Weasel's Blog, page 25
April 7, 2015
Here I am giving a reading for my upcoming collection, The Hell...
Here I am giving a reading for my upcoming collection, The Hell Inside Us, to be released through Earl of Plaid, as well as reading some work from Ashes to Burn published by Transcendent Zero Press. I’ve got a partner in crime for the first couple pieces, don’t mind the singing, we’re not the type of duo to rehearse. xD Z.M. Wise assisted with the backup, can’t thank him enough for taking the stage with me. You can find all of my releases at my website:
http://hitchingpoets.wix.com/poetweasel
http://www.transcendentzeropress.org
http://www.earlofplaid.com
http://www.weaselpress.com
April 4, 2015
lizziemcguirefanfic:
toxicgaydiation:so I just finished reading...
so I just finished reading Viscera by Manna Plourde
it’s intimacy in the aftermath of trauma and struggles with mental illness and queer ladies and it’s amazing
as someone dealing with post-traumatic stress, I was blown away by how well Manna captured the feeling of intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. her writing style keeps the reader on edge in exactly the right way. so much about this book felt at once familiar and alien to me. the realities of violence and intimacy and trauma were so strikingly and beautifully written I’m truly in awe
approx 50 pages // $8.00 // buy it here
content warnings: (parental) abuse, self-harm, violence, explicit gore, pregnancy mention, reference to illness / surgery / hospitalisation
April 1, 2015
a long road
it’s so amusing how we use god for our hatred,
how we tie his hands to his mouth so we can
speak through him; using misinterpreted scriptures
to back our fears of the gays fucking up the
values we worked so hard to instill in ourselves.
as many as 86% of lgbtq youth report being
harassed at school. lgbtq youth are 4 times more
likely to commit suicide and the chances only
increase each time they are victimized.
we build laws around the misinformation spreading
between each other, silencing the slowly
growing belief that love is always right,
that we are not lepers in need of prayer.
when i went to school, i had to drape my skin
over my bones and choke through typical
conversations, never fully comfortable with
how it felt to move in my flesh; always stuffing
cotton balls in my heart to keep it from catching
the cute guys voice, from feeling what’s right.
the first time i held my boyfriend’s hand in
public, i caught their disgust around us. pacifists
shooting imaginary bullets through our palms
as if we were the world’s top terrorists. small
luxuries are hard to afford, some day, these
little things won’t be as expensive as they are now.
https://weaselpress.submittable.com/s...
Weasel Press...
https://weaselpress.submittable.com/submit/40267
Weasel Press is hosting it’s first poetry chapbook contest, and hoping to make it a yearly thing. We love the existential, beat poetry; poetry that thrives on showing us the current state of the human condition. We encourage poets to get experimental with their work, slam it into us. Don’t be afraid to really twist your readers with your words. Details about the contest are listed below. We ask that you read our guidelines and review some of the work we have published before submitting to us. This will allow you to get a better feel for who we are as a community and what we enjoy.
Winner of this contest will receive 20 free copies of their chapbook and a cash prize of $250. 1 winner will be selected, the finalists of this contest will be reviewed for publishing projects for our 2016 line up.
Rules:
-Must not have a current or pending project with Weasel Press
-Must not be an editor or staff member of Weasel Press or it’s affiliate magazines (The Haunted Traveler, Degenerates, Vagabonds: anthology of the Mad Ones, Typewriter Emergencies).
-We will not be accepting Simultaneous work for this contest.
-Chapbooks must be unpublished as a whole (individual pieces published in magazines are fine).
-There is a one time $15 entry fee.
Submissions are accepted through submittable. The contest will take place in two rounds and have been broken down below. Round one will be open submissions. In Round 1 we ask that entrants submit a sample of their chapbook, roughly 3-5 poems. Nothing that identifies the poet can be on this manuscript as it will be read blind. Samples must be one poem per page, Times New Roman, 12pt font and Single Space (unless your poem has special formatting). We only accept files that are DOC, DOCX, RTF. Submissions for round one will end August 1, 2015
Our editorial committee will select 10 contestants to move onto round two. Round two poets will be asked to supply a full manuscript and a video of themselves reading a few poems from that manuscript (3-5 poems is fine for the video). Full Manuscripts should have 20-30 poems in it. Anything below 20 will get rejected without review. Full manuscripts will not be blindly read since we are asking for videos. Contestants will receive an email with an updated submittable link to upload their files, as well as a deadline to get their submissions in by.
Out of these 10 contestants, the committee will select 3 finalists, one of which will be the winner of the contest. Finalists will be reviewed for possible publication in our 2016 lineup.
March 30, 2015
Title: In Another Life, Maybe
Author: Michael Prihoda
Release...
Title: In Another Life, Maybe
Author: Michael Prihoda
Release Date: May 22, 2015
http://www.weaselpress.com/#!prihoda/c13b6
Synopsis: In Another Life, Maybe, charts the collapse of a romantic relationship, though it treats its subject in nonlinear ways, and deals with the anxiety, pain, stress, and the misunderstanding inherent to any relationship’s demise. The poetry at times sways into experimental forms and expressions. Much of Michael’s work is concerned with charting pain and discussing it and its many forms. Something that is looked for in his poetry and in others is empathy and a sense of humanity from relatable experiences.
Title: Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender
Author: Rae...
