National Design Award-winning designer Paula Scher. The design celebrates typography and is suggestive of concrete poetry and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

April 26 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Carry a poem with you and share it with others! The Academy of American Poets provides a PDF Guide to Celebrating Poetry in Schools, Communities & Businesses, which includes a selection of pocket-sized poems (also cellphone, snapshot sized). Carry and share!

Teach This Poem features a poem each week from the Academy's online collection accompanied by commentary and interdisciplinary resources and activities. Good for K-12 as well as early college.

Dear Poet Project invites grades five through twelve (Common Core lesson plan available) to write letters in response to poems written by poets connected with the Academy of American Poets. Deadline: April 30, 2018 for consideration for publication on Poets.org in 2018 as well as select letters receiving a response.

ReadWriteThink, the educational resource partnering with National Council of Teachers of English and International Literacy Association, provides classroom activities, websites, and related resources for teachers and parents of K-12 students.

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry, is all online all the time, providing poetry, poet biographies, news and educaitonal resources for all levels.

Reading Rockets, the national multimedia project from WETA Public Broadcasting, has a full page of resources: Poets on Poetry videos; Learning Through Poetry links to resources and organizations; Poetry Booklists; Video interviews with children's poets; ideas for librarians; and a full list of activities.

American Life in Poetry features a weekly poem with brief commentary from Poet Laurate of the United States 2004-2006 Ted Kooser. Print and online news sources can sign up to reprint the columns.

NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April. Best to sign up early, but check it out this year to prepare yourself for next!

 

If this data shared by Iron City Magazine doesn’t startle or sadden you, then you need to get woke: "The U.S., with less than 5% of the world’s population, has more than 20% of its prisoners, more people by raw number than any other nation in the world, regardless of size. Given that 1 in 135 Americans lives behind bars, U.S. prison complexes are like vast cities. If they were made into a state, it would be the 36th most populated."

Iron City Magazine: Creative Expressions By and For the Incarcerated  is an annual online and print journal devoted entirely to writing and art from the prison world, and one that we should all be reading. The name, Iron City Magazine ’s Marketing Editor Jacqueline Aguilar tells me, comes from the image the word "prison" conjures in most of us: "Even though most prisons are chiefly nowadays made of concrete more than iron, it’s still the iron doors, iron bars, and razor wire that most resonate with our image of prison life."

Works by winners of the Ruminate 2018 Kalos Visual Art Prize can be viewed in the Spring 2018 issue, with a still from Eloisa Guanlao's digital documentary Noli Me Tangere featured on the publication's cover.

First Place
Eloisa Guanlao

Second Place
Janet McKenzie

Honorable Mention
Joseph Di Bella

Information about each of these selected artists and a full list of finalists can be found here.

Pittsburgh-based literary magazine Creative Nonfiction is the winner of the 2018 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Small Press Publisher Award. The prize was announced in Tampa, Florida, at an opening ceremony at AWP’s annual conference and bookfair, which brings together 11,000+ writers, teachers, and small-press publishers. The other finalists were Fence, the Normal School, and Terrain.org.

AWP’s Small Press Publisher Award is an annual prize for nonprofit presses and literary journals that recognizes the important role such organizations play in publishing creative works and introducing new authors to the reading public. The award acknowledges the hard work, creativity, and innovation of these presses and journals, and honors their contributions to the literary landscape through their publication of consistently excellent work. The award includes a $2,000 honorarium and a complimentary exhibit booth at the AWP Conference & Bookfair in the year following the recipient’s recognition. The prize is given to literary magazines in even years; Creative Nonfiction was a finalist in both 2014 and 2016.

Creative Nonfiction founder and editor Lee Gutkind said, “It’s really nice to be recognized in this way. Creative Nonfiction’s small staff is incredibly dedicated, and does so much with so little. And thanks go to our contributors—the writers and artists whose work makes the magazine possible. Twenty-four years ago, we brought the very first issue of Creative Nonfiction to this conference, and I was so nervous … but we sold every copy. So, thanks go to AWP, too, for all their support over the years.”

Creative Nonfiction is true stories, well told. Each issue of the quarterly features original essays and illustrations; writing that pushes traditional boundaries of the genre; notes on craft; micro-essays; conversations with writers and editors; and more. Almost every issue includes a writer’s first publication, and the editorial team emphasizes a thoughtful editorial process and rigorous fact-checking as vital elements of the organization’s overall educational mission. Visit creativenonfiction.org to learn more.

Thema's cover photo for their Spring 2018 issue is "Question the Answer" by Kathleen Gunton, appropriately fitting for the theme: "Is There a Word for That?" Perhaps not a word, but a beautiful image instead. Upcoming themes in search of submissions: "Where's the food truck?" (July 1) and "The critter in the attic" (November 1).

 The cover and internal art portfolio of Georgia Review's Winter 2017 issue features a very different kind of garden life by sculptor Toshihiko Mitsuya: Aluminum. "Far from static," Mitsuya says of his medium, "it takes on the feelings of its surroundings - the wind, the light an the hands that touch it.As a material, aluminum starts in a huge factory and ends in something precious yet transitive: the installation reclaims an industrial material back to nature."

As unique as the vision through the cylindrical optic toy, Kaleidoscope is a publication "exploring the experiene of disability through literature and the arts." Kristin Gehrmann's "The Vial Keeper" reflects the Winter/Spring 2018 theme: Life's Unpredicatbiilty. Now available open access online, readers unfamilar with this journal should defnitely check it out.

The most recent issue of Cold Mountain Review (v45 n2) features winners of the 2017 R.T. Smith Prize for Narrative Poetry:

Winner
"We will Never Mend This" by Jeff Burt [pictured]
Read the beautifully heart-wrenching poem and hear it read by the author here.

Honorable Mention
"A Sestina for Traveling Season" by Geetha Iyer
"To Shadow" by Matthew Winberley

Finalist
"Prologue" by Jude Whelchel

Gerald Plain's photo "Spider Rock, Canyon DeChelly, Arizona" dizzying perspective draws readers into the newest issue of The Louisville Review (#82, Fall 2017). Inside, The Children's Corner features high school sophomore Haemaru Chung's poem "Waking Up."

Looking forward to summer, I enjoy this cover image (also a bit dizzying) on issue four of Cherry Tree national literary journal published out of Washington College: "Children Running in Backlight (Dozza, Italy)" by Claudio Cricca.

The Art of Miss Fluff is featured in the Winter 2017-2018 issue of The Writing Disorder, and online quarterly of new and emerging writers and artists. Fluff is "an enchanting design brand created by artist, Claudette Barjoud."