Poetry Month Spotlight: David Southward

by | Apr 29, 2020 | LGBTQIA+, National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry

Poetry Month Spotlight

David Southward

Message in a Bottle

 

As a kid in the 1970s, I was addicted to reruns of ’60s sitcoms. Shows like Bewitched, The Flying Nun, and most especially I Dream of Jeannie featured magical women whose mischievous powers seemed rooted in their femininity. The men they loved were always trying to control or suppress these powers. A queer boy like me could identify with the predicament of having to hide one’s sexual magic.

Jeannie’s hiding place was her bottle. An ornate Arabian decanter housing her miniaturized bedchamber, its interior was opulent yet intimate—a rich Orientalist fantasy of velvet cushions and curvaceous walls. Whenever Jeannie turned into smoke to enter the bottle’s narrow opening, I desperately wanted to follow. Her magenta lounge looked so chic and fun, so different from my drab suburban world, so safe from judgmental eyes.

I drew countless pictures of Jeannie’s bottle in a stenographer’s notebook, always adding slight variations to its design. (I could never get a close enough look at its details on our black-and-white Zenith). The bottle became my talisman: a jewel-toned objet d’art with mysterious intricacies, whose erotic significance I must have intuited, so obsessively did my imagination return to its suggestive shape.

In a way, those drawings were my first poems. They were early attempts to share the instinct for beauty, love of form, and earnest playfulness that continue to motivate my writing. I want every poem to become a little world of layered meanings for its reader—a decorous, sparkling haven from which to contemplate even painful realities. There, taking refuge from the moral police, my imaginary reader and I briefly come together through the magic of words—in the one theater where every wish can be granted.

I’ve chosen three poems from my new collection, Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), to represent both my formal and free-verse moods. “Macramé” looks back to a weaving fad that every kid of the ’70s remembers; my math-teacher father quickly became something of a master at it. “Nipples of Men” celebrates the diversity and absurdity of those overlooked organs. And “Working (It) Out with Teena Marie,” a gym reverie in terza rima, pays homage to a pop/R&B legend who left us too soon—and whose signature hit made an indelible mark on my teenage psyche.

Macramé

 

Mom enrolled
in an evening class,
botched a butterfly on wood block
and muscled through
hours
of gnarled yarn
dangling from a driftwood stake,
before giving up.
But you,
Dad, discovered
you had a knack for macramé.
Looping her leftover
jute
round a hook
in the ceiling, you braided coarse
helixes that split—
tapering
into bored corners
of mahogany (shelves for our unlit
incense and potted
Dieffenbachia);
then tied it all together
with a graduate’s tassel. Your multilevel
Eiffels filled our house
with math
done strictly for pleasure.
From the carpet I salvaged scraps
to make a noose
or lasso.

Nipples of Men

Not quite tits
or teats, just pectoral points
of interest: a torso’s eyes
caught staring
at the beach; pinpricks
disturbing a taut Oxford’s
cotton; coppery beacons
appearing through sheer Ts.
Aureoles varying
like fingerprints—in diameter
from clamshell to dime, in tint
from plum to pink—each
with its own punch code
of goosebumps. Sensitive
to the barest hints
of coolness in blood
or air flow, they shrivel
like witches
in water, hibernate
in whorls of hair. Whether hubs
of ecstasy or indifference,
bashful paps or rubbery
dugs—pierced, thick
as toothpaste—they are
unmistakably a man’s
most naked part. Impractical
glands, sore reminders
of what he can’t give,
they are the clenched petals
of him—harmless and endearing
as embarrassments
he pretends
aren’t happening.

Working (It) Out with Teena Marie

She whoops into my ears; the whole gym whirls.
I turn the volume up to shush the clink
of my elliptical machine. Like joyous squirrels

her scatted oohs and shoop-pops leap in sync
with youthful biorhythms now gone slack.
And she’s been dead how long? Five years, I think,

letting the iPod’s witchcraft take me back
to summers in Ft. Myers: bored, sixteen,
racing my bike down streets whose hot shellac

exuded waves of harsh, phenolic steam.
Clipped to my shorts, a tape player filled my head
with pop sensations. Warnings to come clean

pursued me through desire’s infrared.
I saw the manly shadows moving nearer;
I pounded harder, like a thoroughbred.

