Resources
From Category:
Polyphony Lit
Polyphony Lit is an Illinois-based nonprofit that publishes a high school literary magazine edited and written by high school students from around the globe. Since launching in 2005, they have given feedback to over 15,000 submissions from 68 countries. Polyphony sponsors the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards, a free writing contest with cash prizes for high school students.
Pop Sonnets
Updated weekly, the literary humor site Pop Sonnets features popular song lyrics paraphrased as Shakespearean sonnets. Songs that come in for the highbrow treatment include LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It", Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5", the Village People's "YMCA", and 50 Cent's (a/k/a "Sir Fifty Pence") "In Da Club".
Pouring Shade
if you had the power to pour shade
what color would you use
the color of honey because you like sweet things
or the oil of menthol because it invigorates the nose
my shade would change with the time
rose red rendering incandescent mornings
pink daffodils rising into a noon shower
an afternoon with an orange mist hanging in the air
at night I would announce the moon's etchings
semi-circles surrounded by colored sunbeads
cast on the flowers of heaven
if I had the power to pour shade
I would add laughter
to see how water looks when it smiles
Copyright 2009 by Hzal (Anthony Fudge)
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem comes to us from "Hzal" (the pen name of the poet Anthony Fudge). In "Pouring Shade", he mingles different modes of sensory perception to create a unique experience of an exuberant life force.
Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which real information from one of the five senses is accompanied by a perception in another sense. For instance, a person may see a certain color when hearing a particular sound, or perceive letters and numbers to be associated with different colors. Researchers have noted the similarity between this condition and an artist's creative process, in that both involve unexpected associative leaps and fresh ways of perceiving our common reality.
Perhaps the most famous synesthetic poem is 19th-century symbolist Arthur Rimbaud's "Voyelles" (Vowels): "A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,/I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:/A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies/which buzz around cruel smells..." More links concerning art and synesthesia can be found on Belgian researcher Dr. Hugo Heyman's website.
In contrast to Rimbaud's extremes of decayed sensuality and spiritual purity, Hzal's synesthetic poem creates a sunnier mood, using the technique of sensory cross-pollination to express a joy and perhaps an affection that exceeds normal descriptive measures. Having a mind that works differently from the rest of humankind can be both thrilling and terrifying. Whereas Rimbaud's "Voyelles" seems to linger in that solitary place where genius and madness meet, Hzal begins with connection to others, and does not seem afraid that this new mode of perception will be a barrier to communicating his essential feelings.
"Pouring Shade" could be read as a love poem, whether or not that love is romantic. "if you had the power to pour shade/what color would you use", the poet asks, like a genie offering three wishes, or a young man promising his lover the moon. His desire to please her is so extravagant that it is unbound by physical laws. We all know that shade is not a liquid, nor does it have a color, let alone a smell or a taste, as the next two lines suggest. But perhaps we can also remember being this enraptured with a person or a project, almost to the point of believing we could do magic with a mere wave of the hand.
After making this fanciful offer, the speaker invites us to view his own ideal landscape, a pleasantly hallucinatory wash of colors that reminded me of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" ("Picture yourself in a boat on a river,/With tangerine trees and marmalade skies/Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,/A girl with kaleidoscope eyes..."). The recurring water imagery in this poem enhances its misty, blurred, dream-like quality.
I wouldn't change much about "Pouring Shade", being hesitant to break the flow of its stream-of-consciousness narrative voice. I might opt for a more original and descriptive phrase than "because you like sweet things" in the third line. If "sunbeads" is a typo for "sunbeams", it's a felicitous one; I loved the notion of bead-like water drops, turned to prisms by the sun's rays, such as one sees on flowers after rain.
For publication suggestions, below, I've emphasized smaller contests run by and for talented amateurs and emerging writers, as opposed to the university-run journals. While I relished the creative and sensual imagery of "Pouring Shade", I suspect that academically-minded judges would prefer poems with a greater variety of light and dark emotions. The diversity of aesthetics within the poetry world is a good thing, in my opinion. Support your favorite literary journals to keep that diversity alive.
