Another wonderful series goes south as the venue shutters its doors. Vox Pop, in Brooklyn, was a beautiful artist scene, with lots of imaginative events.

Mike Fiorito hosted the Sunday night readings which featured many excellent poets alongside actors and musicians. Vox Pop was the kind of place where anything could happen and, especially at Mike’s events, it often did.

A large, sad loss for the Brooklyn lit scene.

Vallum 8:1 “Futures” call for submissions / www.vallummag.com

We plunge forward, often with our eyes closed, not knowing what is in store for us. Realities unfold, dreams are realized or fail to materialize. Many possible futures are on the verge of happening. What do we have to say about the time that has yet to come, the Future(s) of this world? ALSO: Special Section on “Found” and “Overheard” Poems.

Audio files, visual art, reviews, essays or poet interviews can be submitted by email. Poetry must be submitted by regular mail.

DEADLINE: October 1, 2010

Please mail all poetry submissions to:

Vallum

PO BOX 598, Victoria Station

Montreal, QC H3Z 2Y6

CANADA

As of August (yes, this is a late announcement!), the second-Sunday series Kairo’s has moved from 2pm to 3pm and from it’s previous venue over to Space on White. Updated info appears on the NYC Pocal, but as this is a monthly series it seemed like a good idea to drop you a note about it as well:

Kairos Poetry Cafe
3-5 pm
2nd Sunday of Every Month
Space-on-White
81 White Street

Enjoy!

Tony Gloeggler, take a bow!

The poem, Five Years Later, that garnered high praise from Kooser is from Tony’s latest book, The Last Lie, just published by NY Quarterly Books.

Come to Tony’s book launch party at Cornelia Street Cafe on 9/24 if you’re in town. Maybe Tony will invite his new buddy Ted to the event?

first off, i think it’s a bit much for them to charge print subscribers another $3 to get the digital version when most magazines offer digital companion editions to print subscribers for free.

and — unless their website is in some kind of a funk — it seems that the digital and print editions are priced exactly the same, $14.95/year. even stranger is the fact that Canadians are still charged a premium; you’d think the magazine would be all over this as a way to grow their readership north of the border, but no. or, at least, not yet.

full digital edition FAQs are here. i expect that they (and the pricing!) will change soon enough, so you might want to wait a bit before subscribing.

Jackie Sheeler is offering a 12-session workshop this fall on wednesday (or monday) nights beginning on 9/15:

the meetings will last about three hours, and are poems-on-the-table critique sessions. I’ll give some very brief craft talks, with an example poem from a different writer each week; the rest of our time will be spent on constructive group discussion of your work. the class is limited to 8, so there will be enough time to hear from every poet at every meeting.

the workshop is geared toward free verse and will focus on metaphor and “music” – rhythm, assonance, consonance, internal rhyme. we’ll also be looking carefully at line breaks and experimenting with the ways that enjambment and caesura can change the dynamic of a poem, speed it up, slow it down (or, when used ineffectively, create logjams and confusion).  optional “homework” will be given each week, for writers who find assignments helpful in getting started. (I know that I do!)

location is upper manhattan, half a block from the B/C trains or two long blocks from the 2/3. email jackie@poetz.com for more information or to reserve a spot.

Free version of their contest newsletter (and the latest wergle flomp winners) is now available at http://www.winningwriters.com/newsletter/public/2010/nl_public_1008.htm

I make a habit of reading any terms and conditions that apply to writing submissions; clicking “I agree” is, for all practical purposes, the same as signing a contract. While most of us take the time to thoroughly read a contract before reaching for a pen, clicking “yes” to get to the next screen is something we do so often online that it’s practically second nature.

Moontown Cafe put out a call for submissions, and I went to the site for details to post on the contests section of this site. It struck me as odd that the details weren’t on Moontown Cafe itself, though, but rather on a site called “poethood” with just a reference tag for Moontown Cafe. And I didn’t like the look of the guidelines page:

So I clicked into their Terms & Conditions. After you make it through the grammatical error in the first paragraph (“including but not limiting to), and the can’t-be-accidental omission in the second (“ADDRESS HERE”), comes this:

Submissions may not be published by any third party publisher.

Not “previously published”, mind you, just … not published. No time limit. This is easily construed to mean that once a piece of work has been submitted to them you, the author, cannot offer it for publication (or even publish it yourself) ever again.

It gets worse:

By entering a Submission through the web entry form at www.poethood.com, Contestant agrees that the Submission entered may be showcased in Poethood’s online bookstore and other Poethood property, making previews available to the public and making a publication containing the Submission available for purchase, as subject to Sponsor’s Terms of Use, to which Contestant agrees. Posting of any Submission(s) will neither increase nor decrease a Contestant’s score, and any display does not mean that a Contestant has been selected as a winner.

To summarize, you pay them $10, they use your work however they like for as long as they like, even sell it if they can, with no obligation to ever mention a word of it to you. What the “other Poethood property” may be is anybody’s guess, as it isn’t defined on their site. You don’t even get a contributor’s copy of any books, you have to buy them. If you even find out they exist, that is.

A lot of publications don’t pay for the work they accept; that’s just the sad reality of today’s poetic economics. With that understanding, many of us submit to fine print journals and quality sites and are satisfied to see our writing presented in an honorable manner beside good work by other writers of talent. The publication is its own reward, along with the usual one or two contributor copies from print journals.

What “poethood” offers is quite different. An entrepreneurial free-for-all where every piece of shit is thrown against their various unspecified walls until they find one that sticks.That they can make a buck off.

The site claims not to be a “vanity press” yet its methods are reminiscent of the way Vantage Press compiled poetry anthologies back in the day, producing hideous, dictionary-like books that the “winners” paid $60/copy to get. Look ma, I’m a published poet!

Bah, humbug and pshaw.

It appears that “poethood” intends to make some money from this venture. If so, they don’t understand the workings of the poetry world today, and the last laugh will be on them. In the meantime, don’t go giving away your work! If there’s $10 burning a hole in your pocket and you want to send them something, do it in the spirit of wergle flomp,

the comments section of a call for submissions or contest deadline isn’t intended to be used for self-publishing.

yet several people have done exactly that, posting an entire poem as a comment in one of the Calls for Submission notes, presumably in hopes that anyone reading the contest guidelines will also take the time to read their poem.

i delete them from the site on sight. anything unrelated to piece on which it appears, whatever it may be, isn’t a comment and doesn’t belong there.

this may seem rigid. but i know what’s likely to happen without boundaries: a facebook-style thread of poems and responses to those poems, and responses to the responses.

there’s also the possibility of people using the comments in this manner so that they can then say they were “published” on poetz.com. kinda murky.

if you think this sucks, feel free to leave a comment.

The deadlines for twenty writing contests fall between August 15 and September 15, including (on September 1) Black Warrior Review‘s three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Black Warrior Review for a single poem, a short story, and an essay.

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