These boys who curl their biceps in the mirror:
what are they after? Strength won’t make them freer
pullers of Beauty’s drawstring. Do they fear her

because they sense how good it feels to be her?
Fanned by an AC vent, I bounce and hurtle
past them through time—a stationary skier

for whom the trails of memory unfurl
this chorus, like a plaintive reprimand:
I just want to be your lovergirl.

About David Southward

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His chapbook, Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018), reimagines the life of Jesus in a series of sonnets. Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020) is his first collection. David lives in Milwaukee with his husband, Geoff. Read more at davidsouthward.com.

Facebook | Twitter

Bachelor’s Buttons available at:

Boswell Book Co. in Milwaukee | Kelsay Books | Amazon

Apocrypha available at:

Wipf & Stock | Amazon

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Rita Feinstein

by | Apr 29, 2020 | Identity, Meet Our Authors, National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry, writer's life

Poetry Month Spotlight

Rita Feinstein

The Poetics of Joy

I’m half-asleep in the Bishop’s Garden on the south side of the Washington National Cathedral. The 3 p.m. light bathes the limestone in gold, and the flowerbeds pulse with color. My husband and I sit on a bench in direct sunlight, our hound mix sprawled at our feet. I close my eyes and marvel at how good I feel—not thirsty, not hungry, not anxious to cross something off my to-do list.

I open my eyes again and see an elderly couple sitting on a nearby bench. I’m reminded of the healing garden I could see from my fourth-floor hospital room last June. I was never allowed to visit; the nurse said I didn’t have enough time, but it was another couple hours before the doctor discharged me.

These dark memories are mildly sickening. The garden has its own powerful influence, though. It pours another wave of sunshine and flower-fragrance over my head, and now I wonder why I bother dwelling on negative thoughts at all.

Because I’m a poet, that’s why. On some level, I’ve always believed that poetry is the alchemical practice of transmuting trauma into art. Once, when I was hallucinating from pain, I felt a small thrill at this new writing material. When I was sunken into my hospital bed, I typed rhyming phrases into my Notes app with the hand that wasn’t encumbered by an IV. Poetry has gotten me through an eating disorder and a toxic relationship, and at some point I started worrying that once the trauma dried up, the poetry would too.

I wonder why I bother dwelling on negative thoughts at all.Because I’m a poet, that’s why. On some level, I’ve always believed that poetry is the alchemical practice of transmuting trauma into art.

I finished processing my eating disorder when I was nineteen, but I kept writing about it for years afterward. There was no urgency, no catharsis, in these newer poems. I had convinced myself this is what my audience wanted, and yes, some of these poems were published, but at some point it felt disingenuous to continue writing them.

One night in grad school, in the name of pure escapism, I wrote something I had no intention of submitting to workshop. It was the stuff of YA fantasy novels—a selkie-hunting pirate king, a misanthropic bad boy, a star-crossed romance. The first draft was messy and overstuffed. “Is this more than one poem?” I asked my roommate. “Is this two poems? Is this forty poems?” Forty-eight, to be exact. It was the first poem in what would end up becoming my thesis manuscript.

Writing my thesis was an exercise in pure joy. Instead of scrounging for trauma crumbs, I wrote a sprawling ode to everything I love—dragons and wolves, fairytales and mythology, Labyrinth and Outlander. After wasting so much time and emotional energy laboring over poems that didn’t want to be written, I had finally (re)discovered my voice.

Writing my thesis was an exercise in pure joy. Instead of scrounging for trauma crumbs, I wrote a sprawling ode to everything I love—dragons and wolves, fairytales and mythology, Labyrinth and Outlander.

Three years later, I got sick. First I lost my appetite, then I came down with a fever that wouldn’t break, and it was only when I passed out at the bus stop that I acknowledged something was wrong. Three hospital-bound days later, the something had a name. Crohn’s Disease. A very un-glamorous inflammation of the terminal ileum, a body part I didn’t even know I had.

