Call for Submissions: Mount Hope

Mount Hope Magazine, a publication of the creative writing department at Roger Williams University, is 

1. nationally distributed;
2. designed by students at the Massachusetts College of Art; and 
3. now reviewing submissions.

The new editors are taking their cue from the make-it-new aesthetic of McSweeney's, and are trying to do something innovative with format in each issue. If you have work burning a hole on your desktop, by all means send them an email and let them consider your stuff for publication. They welcome prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and literary commentary and journalism. Work which blend text and graphics are especially welcome. Send submissions to Mount.Hope.Magazine@gmail.com. More instructions can be found at http://www.mounthopemagazine.com/Submissions.html.

Call for Submissions: MOJO

We honor the history of the struggle of Black people in America, but we still want to construct our own notion of Blackness that is separate from that of our parents and grandparents.

--Derek Conrad

Editor Mignon Ariel King has written to ask that we share the news that MoJo! -- an online journal of Black and African-American women's poetry, flash memoir, and social commentary -- is now reading  submissions for the Spring/Summer Issue. Deadline: June 15, 2012. Guidelines and past issues can be found online at http://mapsonehq.wordpress.com/mojo.

NB: If you're active in the Boston literary scene, you may have recognized King's name. In addition to her work with MoJo!, she is also the host of "A Century of Black Voices",  an annual poetry reading celebrating Black History Month; the director of Hidden Charm Press (publisher of small books of poetry and memoir by Black women), and author of the Making Poetry blog.

For updates on MoJo! Writers and other Black poets of New England, follow MoJo! on Facebook.

Call for Submissions: The Poet's Quest for God

The Poet's Quest for God: 21st Century Poems of Spirituality
(cross-posted from The Wonder Reflex)

Edited by Dr. Oliver V. Brennan and Dr. Todd Swift
For Publication by Eyewear Publishing 2013-14
Deadline for submission: August 1, 2012

A trimmed version of the call for submissions:

Eyewear Publishing is planning to publish an anthology of new, mostly previously-unpublished poems, written in English, concerned with spiritual issues in this secular age, by persons of any faith, or none. Submissions will be welcomed via email as word documents, containing no more than three poems, and including contact details and a brief 100 word biographical note about the author.

One of the characteristics of our contemporary culture which is generally described as post-modern is the human search for the spiritual. The advent of post-modernity has been accompanied by the dawn of a new spiritual awakening. Many spiritual writers say that desire is our fundamental dis-ease and is always stronger than satisfaction. This desire lies at the centre of our lives, in the deep recesses of the soul. This unquenchable fire residing in all of us manifests itself at key points in the human life cycle. Spirituality is ultimately what we do about that desire. When Plato said that we are on fire because our souls come from beyond and that beyond is trying to draw it back to itself, he is laying out the broad outlines for a spirituality.

This new emphasis on and openness to the spiritual dimension of human existence which is characteristic of contemporary lived culture is accompanied by a new emergence of atheism as well as a sometimes-aggressive secularism. Perhaps the best response to this rage against belief in a Divine Power at work in the universe is a poetic one. 

The purpose of this collection is to awaken debate, create an imaginative discourse and generally open a space for religious poetic practices in the contemporary world, while at the same time refusing to delimit the horizon of the possible.

For more information, or to submit, contact Dr Swift at T.Swift@kingston.ac.uk. I certainly intend to submit, though not in an attitude of resisting secularism. My involvement in secular activism, and my impulses to write and study poetry, are for me two sides of the same coin. I recognize the stone of the world doesn't reveal any message on its surface left by its Maker: not any commandment or token of assurance, no instructions, no threat; and I take that blankness as an invitation to write my own message upon it, and to see what others have written there.

Related reading: Norman Finkelstein's On Mount Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American Poetry.

Frost Farm Prize submission deadline: April 1

A reminder: submissions for the 2nd Annual Frost Farm Prize for metrical poetry must be postmarked by April 1, 2012. The winner will walk away with $1,000 and an invitation, with honorarium, to read as part of The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry in the summer of 2012. The poem will appear in the 2012 edition of The Evansville Review. Submission guidelines are available at the Farm website.

FRUITLANDS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Fruitlands Museum -- a beautiful facility, with outdoor and indoor exhibits occupying a hilltop location in Harvard, Mass. -- in partnership with the Concord Poetry Center, is inviting poets to come seek inspiration in a landscape rich in natural and human history. Fruitlands is soliciting original poems written about and on the museum grounds during fall and winter 2011-2012.

From the program description page: "Anything that can be seen or experienced on the 210-acre property from outside the museum buildings is an appropriate subject. Ten to fifteen poems will be selected by a jury of poets and museum staff. Poets whose poems are selected will be invited to share their work at a Plein Air Poetry Celebration at Fruitlands on the afternoon of Sunday, May 6. Selected poems may also be compiled in a chapbook and/or audio recorded."

Email submissions to poetry@fruitlands.org. Submission deadline is January 15, 2012. Rules and guidelines at http://www.fruitlands.org/sites/default/files/flyer%20for%20poets.pdf; sign-up sheet at http://www.fruitlands.org/sites/default/files/plein%20air%20poetry%20signup.pdf. If you have questions call 978.456.3924 x291 or email poetry@fruitlands.org.
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The photo above was taken on a visit to Fruitlands in October 2011, and is directed toward the rise of Mt. Wachusett to the west. Thoreau, addressing this peak, noted that "like me [thou] standest alone without society", and "know'st not shame nor fear."