Una Nichols Hynum writes, “Old fashioned, I like a book in my hands and have never submitted to on line journals before. It feels like I’m sending my poems off into the ether. But why not?”
We’re delighted to announce the publication of the print edition of “Mutating the Signature,” the Winter 2009 issue of qarrtsiluni, edited by Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore, focusing on collaborative works. In their call for submissions, Dana and Nathan wrote that they wanted “to emphasize the gnarly, brilliant, iterative, process-oriented mess that is the heart of any collaborative artistic endeavor.” As longtime collaborators themselves, they knew what they were talking about!
The issue that resulted was exciting, unique, edgy, and surprising. One of its most fascinating aspects was the inclusion of “process notes” by each team of collaborators which revealed not only the wide range of original inspirations and working methods available to writers and artists in this age of the internet, but the unpredictability of what happens between people both in their work together and in their chemistry.
We hope many qarrtsiluni readers and contributors will want to own a copy, and it’s one of the best ways you can support our ongoing volunteer efforts here. The book, designed and published by Phoenicia Publishing, has a full color cover, 146 pages, and is available for $13.95, either through our online store or at Amazon. Please go to the Phoenicia site for full details and a look inside the book. Thanks!
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Phoenicia is a small, independent press in Montreal publishing poetry, prose, photography, and music. Follow their publishing news, including special offers, on Twitter and Facebook.
Rachel Barenblat is a student in the ALEPH rabbinic program who’s been blogging as The Velveteen Rabbi since 2003. Author of 4 chapbooks of poems (most recently chaplainbook, hospital chaplaincy poems published by Laupe House Press, 2006, and the self-published Through, a collection of miscarriage poems, 2009) she lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and cat. She gave birth to her first child in December.
And there are records of many cures
effected by the healing tongues of both
dogs & serpents during the incubation
of those who came praying for healing. Maria Leach, God Had a Dog
Fear nothing, no matter
what. In your sleep, that perilous
place, will come
dogs & serpents licking
with their tongues.
Ointments will be spread,
foul odors & sharp pain
diminished. Wounds healed
miraculously. Sorrows erased.
The narrow hairy face
of man’s best friend, your
four-legged mentor, will
embrace you. The serpent
in your belly will laugh.
Fear nothing, no matter
what. It has been
this way
forever.
And will be
again.
Jeffery Beam (website) is the author of numerous award-winning books of poetry including An Invocation, The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems 1969 – 2007, Visions of Dame Kind, An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold, The Fountain , and the spoken word CD with multimedia, What We Have Lost: New and Selected Poems 1977-2001. The song cycle, Life of the Bee, with composer Lee Hoiby, continues to be performed on the international stage, and can be heard on Albany Record’s New Growth. Beam is poetry editor of the print and online literary journal Oyster Boy Review and a botanical librarian in the Biology-Chemistry Library at UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Marilyn L. Taylor’s award-winning poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Scholar, Measure, Iris, and The Formalist. Her sixth and latest collection, Going Wrong, was published by Parallel Press in July of 2009. She is a Contributing Editor for The Writer magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear bimonthly. Marilyn is also serving as Poet Laureate of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010, and is happy to report that she’s enjoying every minute of it. For more about Marilyn and her poetry, please visit her website.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
Katherine Durham Oldmixon (website) recently edited a special issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review dedicated to ekphrastic poetry. Her chapbook Water Signs, a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Award, was released in January 2009 by Finishing Line Press. Katherine lives healthily and happily in Austin, TX, with her husband, Arturo Lomas Garza.
1542
I came of age
the day of my first miracle —
light body of vegetable paste
become human
and healing a child
dead through the throat
with her father’s knife.
He will tell anyone who listens
that I draw angels to me
and that I am the mother
of all compassion.
1755
Feria! Near my sanctuary pilgrims
dance, thrill to fireworks, sing,
cook, nurse infants, eat, drink and
drink some more, make love and promises,
sell amulets, candles, toys, mango and tortillas,
buy burros, ride the merry-go-round.
They have walked for days
and not slept for nights,
have visited my little well
and come to me caked in my mud
with pleas for my intervention.
Since they entertain me,
I grant it. Those who repent of coming
I turn to stone.
2001
My mud cakes are novelties for the young who are grateful that their parents at least now ride in vans, don’t freeze for the sake of a pasty virgin.
The road is paved to my door and the songs are thin. It was the music and the suffering that brought rain. I can’t do miracles without rain.
Too many are stone, lost to the colors of hope. I took it for granted — fields of fire, dancers in the atrium, the dusty taste of faith, aroma of annual penitence.
Lisken Van Pelt Dus is a poet, teacher, and martial artist living in western Massachusetts. Her poems can be found in numerous journals, including Conduit, The Comstock Review, and Main Street Rag, and her first poetry collection, Everywhere at Once, was published last year by Pudding House Press.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
Qarrtsiluni offers electronic delivery of original poetry, prose, and art, organized into regular, themed issues, with a new post every weekday. You can find us wherever you go: email and IM, iTunes, feed readers, sometimes even print. Read more...
Congrats to qarrtsiluni authors Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman @wendylvardaman for their appointment as poets laureate of Madison, WI. · 4 months ago
Yesterday the last post in our Worship issue; today we begin the Imitation issue. Follow by email & never miss a post. qarrtsiluni.com · 4 months ago
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