Where could a poem like "Pouring Shade" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
League of Minnesota Poets Annual Contest
Postmark Deadline: July 31
Local poetry society offers top prize of $125 plus 17 other contest categories with top prizes ranging from $20 to $70; publication not included
Poetry Society of Texas Annual Contests
Postmark Deadline: August 15
Prizes up to $450 for unpublished poems in 100 different categories (some are members-only); no simultaneous submissions
Penumbra Poetry & Haiku Contest
Postmark Deadline: October 1
The Tallahassee Writers' Association offers prizes up to $200 and publication in winners' chapbook; no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Powell’s Books: Children’s Poetry
Portland's famous bookseller offers over 1,500 books of poetry for children and young adults. Recommendations and reviews help you choose. Free North American shipping on qualified orders over $50.
Pratt MFA in Writing Program
The Pratt MFA in Writing is a new and unique two-year program specifically designed to support and encourage intellectually rigorous and inspired writing practices that are philosophically, culturally and politically informed. The premise of the program is that writing can be transformative at all scales, from the personal to the social, and we aim to incubate such radically cosmopolitan, resolutely local, pleasure-filled, and potentially revolutionary poetic practices. Pratt is located in the historic Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.
Prayers & Run-On Sentences
By Stuart Kestenbaum. This affable, Buddhist-inflected poetry collection invites gratitude for the daily rhythms of life. As if through the imaginative, unbiased eyes of a child, Kestenbaum's poems find wonder in ordinary things like clotheslines, oil slicks, and even a plastic trash bag left in the woods.
Pretty Machine
By Mara Adamitz Scrupe
You had her longer, rode her
harder, she let you down at least
as often, threw a rod, staggered up mountains
and off again, pushed through deserts,
loaded up now, strapped for the drive
to Annandale, for the man with a bleeding
ulcer which is better than a heart attack,
he wants her, though if his wife were around—
but she's gone, a couple years now, he's adjusted
pretty well but the ulcer didn't come
out of nowhere, a peck and a quick goodbye—
that's how we do it, it's already afternoon,
you'll grab a sandwich on your way
back, I'll eat leftovers tonight you'll tell me
the new owner's turned his wife's house
into a shop moved in bikes in various stages
of tear-down and rebuild, Triumph triage
everywhere, work stands at eye level in the guest
room watching TV he scoots on a stool as he
works, Amal carbs line up neatly on the dining room
table, he never sits anyway but stands slouched paper
plate in one hand folded slice in the other, components
freshly painted dry on clotheslines
strung across the living room, guests sit
on the three-cushion sofa parts skimming past,
yours is the one he'll ride if all goes well
in Emergency, he's waited forty years
while you tore up gravel on the ALKAN,
while you camped the outskirts of Vegas circus,
circus! he dreamed a first kick engine, she dreamed
new floral davenports, matching brocade
drapes, you promised groceries on your way
home, your tread on the stairs pulls me
awake, you sit at the edge of the bed
beside me in the dark, your lips brush
my forehead, you reach for my hand your fingers
spreading mine apart to fit
Reprinted from Beast (NFSPS Press, 2015)
Pretty Tilt
This debut poetry collection effervesces with teen-girl sexuality, its narrator unapologetic in her desire to inhabit this body, this stage of life, this cultural moment, without weighing it down with analysis. Feminism makes a token appearance as a source of self-criticism that she's thrown aside like a bikini top at the beach. Her self may be socially constructed out of crusty panties and My Little Pony hair, but unlike the Gurlesque poets to whom she's been compared, Murphy doesn't seem angry or anxious about the impossibility of some Modernist "authenticity"; for her characters, girlhood holds thrills but no serious dangers. Read it for her fantastic language and perceptiveness about the emotions of this time of life.
Prima Facie
By Trish Hopkinson
Huddled in the corner
where only a creak of light
cast a thin line 'cross his back.
Belief's blackness pressed into his sympathy
like a fire-heated symbol meant for permanence,
meant for slavery.
Ears marked with indoctrination
and freedom castrated by abstinence,
his hands ached for resolution, for reason,
for something to clean the char
from beneath his fingernails.
His voice strained with the rasp
of each unanswered question
and his teeth bent with the burden
as his tongue tore away at vision.
He saw the brand waiting in the flame.
He saw the labels that it made.
It took him years to leave his religion.
Prime: Poetry & Conversation
Edited by Jericho Brown, this essential anthology brings together a new generation of black gay poets: Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Saeed Jones, Rickey Laurentiis, Phillip B. Williams, and L. Lamar Wilson. The book begins with a selection of poems from each author, after which they interview one another about poetic mentoring, influences, and identities. Publisher Sibling Rivalry Press is known for supporting LGBT literature.
