Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 113
November 1, 2015
Special Sunday Call for Submissions! SubTerrain
SubTerrain
Issue #73 (Spring) – Theme: “SECRETS”
Deadline: February 15, 2016 (postmarked—can also submit online via Submittable. See their website for more info).
Poetry, fiction, nonfiction exploring the idea of secrecy. Personal, corporate, governmental, military—secrecy is used to cement personal relationships, to guarantee state security, to harbour knowledge. Some consider secrecy one of the main sources of human conflict. “We intend to open the doors on the subTerrain confessional.”
For submission instructions, see Writer’s Guidelines: www.subterrain.ca
Sometimes the Prompt is Dark, and Lovely
“And I have learned my lessons in darkness”-from a poem I just wrote.
Make art about darkness.
October 31, 2015
Sometimes the Prompt Reaches Out and…Touches You ;-) When You Least Expect It
Daily Prompt
“The dead have stories to tell the living. about relinquishing control, about the sweet sweet letting go….”–from a poem I just drafted. :-)
Make art about the thinning of the veil, communing with the dead.
October 30, 2015
How Poetry and Peter Makuck Saved My Life
When I was fourteen, my mama drove us in her old battered Pontiac station wagon the dozen miles from where we lived out in the trailer park into town to East Carolina’s campus on a crisp fall Tuesday night. We parked behind the student union, and Mama looked over to where I sat with a sheaf of wrinkled paper clenched in my hands, poems, typewritten on my daddy’s manual typewriter, my teenage angst and effort click-clacking late into the night, transcribed from the bits and pieces in my journals, or scratched on to napkins, or whatever paper I had stuffed in the pockets of my Levis that day.
I was a difficult child, and an even more difficult teenager, mouthy and hungry for things I had no clue about or could even name, obstinate and wild, and angry and defiant, and too easily bored, a particular trait that more often than not led me into self-destructive, even dangerous attempts to a keep myself entertained, and to do something–anything–with the wild demanding thirst–for something–anything–that boiled up and through me all the time.
The only times I felt still, or filled, or not terrified I was gonna miss something, was in the woods, or when I was writing.
Mama got that. So she took me to campus so I could go to a gathering called the Poetry Forum, an open to the public workshop hosted and facilitated for years by the tender funny wise and wise-cracking poet Peter Makuck. I stared down at the papers in my hands, words blurring, and then Mama patted my hand–Mama was a patter of the highest order!–and said, “I’ll be right here.”
So I got out and climbed the steps behind the student union, and walked into my very first workshop. Peter welcomed me like any of the “grown-ups” and LOL the readers gathered round that table handed me my fourteen-year-old behind on a platter with the specificity and directness and detail of the critiques they made of my poems that night. I was stunned. But no way was I gonna let them see me cry LOL So when the meeting broke up, I said, “Thank y’all,” and headed down the hall out to where Mama sat in the car (now for two hours), reading one of the thousands of books she read by the weak yellow overhead light in the car. I sniffled back tears, nearing the door, when I heard a voice behind me. “Wait!”
I turned to see Peter trotting down the hall toward me, smiling gently, as he asked, “You okay?”
I nodded. He reached out and patted my arm, saying. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re very brave, to come in here so young. And I wanted to say, Don’t quit writing. Never quit writing. You have talent. So yeah, just that. Don’t quit.”
I couldn’t say anything, too afraid I’d cry, so I just nodded. He headed back down the hall, and I walked out into the dark toward my waiting patient Mama.
Seventeen years later, after a decade of believing the story the world told me–that I needed a “real” job, that writing was a childish dream I needed to give up–I was terrified, but still filled with that hunger for things I couldn’t name–desperately so–I pulled up the website for the English Department at ECU, just beginning to harbor hopes of going back to school. What was I thinking? I had three kids, poverty-level income, two failed marriages rife with alcoholism and now single-parenthood defining my twenties. Maybe the naysayers were right; maybe I needed to just grow up.
But then, on the faculty page, I saw Peter’s face. “Don’t quit. Never quit.”
And I saw my mama’s face in that car that night, waiting patiently in that watery parking lot light, while her troubled teenage daughter chased after poetry in the long uncertain dark.
Gratitude. Even after a life now for more than twenty years where words are my work, they fail me here. Can’t even begin to articulate the gratitude.