It was a couple months before I was well enough to write again. Then, one day, the words started pouring out of me. I channeled all my frustration into a 2,000-word story, and I was done. The whole process was as straightforward as turning a faucet on and off.

Skeptical that I had done enough processing, I decided to write a poetry chapbook about my illness. The poems didn’t come easily. Recently, I gave one of them to my writing group. On a craft level, we had a very productive discussion. On an emotional level, I felt like I was back in the colonoscopy room.

It’s only now, in the Bishop’s Garden, that I remember what I somehow forgot—poems can be joyful. No one is forcing me to re-live painful memories every time I open my notebook. I don’t have to compromise my vision to please an imaginary audience.

No more hospital poems. From now on, it’s all dragons and goblin kings.

About Rita Feinstein

Rita Feinstein is a DC-based writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in Grist, Willow Springs, and Sugar House, among other publications, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. She received her MFA from Oregon State University.

Website | Twitter

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

2020 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 1

by | Apr 6, 2020 | National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry

2020 Editors' Choice Poems

Week 1

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest. We have received a lot of wonderful work via our submission portal, and these pieces by Emily Bowles, Margaret Rozga, Sebastian Santiago, and Robin Long stood out.

We hope you’ll enjoy these editors’ picks as much as we did.

Cucumbering a Sunbeam

by Emily Bowles

 

1.

For most people, Margaret Cavendish is a footnote[1] in literary history.
For most people, cucumbers are not fruit or flower because they are green.

2.

She terrified Woolf—raging voices, staged in volumes of a length only the
Uneditable Elite might afford to print, her “paper bodies,” she called them.

3.

Her husband’s body had produced more ephemeral works, and a treatise on
horseback riding, as well as two daughters, both older than the Duchess.

4.

I’ve been that woman, the same age as a man’s daughter by his first wife, and
like Mad Madge, I relish in cucumbers as much as others like cake.

5.

They wrote for their father, for their coterie closet drama, coveting ambition,
writing of cake when surely their servants had their hands in that batter.

6.

We do not pick our mothers, although we try to write and rewrite them. They
revered one, ridiculed the other, and each became one, hating what was other.

7.

Margaret was accustomed to that misogyny or would soon be. Her desires were limit-
less, cosmic, a cucumber overgrowing its plot, her novels overgrowing their plots.

8.

She had stood before the Royal Society, spoke out before that audience of satirzable
pseudo-scientific Men, Pepys’ pen ready to render her as the Object of their satire.

9.

Swift wrote not of Margaret but of the men who were “extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers.”
He made light of their science, mad enough, unstable in a stable with Gulliver, eating apples.

10.

There are no roses, no carnations that can survive a lack of light like this, and so I kill
the plants in my apartment, eat a cucumber, imagine that sunbeam—for, from her.

—————

[1] Seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish was of ambiguous origins before her marriage to the slightly foppish William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, whose daughters from his previous marriage bettered their father as elegant writers of manuscript prose and poetry.  Margaret self-published wide-ranging books on philosophy, science, and more, while also writing seemingly impossible-to-perform plays, a utopian novel that explored many of her scientific theories, and a wild autobiography.

[Footnote to this footnote: like Woolf, I have feelings for her that inflect my version of her Story, as has had Every Historian Who Has Ever Pretended Objectivity, for Cavendish beginning perhaps with Pepys and somewhat later Ballard but extending indefinitely.]

