Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 86
June 3, 2016
A Dream, A Meditation, and A Prompt: Ecosystems
I dreamt my husband and mama, both gone now for years, having walked on to the next life, were helping me in the garden, setting up two new raised beds, working the dark rich soil with rakes and with our hands. I was planting turnips, the seeds so small, so many shades of purple, lavender, violet, plum, deep purply rose. “Plant cabbage with them,” Mama said, “Good companions.” John nodded, “Or spinach, or peas.” He grinned. “They like each other.”
I woke up thinking about companion planting, about ecosystems.
Ecology is all about interconnection and eternal change, creating patterns, connection, cause and effect, that shape every organism and phenomenon. Our own minds work this way, but, I wonder, Can we step back and recognize that? Can we extend that eco-understanding beyond our needs, thinking like an ecosystem”? Recognizing, developing, and honoring our “eco-mind”?
Wouldn’t an eco-mind also able to see that the survival of our own species, our own existence, our own desire to thrive, is connected to our consciously creating the context needed for that thriving, and that it is inextrcably tied to the well-being, the continuation, of other species and the health of our wider ecology.
Can we learn to see that we don’t exist above or beyond the ecosystem? That those turnip seeds, in their tiny purple majesty, are as essential as the bees that come to the comfrey, the deer who watch from the shaded wood, the cardinal that sings from the Guardian Oak, the groundhog who thinks I don’t see her in the tall grass at the edge of the yard, to the spider silent in the rain-silvered web at the side of the garage, are as essential to our own survival as they are to ours?
Make art about interconnections, about ecosystems
.
June 2, 2016
Are you a fan of comic books and graphic novels?! Then you have to see Plume Snake!
Are you a fan of comic books and graphic novels?! Then you have to see how one of my beloved alums is changing the landscape of that industry, for creators and readers!
What’s Plume Snake?
Plume Snake is a new service that allows members unlimited access to all of the creator-owned comic books and graphic novels in their growing library, A digital archive of creator-owned comics and graphic novels!
My brilliant talented alum Alex Odom, with his amazing team including Austin Jr., have been working to launch this new model of artistic community, and now IT’S LIVE!!!!
Just 5 buckaroos for full access! Check it out! Sign up! Get your read on!
And support these innovative amazing young Artist-Entrepreneurs! So honored and humbled to have worked with both Alex and Austin❤
Please share, y’all!
Daily Prompt <3 Fame, and Ms. Dickinson
Fame is a bee
by Emily Dickinson
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.
Make art about bees, or fame.
June 1, 2016
HeartWood Broadside Contest Closes at Midnight Tonight! Submit Now!
HEARTWOOD BROADSIDE SERIES CONTEST
2016 Judge: Diane Gilliam
Contest submission window: April 1 – June 1, 2016
A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with the launch of an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia artist Diane Radford of Dog and Pony Press, we will print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside will be an artifact companion the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter.
Contest Judge: DIANE GILLIAM is the author of four collections of poetry: Everything Ever, Everything After (forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2016), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything and Recipe for Blackberry Cake (chapbook). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and is the most recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.
Guidelines
$15 entry fee (includes a mailed copy of the winning broadside)
Contest opens April 1, 2016. The submission deadline for the prize is midnight June 1, 2016.
Submit one poem (of any form) or flash prose piece (fiction or nonfiction) per entry; regardless of genre, the entry must be 250 words or less. There is no limit on the number of entries per person.
All entries will also be considered for publication in HeartWood.
$500 cash prize + 25 copies of limited-edition letterpress broadside will be awarded to the winner.
All submissions must be submitted via our online submission form manager, Submittable, at: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/submit/. We will not accept mail or email submissions, but please do include mailing address. We do not accept previously published entries. You may enter simultaneously submitted work as long as you notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere before our contest closes on June 1. Entries need not be anonymous.
1st round of judging will be performed by HeartWood Editors. Finalists (approximately 20 poems and/or flash prose) will then be forwarded to the Contest Judge for the final round of judging.
Winner will be selected by July 1. Broadside will be printed/mailed October 1.
Winner will be publicly announced in the October 2016 issue of HeartWood; all entrants will be notified of submission status in July 2016.
Sometimes the Day Is the Poem <3
“The Times They Are a-Changin'”
as performed by Richie Havens
Come gather ’round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics who prophecise with your pen
And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agein’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, and congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block the hall
For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
The first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
For the times they are a-changin’
For the times they are a-changin’
For the times they are a-changin’
Daily Prompt t What They Say
1 June 2016
Apocalypse (Ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis, from ἀπό and καλύπτω meaning“uncovering”), translated literally from Greek, is a disclosure of knowledge, i.e., a lifting of the veil or revelation.
Make art about revelation, or about spiritual awakening.
May 31, 2016
Daily Prompt <3 Breaking Open the Sky
31 May 2016
“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”~Walter Mosley
Make art about growth, about new growth, about the power in choosing to grow.
May 30, 2016
Literary Journals on War and Peace
Literary Journals on War and Peace
You’ll have to check their guidelines for reading periods and submission specs. This is just a list, for a conversation we so desperately need to have, and have, and have again.
WAR
PEACE
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices
So It Goes: A Publication of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library
A FEW OTHER RESOURCES
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Contests
Writing for Peace Young Writers Contest
Daily Prompt <3 On Liberty
30 May 2016
Make art about Liberty, about its costs, about the quest for it, about the privilege and fragility of it.
Only a couple of days left to submit! HeartWood Broadside Series Contest
Only a couple of days left to submit! Deadline June 1, 2016
HeartWood BROADSIDE SERIES CONTEST
2016 Judge: Diane Gilliam
Contest submission window: April 1 – June 1, 2016
A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with the launch of an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia artist Diane Radford of Dog and Pony Press, we will print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside will be an artifact companion the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter.
Contest Judge: DIANE GILLIAM is the author of four collections of poetry: Everything Ever, Everything After (forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2016), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything and Recipe for Blackberry Cake (chapbook). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and is the most recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.
Guidelines
$15 entry fee (includes a mailed copy of the winning broadside)
Contest opens April 1, 2016. The submission deadline for the prize is midnight June 1, 2016.
Submit one poem (of any form) or flash prose piece (fiction or nonfiction) per entry; regardless of genre, the entry must be 250 words or less. There is no limit on the number of entries per person.
All entries will also be considered for publication in HeartWood.
$500 cash prize + 25 copies of limited-edition letterpress broadside will be awarded to the winner.
All submissions must be submitted via our online submission form manager, Submittable, at: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/submit/. We will not accept mail or email submissions, but please do include mailing address. We do not accept previously published entries. You may enter simultaneously submitted work as long as you notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere before our contest closes on June 1. Entries need not be anonymous.
1st round of judging will be performed by HeartWood Editors. Finalists (approximately 20 poems and/or flash prose) will then be forwarded to the Contest Judge for the final round of judging.
Winner will be selected by July 1. Broadside will be printed/mailed October 1.
Winner will be publicly announced in the October 2016 issue of HeartWood; all entrants will be notified of submission status in July 2016.
Submit Here! http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/contest/
Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog
- Mary Carroll-Hackett's profile
- 11 followers