Prism Comics
Prism Comics is a nonprofit organization that supports the creators and readers of LGBT and LGBT-friendly comics and graphic novels. Prism provides networking opportunities for writers, artists, and small publishers to collaborate on new comics and reach a wider fan base. The website includes an online store where indie comics creators can sell their work. They also sponsor the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant to help indie and self-published authors publicize their work.
Prism Comics
Prism Comics is the leading nonprofit, all-volunteer organization supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual and LGBTQIA-friendly comic books, comics professionals, readers and educators. Prism awards an annual Queer Press Grant to help an independent comics creator publish their work of interest to an LGBTQIA audience. Prism also publishes anthologies and hosts panel discussions at comics conventions around the United States.
Prison Writers
Co-founded by journalists from USA Today and CBS News, Prison Writers is a nonprofit organization that advocates for prison reform through sharing true stories by incarcerated writers. The group's goals are to encourage prisoners in learning marketable skills and to educate the public about life on the inside. Volunteer screeners give feedback, edit, and publish work by prisoners on the website. All contributors receive $10. There is often a large backlog of submissions, so more volunteers are always needed.
Prisoner Express
A project of the Durland Alternatives Library, Prisoner Express promotes rehabilitation by connecting prisoners to a community through literature. Prisoner Express began as a program for sending donated books to inmates. In addition to this service, they also coordinate pen-pal and distance-learning programs, and publish prisoners' writing on their website and in an anthology.
Prisons Foundation
The Prisons Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC that promotes the arts and education in prison and alternatives to incarceration. Visit the gallery page of their website to view and purchase original work by incarcerated artists.
Priya’s Shakti
This graphic novel is a collaboration between poet and playwright Vikas K. Menon, artist Dan Goldman, and filmmaker Ram Devineni. The provocative story portrays an Indian female super-hero who fights against sexual violence in a Hindu-inspired mythic reality. The comic's creation was prompted by the December 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in Delhi. The story can be downloaded for free from the website, which also features videos and information about supporting anti-rape activism.
Professor Roy’s Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal
Satirist "Professor Roy" searches Poetry.com for the worst possible poems, and explains just why they're so bad. Visit his User Info page for warnings about poetry scams.
Prolitfic
Prolitfic is a free online forum for short fiction writers. In exchange for posting your work, you have to leave a review of another member's piece. They sponsor monthly themed contests where the prize is feedback from publishing professionals.
Public Books
Founded in 2012, Public Books is an online journal that aims to "unite the best of the university with the openness of the internet." Featuring accessible articles by scholars in a variety of disciplines, from anthropology and history to literature and television, the journal brings academic research to a general audience. They have an extensive book review archive.
PublishDrive Free E-book Converter
PublishDrive's free converter tool will change your MS Word documents into ePub or Kindle mobi files (two of the most popular e-book formats). Note that conversion of complicated publications is not guaranteed (magazines, textbooks, books with many pictures or too long and wide tables). Files must use Latin characters only, no foreign-language alphabets.
Publishers & Vendors of Deaf-Related Materials
The website of Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf, features this list of English-language publishers who specialize in or otherwise publish a relatively large number of deaf-related books and/or videos. The list was last updated several years ago, but it is a good place to start your research into this market.
Publishers Marketplace
Publishers Marketplace is an industry news website that can help authors connect with agents and editors. Their newsfeed tracks publishing deals, agents, editors, submission calls and more. Full membership is $25/month. If this is out of your price range, there is also a free, shorter daily email newsletter called Publishers Lunch.
Publishers Weekly
Daily bulletins from the world of book publishing. Good attention to sectors poorly covered elsewhere, such as religion. Browse ads for jobs at publishers and libraries.
Publishing Resources Links at BookBub
Diana Urban, industry marketing manager at the self-publishing company BookBub, compiled this list of 48+ reputable vendors for every stage of book creation and marketing. Categories include developmental and copy editing, graphic design, distribution for self-published books, marketing, publishing industry news, authors' associations, and website building tools. Links are current as of 2019.
Pubslush
Pubslush is a global pre-publication platform that allows authors to raise funds, collect pre-orders, and tangibly market upcoming book projects. Authors and literary trendsetters can choose to raise funds and gauge audience response for publishing projects or conduct comprehensive pre-order campaigns for upcoming titles. Providing crowdfunding and pre-order options, Pubslush caters to the needs of all authors while incorporating them into their growing publishing and literary community.