About Emily Bowles

 

Emily Bowles’s first poetry chapbook—His Journal, My Stella—examines Jonathan Swift’s shadowy Stella while using Stella to reflect on her own gendered embodiment and her disappearance in/among texts. She’s currently working on a project loosely tied to A Room of One’s Own that will explore patterns of order/disorder that create dissonance between women and perpetuate systemic forms of female misogyny even as we seek out space for community. These poems focus on four early modern women writers—Margaret Cavendish, her stepdaughters Jane and Elizabeth, and Anne Finch—in order to draw attention to the ways in which networks of circulation (from print texts and scribally copied manuscripts to modern social media posts) fabricate ideals of femininity that become naturalized, deeply sedimented, and dangerous unless we listen to each other’s stories. Instagram: @embowlden77

Alice Walks Herself Back through the Adventure

by Margaret Rozga

Don’t believe your sister when she says you were asleep
and merely dreaming. Don’t hang around waiting
for the queen to take your head. Even if it grins,
don’t ask directions of a disappearing cat.
Don’t take tea at a table with many empty places.
If, tired and thirsty, you forget and seat yourself,
hold on through the whirlwind that follows.
Even if answers are riddles, ask your questions.

You can’t be everybody.

Ask deeper questions: how is it potions and biscuits
just happen to appear as needed? If there’s no one
to ask, don’t touch. Don’t forget the solution
to one problem may be the start of another.
Give yourself some credit. You found
better ways to manage keys and size.

Don’t follow rabbits on the run.
Don’t think books without pictures boring.
Don’t forget that green little girl you used to be.
Recognize the limit to backwards:

don’t try to be her again.

About Margaret Rozga

 

Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She is the author of four books, including Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems (Lit Fest Press 2017), written with the help of a creative writer’s fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. A professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee – Waukesha campus, she lives near Lake Michigan in Milwaukee.

Website: margaretrozga.com

National Poetry Month

Looking through a box of photos

by Sebastian Santiago

I hold a picture of my mother,
the one where she’s splashing in
an inflatable pool in her front yard,
an unabashed smile on her face.

Strange to think she was once
only a girl.

I whisper,

Life will not be kind to you.

I want to lay in that pool with her,
and hold her like a dream.

I’m damaged goods mijo

she once said, as she drifted
off to sleep.

I press my lips to this picture.

From the other room,
I hear her laughing at
something on television.

About Sebastian Santiago

I’m originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, but grew up just outside of Detroit. I attained my English degree from Central Michigan University where the focus of my studies was creative writing with a concentration in poetry.

I was recently living in Prague teaching English, but have since moved back to the US due to the Covid-19 crisis and am actively looking to attend an MFA program where I’ll continue to work on my writing. I’ve recently had work featured in Poetry South (2020), Rigorous (January 2020), and The Emerson Review (2020) among others.

National Poetry Month

What a time spent trying now

by Robin Long

 

What a time spent trying now

the pillars of past days—tip—
until I am crushed beneath

through parched lips, glittering dust
She comes

“bereft I was, of what I knew not,” She says,
of course

but hiding message in a music
is affliction in the night

We all know that it lives

We all know where to look

so we seek, we search
and the quiet conscience rests somewhere
just outside the reach
of narrowed arms, busted knuckles

I still have days I wake,
tuck my chin into my breastbone,
and seize patterned sheets
to stretch across eyelids
for hours

and only when the air sours of spent breath

and I clutch my throat with both my fists—

does the buried alive fight for me
on a morning I, myself, could not

————————————————————— 

Dickinson, Emily. “A loss of something ever felt I—”

Circa 1865. Unbound sheets. Sheet 48.

FR1072, J959

About Robin Long

Robin Long is a queer poet, writer, and professor in Austin, Texas. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in the 2021 Texas Poetry Calendar by Kallisto Gaia Press, Alexandria Quarterly, FEELS Zine, Twist in Time, 8 Poems, Literary Yard, and 45 Magazine, as of late. She is currently expanding her fiction thesis on the life of Emily Dickinson, The Other Dickinson, so she can be found at theotherdickinson.com or in social media as @theotherdickinson.

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

“O Villain, My Friend,” “A Song for New Orleans,” and “Would a farm and a frigid river be fitting for a girl?”

by | Mar 31, 2020 | National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry, Reading

“O Villain, My Friend,” “A Song for New Orleans,” and “Would a farm and a frigid river be fitting for a girl?”

Poetry Month Selections

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest. We have received a lot of wonderful work via our submission portal, and these pieces by Anne Marie Wells, Maya Richard-Craven, and Rebecca Weingart stood out.

