In honor of National Poetry Month, paperback editions of all our full-length poetry books are on sale for the price of $12.50 rather than the usual $13.95. The sale price will be applied when you visit the e-store, or any Amazon.com site. Titles included are: Thaliad 70 Faces: Torah Poems Angels & Beasts Ancient Lights Mercy Island. Brilliant Coroners. Take advantage of the excellent price, and support poetry and independent publishing at the same time! This is the third year qarrtsiluni has run a chapbook contest, with the winning manuscript published by Phoenicia. There are lots of contests out there, some with no reading fee at all (this one costs $11). If poets simply want to be published, there are also a number of chapbook printers now who masquerade as publishers. So why go to the trouble of entering a contest like this one? For one thing, the judging process is completely anonymous. (I know: I'm the contest coordinator!) We receive entries from known poets as well as people who've never submitted before, but all identifying information is stripped out, including acknowledgments, prior publications, biographical information -- even the "created by" tag in the file data is removed. So the judge has no way of knowing who is who, who has a degree, whose manuscript is filled with previously-published poems, and who doesn't but just happens to be a very good poet with something unique to say and an arresting way of saying it. Second: Our contests typically don't receive hundreds of entries. Your work won't be lost in the shuffle, but read carefully. And third: your entry fee goes toward the honorarium for the judge (for 2011, that's Luisa Igloria) and the cover artist, and to defray the expenses for review copies and postage. This is a break-even proposition at best, and you can feel positive, knowing that your fee helps support poetry itself. All ten shortlisted poets will receive publicity and publication of some of their works. In both 2009 and 2010, the contest was won by accomplished but relatively unknown poets. The subsequent publication of their books and the publicity they received, as well as the credit, has helped both of them in their careers. Dave Bonta and I take seriously our role as publishers and promoters of the poets who are chosen for the shortlist and as winners, and we do all we can to get the work out into the world in a beautiful form -- whether that's as printed or online books, or in the audio version -- where it can be read and appreciated. We also try to make the process an enjoyable one for everyone involved. To all my poet friends: you should seriously consider submitting to this contest. I won this contest last year, and Beth Adams & Dave Bonta have have been so awesome that they have ruined me for any other publisher. This year's judge is Luisa Igloria, who won the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry. --Clayton Michaels So we hope you will consider entering the 2011 contest; send us your best work, and good luck to all! The deadline is June 15, and all details are here. An "Ode" at Verse Daily: One of Dave Bonta's poems from his Odes to Tools chapbook is today's selection by the editors at Verse Daily. Congratulations, Dave! The poem chosen is "Ode to a Wire Brush," one of our favorites.Congratulations, Dave! The poem chosen is "Ode to a Wire Brush," one of our favorites.
Phoenicia Publishing supports its authors by sending out review copies to the most appropriate online and print anthologies and publications. We're delighted that the editors at Verse Daily recognized the wide appeal of Dave's work, and welcome any readers of that publication who may have come over to look at Dave's "Odes to Tools" chapbook; we hope you'll like what you find! Todd Davis, winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and author of Some Heaven and The Least of These, is a professor of creative writing, environmental studies, and American literature at Penn State University's Altoona College. Todd's own poetry is influenced by the natural world, by family relationships, and by his personal knowledge of the Amish and Mennonite who live and farm in central Pennsylvania.
He was pleased to be asked to say something about fellow Pennsylvanian Dave Bonta's Odes to Tools, and I think his words reflect succinctly and beautifully what many of us feel about the integrity that exists between Dave's life and his poetry. In Odes to Tools, Dave Bonta’s wide-ranging intellect and voracious curiosity are on full display, as is his insistence that we come to know the world that is forever passing from us. A meditation on everything from a measuring tape to a spirit level, this first book of poems demonstrates what all of Bonta’s readers at Via Negativa already know: here is the uncompromising voice of a man who has not allowed the broader culture to dictate what is important to him, or what is vital about the natural world that sustains us and the relationships that might actually transform us. As he says in “Ode to a Socket Wrench:” “with the click of a lever // the past screwed down / the future loose.” Bonta’s voice is one that offers keen insight into how we might move into that future, all of our senses intact, especially our common sense. |
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