Title: Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender
Author: Rae Theodore
Release: June 26, 2015
http://www.weaselpress.com/#!rae/clx7
Synopsis: Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender is creative nonfiction that takes an unflinching but humorous look at living as a butch in a pink/blue, boy-girl, M/F world. Here’s my theory: I’ve always been a butch. When I was a child, it was called being a “tomboy” (also known as “embarrassing my mother”). Back then, I liked to think I was a boy-girl hybrid, perhaps grown from special heirloom seeds. Later in life, I came out as a lesbian, which explained my fondness for flannel and sensible shoes, as well as my masculine ways.
Still, something wasn’t quite right. I watched spectator-like as my hair got shorter and my clothes started coming from the opposite side of the department store. When someone called me “sir” for the first time, I realized I had unintentionally crossed over into foreign territory — that sliver of space that exists in the middle place between the absolutes of boy and girl.
Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender is for anyone who has ever felt different, especially those who have found themselves living in the gender margins without a rule book. The topic of gender nonconformity is red hot right now as it was recently dubbed “the next civil rights frontier” by Time magazine.
March 26, 2015
Title: Taste I Say, You’re Timeless
Author: Chuck...
Title: Taste I Say, You’re Timeless
Author: Chuck Taylor
Release Date: July 10, 2015
http://www.weaselpress.com/#!chuck-taylor/c16ra
Synopsis: The Prose Poem is one of the more controversial styles in the poetry world as it sounds like a massive contradiction. How can something that is prose be considered poetry? Well, it’s not as black and white as that. Prose Poetry removes the line breaks and usual lyrical style while maintaining other poetry qualities. It is a less frightening style for readers who are not familiar with poetry, and a unique style for experienced poetry lovers. This collection seeks to bring readers of all kinds together through the use of poetic narrative, leaving behind the conventional style of poetry and moving into a widely experimental form. Prose Poetry has a good range where it can be taken. Though most are about a page, the pieces can be longer, depending on the artist behind the craft. Readers can expect to see a vastly human nature in the collection; experiencing moments of sympathy for others to the feeling of being alienated in conservative America. Taste, I Say, You’re Timeless, is a fantastic beat style work, and one that simply cannot be ignored. It is a timeless collection!
Bio: Chuck Taylor went to work early, and although it may have inhibited his social skills, the work kept him out of all sorts of trouble, especially as a teenager, innocent and stupid around the ladies. He began mowing lawns and operating a paper route, and then moved on to janitor work and house painting, and later worked as a minor electrician, morgue attendant, lab researcher, cafeteria lineman, dishwasher, daycare worker, part-time records and reference librarian, special collections clerk, bookstore clerk, printer’s assistant, furniture mover, children’s magician, typist, and soft water salesman. Taylor also worked poets-in-the-schools in Galveston, Beaumont, and Victoria, and as a CETA poet-in-residence for Salt Lake City. As a teacher he has taught at the Universities of Texas at Austin, El Paso, and Tyler, as well as at Austin Community College, Angelo State, and for twenty-five years, Texas A&M in College Station and in Koriyama, Japan. He has been married three times and has three ex-step children, three blood children, and seven grandchildren. Taylor has published two novels, two story collections, two memoirs, and numerous volumes of lined verse and prose poetry. His most recent books are Poet and Vampire and Magical, Fantastical, Alphabetical, Soup. It is not surprising that his first novel, briefly considered for a movie, is called Drifter’s Story. He feels his path has been one of stable instability, but he has gotten to know a few places well.
Title: HAIL
Author: Stanford Cheung
Release Date: Late Summer,...
Title: HAIL
Author: Stanford Cheung
Release Date: Late Summer, official date has not been set yet.
Synopsis: From the industrial eccentricity of inner undulation, to the experimental approach of progressive musicology, the poems in HAIL speak of the psychological depictions of interpretation and musical ethnocentrism. It bridges the histories of musical social status found in society, the evolution of musical transmission over the course of two centuries and offers a subjective dissolution of every musician’s embodiment of thought and how the innate musical natures found in humanity shapes the perception of music in our society today.
March 25, 2015
ZM Wise reading at Barnes N Noble open mic 3-24-2015 Watch as...
ZM Wise reading at Barnes N Noble open mic 3-24-2015 Watch as Wise reads from his latest collection Wolf: An pic and Other Poems and a piece focusing on Domestic Violence
Z.M. Wise is a poet and poetry activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades, and a spoken-word poet for four years. He is an Assistant Editor of Harbinger Asylum, a Houston-based, internationally known poetry magazine. He is co-owner of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. He hosts a weekly reading at San Jacinto College. His first book of poetry, ‘Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock,’ published by MavLit, is available as both a hard copy and ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Nook, and Kindle. His second book that was released by Transcendent Zero Press, ‘The Wandering Poet,’ is available in both hard copy and digital form. Wise is planning to release another collection titled Wolf in 2015 through Weasel Press. Other than his three books, his poems have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies, such as Boston Poetry Magazine, Coalesce Magazine, Great Poems of the Western World, Torrid literary Journal, FreeMyVerse, and A Celebration of Poets. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES! Mr. Wise will make sure to spread that message and the love of poetry, making sure it remains vibrant for the rest of his days and beyond. To find out more about Z.M. Wise visit his website below:
http://zmwisethepoet.tumblr.com/
