Author Archives: thisfrenzy

2015 List of Indispensable Women Poets

On our contest entry form we ask poets to list 2-3 Indispensable Women Poets. What an amazing resource this is creating for us!

Here’s the list of names submitted as of December 20th:

Adrienne Rich
Akiko Yosano
Allison Townsend
Anna Akhmatova
Anne Finch
Annie Dillard
Aracelis Girmay
Audre Lorde
Beckian Fritz Goldberg
Bette Lynch Husted
Brenda Shaugnessy
Cathy Colman
Cecilia Woloch
Connie Willis
Dahlia Ravikovitch
Daisy Fried
Denise Duhamel
Eavan Boland
Elizabeth Bishop
Ellen Bass
Emily Dickinson
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Glenna Luschei
Gwendolyn Brooks
Heather McHugh
Helen Klein Ross
Holly Day
Jane Hirschfield
Jane Kenyon
Joan Colby
Judy Rowe Michaels
Kay Ryan
Kim Addonizio
Liesl Mueller
Linda Gregg
Linda Hogan
Linda Pastan
Louise Erdrich
Louise Glück
Lucille Clifton
Lucy Tapahonso
Margaret Atwood
Marian Boyer
Marie Howe
Marilyn Hacker
Marsha de la O
Mary Oliver
Maxine Kumin
May Sarton
May Swenson
Maya Angelou
Muriel Rukeyser
Naomi Shihab Nye
Natasha Trethewey
Nellie Wong
Nikki Finney
Paisley Rekdal
Patricia Caspers Ross
Patricia Fargnoli
Patricia Smith
Pattiann Rogers
Quan Barry
Rachel Bluwstein
Renee Ashley
Rita Dove
Ruth Stone
Sandra Cisneros
Sappho
Sharon Olds
Sonia Sanchez
Sylvia Plath
Tiffany Midge
Ursula K. Le Guin
Wislawa Szymborska

QuillsEdge is Pro-Diversity!

QuillsEdge Press is thrilled to announce
that our 2015 contest includes a
Pro-Diversity entrance fee of $5.00
for self-identified Women of Color

 

In our first contest last year the proportion of manuscripts we received from Women of Color did not match the number of talented Women of Color writers we know are out there, so we resolved to reach out in new ways this year.

 

Please help us by sharing our news
with your writing communities!

Great news! Another poetry prize for women over 50!

NOW OPEN:   THE WILDER SERIES POETRY BOOK PRIZE
Accepting Submissions: September 1st, 2015 – November 30, 2015


wilder prize2015 Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Book Prize: 
A Poetry Contest for Women Over Age 50

Submission Dates: Sept. 1, 2015 – Nov. 30th, 2015.

Judges: The editors of Two Sylvias Press–
Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy.

Prize: $1000 and publication by Two Sylvias Press
(print book and eBook plus an art nouveau pendant).

The Wilder Series Book Prize is open to women over 50 years of age (established or emerging poets) and includes a $1000 prize, publication by Two Sylvias Press, 20 copies of the winning book, and a vintage, art nouveau pendant. Women submitting manuscripts may be poets with one or more previously published chapbooks/books or poets without any prior chapbook/book publications. All manuscripts will be considered for publication.

Please read the complete guidelines below before submitting your manuscript.



Submission Requirements:

Please submit an original, unpublished full-length manuscript of poetry (no translations or previously self-published books). Individual poems may have been previously published in journals, magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished.

Open to: Women over the age of 50 (born on or before November 30, 1965)

Length: 60-100 pages of poems
(One poem per page. Though poems can be longer than one page, we just want to make sure each poem begins on its own page and that two poems are never included on the same page.)

Manuscript should include a table of contents and an acknowledgments page for previously published poems.

Poet’s name should not appear in the manuscript.

A poet may submit more than one manuscript for consideration. Submit additional manuscript(s) in a separate email(s) and include submission fee(s).

Simultaneous submissions allowed. Please notify Two Sylvias Press immediately if manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

NOTE: Our mission at Two Sylvias Press is to support poets. Your manuscript will NOT be disqualified if it was submitted incorrectly. We will not penalize you for trying and making a mistake. If we have a question or concern about your manuscript format, we will contact you and allow you to resubmit. Please know that we are on your side. Thank you for trusting us with your work.

