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
Knowing the long journey you are about to embark on Frank…all I can say is wow! What a wonderful testament to the amazing voices that visit the pub every week. Much Poet Love indeed! and gratitude…and appreciation…and did I mention Poet Love…
a wonderful opportunity… Frank is def. a cool fellow.. enjoyed meeting him in person in NYC and can’t wait to hold that dVerse voices anthology in my hands…smiles
what a great idea Frank!
What a super idea, Frank, Brian, Claudia. Very very nice. k.
What a wonderful idea, thank you Frank ~
Like Claudia, I can’t wait to hold the D’verse anthology in my hands ~
Have a wonderful day to everyone ~
woot….this is going ot be fun…i def cant wait to hold the anthology and be able to thumb through the poets whenever i want…
Oh my, applaud you for taking thus on Frank. You have your work cut out for you for dVerse is truly chock full of some amazing poets and poetry! I can’t wait to hold the final results!
How exciting! Thanks to all involved in making this happen!
This is wonderful. Thanks for this wonderful opportunity.
Frank, thanks for being willing to undertake such a venture!
This will be a must-have anthology for my library!!
Brilliant idea Frank – and lots of work too. One question occurs to me – is it OK to submt stuff we’ve published on our blogs, or does it need to be unpublished work?
Now to consider what. if anything, I have of sufficient quality to submit….
Thanks, Tony. Anything is okay, published or not published, as long as you have the rights to it. If it’s been published in a magazine or book and the rights have reverted to you (which is usually the case), please just mention where it was first published so I can credit them as the first publisher. This will be for non-exclusive use in the anthology, meaning you can publish the poems again in your own collection or another anthology, as you like.
Lovely! Thank you for this opportunity.
Good stuff Frank… def a grand opportunity… will write a couple special ones just for this. 🙂
This sounds a brilliant idea – d’Verse has so many different voices to capture. I’ll start thumbing through my stuff…
Lovely. I will search for what I feel have the best message and voice, and try to create a couple of brand new ones too. Some questions on poetry submissions:
1. Do you have a time frame – poems written in the last one year, decade or whenever?
2. Would you rather each writer submit a variety of style/topics or within the same genre so that you can pick the best to allow as many writers
3. The focus seems to be contemporary. What about twist of traditional forms…
What excitement!
1. Any poems you have written from any time frame are welcome, as long as you hold the rights to them.
2. Please submit poems of whatever topic interests you the most. As I gather all the poems, I will try to arrange them in a logical and flowing order, connecting poems that relate to each other in some way.
3. Traditional forms, or twists thereof, are welcome!
Dear Frank,
My submission is coming along nicely. I should be able to finalise it over the long weekend.
Cheers!
wanna add my poetry link in OpenLinkNight ..Could not find Mr.Linky widget..Can anybody help..?
the mr. linky will go up with the OpenLInkNight post at 3pm EST
Many thanks ,Claudia for your help..I was able to add my link ..Thanks again
Curious:
Will this anthology have a theme?
Will you only be including people who have participated on d’Verse regularly?
Will you include > 1 poem/person?
Thanx. Sounds like a fun project.
The only unifying theme will be a broad one–voices from around the world in contemporary poetry. I imagine that the poets will cover a lot of the universal themes that people everywhere deal with and I will try to organize the anthology around the themes that people send in. I will try to include a poem from as many poets as possible, given the constraints of space and how many poets send in work. I will also try to include more than one poem when possible, also given the constraints.
The poets will primarily be dVerse contributors, but readers and occasional contributors are welcome too!
Excellent!
Cool to do indeed.
Nice. 🙂 I’d buy this anthology. 🙂
I’d love to join this great collection of poets in this anthology. I’m also interested in purchasing this anthology (regardless if I’m in it or not). Good luck on the anthology! Brilliant idea and I look forward to reading it. I hope there will be an eBook version as well. Thanks to the dVerse staff for all their wonderful work at the blog.
So far response has been terrific and I’ve received some excellent submissions so far; I think the volume will turn out very well. Hopefully we can include as broad a group as possible. Thank you everybody for participating!
How exciting! Wow, thanks Frank…can’t wait to read this.
Great idea. This will be a huge job, judging by the vast numbers of dVerse contributors.
Should our submissions be of poems that have been linked here, or can we use other work? I ask because I have been writing a lot of haiga (poems within pictures) and as they are short, they don’t take up much room!
I hope you can come up with a better title than “dVerse: Contemporary Voices of World Poetry; ” For one thing, I can’t claim to be a contemporary of anyone much younger than Methuselah!
I hope I’m not too late to try and join this poetic party, I’d love to submit some work for this. Just one quick question – are you accepting submissions that have already appeared on my blog or do I need to submit new previously unseen work?
I trust contributing poets will retain copyright for any of their own work which appears in the anthology?
The dVerse anthology sounds more than rather exciting and I shall be submitting some of my work for consideration…
I’m a bit late to this
Hope I can get some to you in time 🙂
Hey Brian – I am trying to get stuff together to send. I have this crazy issue with my internet right now – I have at work but not at home – and I get a bit tired at work late. It will not be sorted out for several days, but I’ll take some time to mail to Blue Flute. k.