Never ever ever underestimate the power your kindness can have in a person’s life, nor how far-reaching and long-lasting that kindness can be
_______________________________________________
Peter’s website: http://www.makuck.com/site/
Peter Makuck
Friday Call for Submissions Love! New Journal: Mockingheart Review
MockingHeart Review
Deadline: December 1, 2015
Call for Inaugural Issue: Submissions for the inaugural issue of MockingHeart Review open November 1, 2015 and close December 1, 2015. We favor poems that express the complexities of the human heart in clear, precise, and lyrical language. Poems should call out to us, not let us sleep or turn away. Bring us poems that gleam and palpitate with intimacy. We seek visionary works that are visceral and that will leave us emotionally undone. We encourage poems that speak to the personal and political inasmuch as the political relates to the person/a. We accept poetry only. Prose poems are welcome.
Guidelines:
We accept poetry only. Prose poems are welcome.
Works that require extensive special formatting are discouraged. Our apologies in advance.
Here is a .pdf of Frequently Asked Questions for submitting poetry that generally apply: How to Submit Poetry
We seek works of the highest literary quality. We expect your best work in its final form.
We favor poems that express the complexities of the human heart in clear, precise, and lyrical language. We want poems that call out to us, that won’t let us sleep or turn away. Bring us poems that gleam and palpitate with intimacy. We hope for visionary works that are visceral and that will leave us emotionally undone. We encourage poems that speak to the personal and political inasmuch as the political relates to the person/a.
We believe metaphors. Entrance us with imagery that transforms. We are especially intrigued by imaginative language which melds the real to the surreal, and are pleased when this is done well through artful craft. We question reality. So should your poems.
We do not like poems that utilize clichés or are not finely wrought. We shy away from experimental verse, unless it appeals to our aesthetic and succeeds in moving us. We want works that convey meaning and possess emotional impact, or convince us there is no meaning to be understood.
We favor poems of shorter length, generally of a line length of 30. There is room for flexibility regarding this.
If you are unsure if your work falls within these guidelines, send it to us anyway. We will respond during the selection process and may be able to help to further clarify through conversation.
Your publishing history does not matter, but the quality of the work does.
Our issues will showcase only the best selected works. We will publish issues (3) three times a year.
Unpublished poems only. Simultaneous submissions okay, if the Editor is notified immediately of publication elsewhere. Expect to hear from us in less than (4) four weeks’ time.
Submissions outside of reading periods, unless solicited, will be ignored. If your work has been accepted for an issue, please wait six months before submitting again, within an open submission period. Also, please wait to hear from us regarding a submission before sending more work.
MockingHeart Review cannot pay our contributors at this time. Rights revert to author upon publication, although MockingHeart Review reserves the right to anthologize, in printed or electronic format, material originally published here. If work that has appeared in this journal subsequently appears elsewhere, the editor requests MockingHeart Review be acknowledged as the place of first publication.
Submissions for the Inaugural Issue will open November 1, 2015 and close at midnight December 1, 2015.
Website: mockingheartreview.com.
Email: mockingheartreview@gmail.com
Sometimes the Prompt is Haunting
“I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night”~Anne Sexton
Make art about witches
#writingprompt #art #poetry #fiction #nonfiction #icastaspellonyoubaby
Anne Sexton
October 29, 2015
Sometimes the Prompt Seems So Far Away
“Time is the longest distance between two places.”~Tennessee Williams
Make art about distance, about distance covered.
October 28, 2015
Sometimes the Prompt Can’t Be Seen
Thanks and Love to my lil brother Scott Sumner for inspiring today’s
Daily Prompt
“Every day we bear up under
the liminal weight of air,
a million pounds and more,
in tiny increments
because we’ve grown used to it…”~Dan Gerber
Make art about the weight of invisible things.
PS: Scott’s an amazing musician! Check him out and buy his EP at
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/scottsumner
October 27, 2015
Daily Prompt: Trauma & Becoming
I am not who I was 5 years ago.
Make art about the Becoming after trauma.
#writingprompt #art #poetry #fiction #nonfiction #wordsmatter #trauma #ptsd
October 26, 2015
Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Fingerpaint and Sons and Resistance :-)
Daily Prompt Catch-Up :-) My sons were home!
10/24/2015
Teaching a workshop on Creative Meditation Techniques today, which will include painting with our fingers! :-) Make art about fingerpaint–or–go on–you know you wanta!–break out the paints yourself and get a lil fingerpainting on!
10/25/2015
Both my sons home today. They make me laugh like no one else. Make art about sons.
10/26/2015
“You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think.”~Laura Oliver Make art about resistance.
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