We hope you’ll enjoy these editors’ picks as much as we did.

O Villain, My Friend

by Anne Marie Wells

Obscure stranger,
O villain,
could we, for a moment,
even on an odd day,
an unholy day, take our right eyes from the cross hairs
and right pointers from the precipice
to acknowledge the thirst in one another?
I admit I’ve been a scoundrel opportunistic in my malice,
and I am so thirsty,
like you, your mouth a salt lick.
I have no sand left, and
if your camel pride can wait no longer,
could you touch your hand to mine?
My left, your right,
joined at the little fingers
to evolve from weapon-wielding mercenaries
into a single, dainty cup
from which we both
can drink.

Jareen Imam author photo

​Anne Marie Wells (She/Her) of Hoback Junction, Wyoming, is a queer poet, playwright, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. In 2015, she published her children’s book, MAMÃ, PORQUE SOU UMA AVE? / MOMMY, WHY AM I A BIRD? (Universidade de Coimbra). She earned first place in the Riot Act Regional New Play Festival in 2017 for her play LOVE AND RADIO (AND ZOMBIES… KIND OF) and earned second place in 2018 for her play, LAST. ONLY. BEST. In 2019, the Wrights of Wyoming judges blindly selected four of her theatrical works for the statewide play festival in Cheyenne. In 2020, her play LAST. ONLY. BEST. was selected for publication in The Dallas Review, and her 10-minute play THE DOOR will appear in The Progenitor Art & Literary Journal.

An avid storyteller, she performed in and won several Cabin Fever Story Slams and was selected by The Moth to perform in a ‘Main Stage’ event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2019.

Anne Marie’s poems have appeared or will appear in In Parentheses, Lucky Jefferson, Unlimited Literature, Soliloquies Anthology, Muddy River Poetry Review, Variant Literature, Poets’ Choice, Meniscus Journal, Changing Womxn Collective, and The Voices Project.

Website | Facebook | Medium | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest | Tumblr

 

A Song for New Orleans

by Maya Richard-Craven

Each street is covered in mud,
stray dogs search for their owners bodies
they toss and tumble through the wreckage
like dendrites, millions
of branched extensions pile in the streets
a nightmare from hell. Blue gray
bits of flesh become one with murky water.
The population size diminishes down
to the size of a single axon,
the stadium its terminal.
Black arms above rooftops, seeking a signal,
a recognizable sound, of no one is coming,
capillaries at fingertips lose their color.
When the waiting sleep, it is in waiting.
When given refuge, it is in waiting.
Children make finger guns amongst
each other, emulate officers
in black and blue who refuse
to come and get them.
Like cell walls,
New Orleans is permeable.
Cells walls protect
organelles of the cell
but sometimes water gets through
and when it does the ark is flooded
and the animals run loose
or fields are flooded and
people start to drown
having waited atop rooftops
black arms raising in the air
waiting for someone, anyone,
to come and stop by
so the children keep playing
making finger guns but
the men in black and blue
the men with guns and power
they don’t come
so the blood continues to run.

Jareen Imam author photo

Maya Richard-Craven is an American journalist and poet, who has opened for California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia (2013), and has spoken before the USC Board of Trustees (2015).  Her work has appeared in New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, USA TODAY College, and The Hollywood Reporter. In 2014, Richard-Craven was named best college columnist by The National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Would a farm and a frigid river be fitting for a girl?

by Rebecca Weingart

I see myself up there
by the bridge that sways
over the frozen lake.

Winters so long
you forget spring is coming.

This is where you choose to live.

Keep driving north and you’ll find it.

I once bought 2 lbs.
of cranberries
at a farmers market

in late fall.

I’ve driven to the nearest rental video store
in the snow. You drove to the nearest rental video store
in the snow.

We listened to the same song and heard two different lyrics.

You’re making me feel like I’ve never been wrong.
You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born.

I wanted to have never been wrong.
You wanted to have never been born.

———

Note: Title is from poem 3.14 by the Roman poet Sulpicia, translated by me. “You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born” is from the song “She Said She Said” by the Beatles.

