Call for Submissions: Landfall

Denis Garrison has sent news of a new tanka anthology he is editing. Please note that untitled cinquains in the "tanka spirit" will be considered for inclusion in this anthology.

He writes:

OPEN CALL for Submissions: LANDFALL anthology of pastoral tanka

A special edition anthology of pastoral poetry, a print edition, is to be published in Summer 2007 by Modern English Tanka Press and is to be entitled "Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka." Landfall is intended as a companion anthology to Streetlights: Poetry of Urban Life in Modern English Tanka (due for release in Fall 2007).

The Landfall anthology is about the lands we live in, the highlands and lowlands, prairies and forests, deserts and wetlands, farmlands and wilderness, the vast continental interiors and the lands bordering the seas, and the waters of the earth. As such it is inevitably a book about ourselves as well. Through tanka, the short poetry of our time, this book is intended to rediscover, and to reacquaint the reader with, the mood, temper, and diversity of the infinitely varied and nuanced places where we live our lives—all landscapes that imprint us with their forms and colors, their scents and sounds, and that have their parallels in each of us, in our consciousness and spirit. Every generation makes anew its own landfall, discovering for itself its special, abiding relationship to the natural world. With these fine tanka, pastoral poems of a new kind and for a new day in the sun, when one makes landfall, it is a greatly prized moment—a personal epiphany.

The Landfall anthology will be a selection of "poetry of place," strong nature-centered tanka in contemporary, actual non-urban settings. Authenticity is wanted; imitative Japanese-cherry-blossom-poems and the like are not wanted for this collection. We want tanka which are idylls, viz., describing rustic life, natural, rural or pastoral scenes, set in the farms and fields, forests, swamps, prairies, mountains, seaside and countryside, at sea, on lakes and rivers, etc., etc. that you know. The usual "idyllic" mood of peace and contentment is neither a prerequisite for, nor a bar to, acceptance. We are not looking for the unrealistic, naively idealized, pastoral poetry of the past; rather, we seek the pastoral poetry of the present and future—meaningful poems of place demonstrating tanka's enormous versatility and power (in contrast to the more restrictive haiku legacy) in this area of poetry. Of course, the inclusion of man, animal, and the environment (whether in their classic harmonious unity or otherwise) is certainly acceptable. As always, we want tanka in modern English idiom and which are authentic rather than fantastic. More than anything, we appreciate freshness—fresh imagery, fresh ideas, fresh melodies.

Please send submissions, up to forty tanka, in the body of an email (no attachments) to Denis M. Garrison at dmg@metankapress.com. Michael McClintock and I will jointly edit the anthology.

Be sure to include in your subject line: Landfall---Submissions---Your Last Name. Also, make sure that the author's name is included under EACH poem submitted, even if submitted as a set. This will greatly assist us in keeping your poem and name together as we go through the processes of sorting, editing, compiling, and layout of the volume's sections. Please do not include credits for previously published work in your initial submission; you will be asked to supply this information when final selections are made. We would like to include your best work in Landfall . We require only one-time rights to print publication; this book will not be available online as a digital edition, only as a print edition.

Payment: One dollar ($1.00 USD) per poem is the sole payment for accepted submissions for this anthology. Single tanka count as one poem; titled sets and sequences, etc., count as one poem; for purposes of payment.

The Landfall open submissions period is March15th to June 15th. We plan to publish Landfall during Summer 2007.

Poems that are definitely not selected for publication ("first cuts") will be returned to poets on a flow basis, so as not to hold them longer than necessary. Poems that make the first cut will be held until final acceptance decisions ("final cuts") are made on all the poems for the particular anthology. So, a decisive reply to a submission could take up to three or four months.

We hope that you will contribute some of your best work to Landfall , another in the series of tanka anthologies being published by Modern English Tanka Press.

Sincerely, Denis M. Garrison, Lead Editor, Landfall
dmg@metankapress.com

MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS
Baltimore, Maryland USA
www.modernenglishtankapress.com
www.modernenglishtanka.com
www.tankacentral.com
www.tankanews.com