Purdue University Online Writing Lab
This resource portal from Purdue University in Indiana features basic exercises to learn grammar, punctuation, spelling, APA and MLA citation styles, and composing resumes and business letters.
Purity and Nonsense
This two-part essay by award-winning poet Brian Brodeur discusses the prosody of nonsense verse and compares it to other types of avant-garde art. Is it aesthetically significant, as a kind of distillation of poetry to its abstract elements of sound and rhythm, purified of "meaning"? Or is it just a sophomoric prank? Read Part 1 and Part 2 on The Best American Poetry blog.
Q Avenue Press
Launched in 2004 by award-winning poet Curtis Bauer, Q Avenue Press publishes hand-bound chapbooks. Editors say, "We are devoted to publishing new writing, whether prose, poetry, or some combination of the two, new translations, and books that incorporate visual art with writing." Titles include 'I take back the sponge cake' by Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson, an illustrated poetry chapbook modeled on choose-your-own-adventure novels.
Q&A With Amy King from VIDA, Feminist Watchdog
The Riveter is a magazine of narratives and longform journalism by women. In this August 2017 piece, magazine co-founder Joanna Demkiewicz interviews poet Amy King about her work with VIDA, an organization launched in 2009 to track gender disparities in the top literary publications and book reviews. VIDA has since expanded its surveys to break down the data by race, ethnicity, sexuality/gender, disability, and neurodiversity.
Queen Mob’s Tea House
Queen Mob's Tea House, affiliated with the respected cultural journal Berfrois, is an international online literary magazine for "weird, serious, gorgeous, cross genre, spell conjuring, rant inducing work." The many genres they accept include poetry, fiction, satire, sex columns, music journalism, queer translations and more.
Queer in Color
Queer in Color is a site to showcase fiction books featuring LGBTQ characters of color. The founders are romance writers but the site is open to all genres. They will add books to the website for free, and charge a small fee to promote them on social media.
Queer Indigenous Women Poets at LitHub
Award-winning Mojave poet Natalie Diaz curates this bimonthly feature of selected poems by contemporary queer indigenous women. The first installment includes work by No'u Revilla, Janet McAdams, Lehua M. Taitano, Deborah A. Miranda, and Arianne True.
Querencia,
By Diana Anhalt
a word that inhabits my Spanish-speaking mouth,
lies under my tongue and smells of evergreens,
and rainy Mondays, smoke. From the word querer—
to want, desire, wish. It refers to bulls
who seek their place of solace in the ring.
For the waif in every living creature. I think
of the neighbor's dachshund hunkered under the porch,
the sparrow haunting a fallen tree, the child
afraid to stray too far from his mother's side.
We took to driving the Cuernavaca highway
and parked in the clearing with that Mexico City view.
As the air turned hazy with cigarette smoke,
we'd drink wine from the bottle, talk and listen to danzones
on the radio. We drove away soon after, took
our memories with us, haven't returned.
After years away, our key no longer fits
the lock. And our home, grown used to strangers' feet,
is home no more.
Quick Brown Fox: The Literary Journal of the Five Colleges
Editors say, "We seek to bridge the barriers between the colleges and to promote our generation's voice by providing students with space for writing, discussion, and a collaborative intellectual experience."
Quick Brown Fox: The Literary Journal of the Five Colleges
Launched in 2010, QBF publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and artwork by students at the Five Colleges in Western Massachusetts: Smith, Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and U Mass Amherst. Editors say, "We seek to bridge the barriers between the colleges and to promote our generation's voice by providing students with space for writing, discussion, and a collaborative intellectual experience."
Quiddity: International Literary Journal & Public-Radio Program
Quiddity is a literary journal published by Springfield College-Benedictine University in Illinois. Contributors to the journal may also be invited to read their work and be interviewed about the writing process on Illinois Public Radio, an NPR affiliate. Links to samples of these broadcasts are available on their website. Contributors have included Douglas A. Blackmon, Dan Guillory, and Martin Willitts, Jr.
