A year ago, I was gearing up for a trip to New York city to meet Claudia. On that trip I also had a chance to meet Charles, Karin and Frank Watson, whom most of you know him as Blue Flute. Frank will be making the announcement that I teased you with last week. Take it away Frank:

Open call for submissions to a new poetry anthology, featuring voices heard on dVerse!

Since I was fortunate enough to be introduced to dVerse over a year ago, I have discovered many fascinating voices from around the world, expressing themselves with often beautiful poetry and creativity. I would like to celebrate these voices and gather some of them into a new anthology to come out later this year. If you are interested in having your work showcased, you are welcome to send up to five pages of your best work; we are seeking a wide range of voices and will try to be as inclusive as possible, so please don’t be shy about contributing!

The title is still not determined, but may be something like dVerse: Contemporary Voices of World Poetry; the goal will be to make it around 300-400 pages. This will be somewhat similar to my previous anthology, Fragments, but will focus entirely on contemporary poetry in order to give more space to contemporary poets, to allow more space for the many talented poets sharing their voice to participate, to record, as G. Onimra Farley says, an “anthology of a man’s soul.”

Anthology
by G. Onimira Farley

The anthology of a man’s soul
The documented progression of where a man has been
Like foot prints in the muddied soil
Are they traces of his past?
Or just records of encounters with sorrow
with despair
with hate
with anguish
with happiness
with joy
with love
with success or failure
with mystery
and with pain….
Intrigued by the mysteries of life
Sedated by its calmness
and exhilarated by the speed at which time passes when
we are having fun
begging to differ or to debate the issue
my opinion is second to none but it is only one….
With prose and poetry I give you
the anthology of a man’s soul
A collection of a man’s encounters with life
Records of his past, his miseries and his loves
See my foots prints in the mud and follow me
because I am that man….

With your help, we can pool together to gain a wider exposure for our work, enhance the conversation with our readers, and hopefully discover something new about each other. As Max Reif might have said, almost all of us have written a pearl somewhere, perhaps hidden deep in the leaves of our work. Let’s dig out those pearls and share them!

Ode To a Poetry Anthology
by Max Reif

Set me surfing now
over the waves of your pages
skimming the surface,
bump bump bump,
of the deep ocean
of my own experience

till I can plunge
off the board
into the rich, forgotten

depths of shining fish,
the ones with the great teeth,
the mythologized creatures

as real to you or I
but as yet undiscovered —

and below that somewhere,
the treasure,

the pearl

In order to participate:

• Send up to five pages of your best poetry to followingtheblueflute@gmail.com. Any form or no form at all is acceptable. Combinations of poems with pictures or art is also acceptable, but please include a 300 dpi version of your picture if you’re sending one. The best kind of poetry will appeal to readers even if they do not know you and are not familiar with your work. By sending in your work, you are giving permission to include your submission in the anthology.
• Include an optional biography (about one paragraph long), including the name you would like to display and any or all of these: your town and country, your town and country of origin (if different), what you do for a living, what drew you to poetry, and which poets inspire you.
• All submissions must be entered by February 28, 2013

Thank you Frank. There you have it poets. Start sifting through your poetry archives and send it in. I am looking forward to having your voices on my shelf. We will see you right back here tomorrow for OpenLinkNight. ~Brian