Jareen Imam author photo

Rebecca Weingart is a high school English teacher in St. Louis, Missouri. She is an MFA candidate at University of Missouri-St. Louis and has a poem published in NonBinary Review. She can be found on Instagram and Twitter as @antbeea.

National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

“Distance & Temerity” and “Ken”

by | Mar 31, 2020 | National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry

“Distance & Temerity” and “Ken”

Editors' Selections

We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest. We have received a lot of wonderful work via our submission portal, and these pieces by Samn Stockwell and Caleb Nichols stood out.

We hope you’ll enjoy these editors’ picks as much as we did.

Distance & Temerity

by Samn Stockwell

The sparrows were enamored
but sounded like a congregation of worried mothers.

Distance and Temerity flew
from Central Park to the bakery.
Like dark flakes, they fluttered to the ground
and ate crumbs of coffee cake and cinnamon buns.

Everyone emerged from the bakery
with white paper bags held out like lamps
and hot cups of coffee jiggling in the other hand.

Joggers zoomed by in black tights and headbands.
Fleet, said Distance.
Sweet as plums, agreed Temerity, inhaling.

After the joggers, the businesswomen, the businessmen
dragging brown briefcases
or swinging them like dull missiles.

Then, children going to school, the girls in pink and purple,
the boys in blue and red, with secrets like feathers.

The sidewalk was getting thin, a few shoppers and the homeless.

A snarl of chaff left as they leap?
Yes, remarked the other, they light and thunder.

Is there a sparrow waking at 2 a.m.,
knowing he’s alone? No.

Samn Stockwell has published in Agni, Ploughshares, and the New Yorker, among others. Her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent poems are in Gargoyle & The Literary Review and are forthcoming in Plume and others.

Ken

by Caleb Nichols

Unsubscribe from everything, save hummingbird wings
and the waves of plague grass that salvage an afternoon.

Aim to create half as much as you maw, and
ken ye well a language not your own.

Face it once a day, the ebb tide, how even as it wanes
it pushes in, endlessly, until the moon unspools, unwinds.

Mute everyone, unfollow. Track daylight by the shadows on the wall.
Listen to the plague wind, savaging the afternoon, raising the dust.

Jareen Imam author photo

Caleb Nichols is a writer and musician from California.  His poems have appeared in Unstamatic: A Micro Lit Mag, and his music has been featured on Paste and Out.  He records music along with his husband as one half of the indie pop duo Soft People, and tweets @seanickels.

National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2020!

by | Mar 31, 2020 | Identity, National Poetry Month, NPM 2020, Poetry, Representation

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2020

 

Poetry Contest: Interconnection & Community

Open All April – Fee Free For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit 1-3 poems in a single document, a doc, docx, or PDF, free of identifying information. If your poem does respond to another poet’s work (by using an “after” form or any of their work as excerpted text) we require not only the name of the poet you are responding to but also the title of the original poem. Additionally, if a submitted poem quotes lines from another poet, we ask that the source text be properly attributed as an endnote. In the cover letter, please include contact information, a short bio, description or explanation of the poems (as appropriate), social media links, and a headshot (optional). Submissions will be reviewed for suitability by Brain Mill Press staff. For submissions selected for reproduction on BMP Voices, you will receive a contract granting Brain Mill Press the limited right to reproduce your piece. You will retain all other rights to your work. Your poetry and profile will be published on bmpvoices.com and promoted on our social media outlets. Your post will contain your headshot and bio, as well as information you may wish to include about recent work and your website and social media links. Brain Mill Press strongly encourages submissions from people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ writers, First Nations writers, and disabled writers. Please direct inquiries not answered in this call to inquiries@brainmillpress.com.

Prizes

The Brain Mill Press editors will select one or more submitted poems as the editors’ choice pick(s) approximately once a week through the month of April. Those authors whose poems are editors’ choice selections may choose any poetry title from the Brain Mill Press catalog for their prize. In early May, the editors will select a winning poem, and the poet will receive the full collection of Brain Mill Press poetry titles for themselves, as well as a second collection to gift to an organization of their choice.
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.