QUILTBAG+ Speculative Classics
Writer and critic Bogi Takács highlights lost classics of queer speculative fiction in this biweekly column on the website of Tor.com, a leading publisher of diverse voices in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Their goal is to counteract the cultural mechanisms of erasure and suppression of minority writing. Takács explains, "QUILTBAG+ is a handy acronym of Queer, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans, Bisexual, Asexual / Aromantic / Agender, Gay and a plus sign indicating further expansion." Launched in 2018, the column will feature pre-2010 work either by QUILTBAG+ authors (where this is known) or with QUILTBAG+ themes, with a special emphasis on identities that are less-discussed, such as trans, intersex, asexual, and bisexual writing. Read more of Takács' reviews and critical essays at Bogi Reads the World.
Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006
Intricate lyrics from the poet's eight collections marry austere classicism to sensual passion. Eros, for Phillips, is always shadowed by loss, yet for that very reason also points to a radiant, barely describable landscape beyond death, as the speaker of these poems renounces all illusions about the cost of his devotion to another man.
R.R. Bowker, the US ISBN Agency
R.R. Bowker is the authorized ISBN Agency in the United States, responsible for assigning ISBNs as well as providing information and advice on the uses of the ISBN system to publishers and the publishing industry in general. (An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.) Their website includes instructions for publishers or self-published authors to obtain an ISBN for their titles.
R.R. Bowker, the US ISBN Agency
R.R. Bowker is the authorized ISBN Agency in the United States, responsible for assigning ISBNs as well as providing information and advice on the uses of the ISBN system to publishers and the publishing industry in general. (An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.) Their website includes instructions for publishers or self-published authors to obtain an ISBN for their titles.
Radical Copyeditor
The Radical Copyeditor is a blog and editing service that keeps writers up-to-date on respectful ways to write about marginalized communities. Tips include recognizing biased reporting, a style guide for referring to transgender and nonbinary people, and unpacking the politics behind buzzwords like "alt-right" and "politically correct".
Ragged Sky Press
Ragged Sky Press was founded in 1992 by poet and publisher Ellen Foos of Princeton, NJ, and publishes quality works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. See website for submission guidelines for their themed anthologies. Authors in their catalog include Elizabeth Socolow, Anca Vlasopolos, and Carlos Hernández Peña.
Rain Gives
By Carol Smallwood
remembrance of floating—
the illusion encouraged by people
under umbrellas, huddled in cars,
part of the whole yet separate.
Grass turns so green it hurts the eye;
sidewalk cracks fill to water weeds.
My umbrella the color of skin gives
rain a voice: thunder assures you
are not alone.
Ralan’s Webstravaganza
Large link directory of markets and contests for writers, broken down by type of publisher (anthology, paying publication, semi-professional magazines, book publishers, and so on). Science fiction, fantasy and horror writers will find the site most useful, but there are also a number of general-interest and poetry links.
Random Poem Generator
The algorithm on this website will create haiku or rhyming quatrains from the text of any webpage. Not all of them are grammatical, but a found-poem can be assembled out of the best attempts.
Rare Children’s Books Digital Archive at the Library of Congress
To celebrate the centennial of Children's Book Week in 2019, the US Library of Congress has made available a free digital collection of 100+ out-of-print, public-domain children's books from before 1924. These historically significant works include examples of the work of American illustrators such as W.W. Denslow, Peter Newell, and Howard Pyle, as well as works by renowned English illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway.
Raspberry Sassafras
Named after a series of children's picture books by site editor Allison Holland, Raspberry Sassafras is a website that reviews indie and self-published picture books, and also features a Storytellers section where young writers can submit work to be posted on the site.
Rattle Young Poets Anthology
Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century is a well-regarded literary journal that produces this annual anthology of writing by young people. The editors select the top 52 poems from thousands of submissions from all over the world. Entrants must have been age 15 or younger when the poem was written, and 18 or younger when submitted. See website for guidelines, privacy protections, and online submission form.
Raving Dove
Online literary journal dedicated to sharing thought-provoking writing, photography, and art that opposes the use of violence as conflict resolution, and embraces the intrinsic themes of peace and human rights. Also features a good list of links to humanitarian organizations.
Rawboned
Rawboned publishes flash fiction and nonfiction, poetry, and hybrids up to 750 words. The magazine is published monthly online, and the editors' favorites are reprinted in a biannual print journal. They offer a weekly Twitter micro-essay contest and an annual themed flash fiction and essay contest with cash prizes. Their motto is "the marrow of the story".