– See more at: http://www.twosylviaspress.com/wilder-series-poetry-book-prize.html#sthash.qP6TqECI.dpuf

The Chapbooks Have Arrived!

All of the chapbooks went out to our authors this week! We asked everyone to send us pictures of opening up the packages, and Lucia Galloway, author of The Garlic Peelers, was the first to gleefully respond.

Here are the photos, so you can share the joy.

lucia opening manuscripts

Our First Chapbooks Go On Sale Today!

Our 2014 On the Edge winners are being printed this week. We are so excited by the quality of the poetry and the beautiful book design our printer Joe Carlough created.

And the covers! Wow, the covers! QuillsEdge Board Member Anique Taylor created a painting just for The Garlic Peelers, and the multi-talented Suellen Wedmore sent us her own lighthouse paintings to choose from for Mind the Light.

You can buy them now on our QuillsEdge Press Web Store for $12/book, with free shipping. They will be mailed out starting October 10th. We’re offering a pre-shipping special deal – both beautiful chapbooks for $20.00

Both books contain a selection of poems from our four finalists: Eve Linn, Sarah Backer, Kim Baker, and T. Stores.

 

Of The Garlic Peelers, 2014 Judge Barbara Crooker said:

garlic peelersOne of the things I look for in a chapbook is unity of theme, keeping in mind Frost’s dictum that if 26 separate poems make up a book, then the 27th poem is the book itself. The Garlic Peelers exemplifies this. I love the stunning title poem, and the way the other poems unfolded, like cloves of garlic from its core. I also admired the variety of forms and voices used, and the central metaphor: women’s lives as many-layered and essential as garlic. I like the way Lucia Galloway plays with multiple levels of meaning (chase/chaste/chastened; skins/scraps/leavings/chaff), the quotes that are salted between sections, and the way each section is introduced by lines that are excerpted and reworked from the title poem. No good recipe is complete without garlic, and no poetry shelf is complete without this fine book.

 

 

 

Of Mind The Light, 2014 Judge Barbara Crooker said,

mind the ligh

Mind The Light has as its narrators five very different women who were lighthouse keepers, five separate personas, five unique voices, like the multi-faceted Fresnel lens used in lighthouses. Each poem is a small gem; “lapidary” comes to mind in describing them. The central metaphor, women finding their strength in adverse and sometimes unchosen circumstances, took my breath away. This is a book of poetry that reads like a novel, and I challenge any reader to come away unmoved.

 

Mind the Light also has photos of four of the women, and an original painting by Suellen Wedmore of the fifth.

Our 2nd Competition Opens 11/01/2015!

QuillsEdge Press is proud to announce our 2nd Annual Chapbook Competition for Women Poets Over 50!

Our Theme: To Inhabit (a body, a landscape, an ecosystem, a dream, a memory, a nightmare, a fantasy, a place, a time)

Our Judge: Mary Ann McFadden

The competition opens November 1st, 2015 and runs through January 31st, 2016. Check back here in early October to download the guidelines and get the link to enter online!

We’ve been editing our hearts out!

Been a while since our last post – but only because we’ve been busy being editors!

The second of the two winning manuscripts just flew digitally to our designer, Joe Carlough, so layout can begin. We can’t wait to see the proofs, which will be coming soon. Soon soon soon.

Since QuillsEdge Press is dedicated to creating community, and not only to publishing “contest winners,” we’re doing something different with our first two chapbooks. Each one will have a complete winning manuscript in a front section, and then a separate section at the back where each of the other four finalists will have two poems. When you buy our books (and you WILL buy them!), you’ll also be getting four poems by each finalist as a sample of the depth and variety of poetry submitted to us.

And all six finalists will be invited to be readers for our next contest! Just like every other small press, we have to run contests to fund the work, but for us strengthening bonds between women poets is just as much our mission as publishing chapbooks.

More exciting news is coming soon, including our next competition, readings, how to BUY THE BOOKS, and announcements of new Board members!

Meanwhile, here’s part of the cover image for Lucia Galloway’s chapbook, created by poet and artist (and now BOARD MEMBER) Anique Taylor.

garlic cropped for blog

Poets that shaped us deeply – Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker:

All poets have their chosen ancestors and affinities. As an American poet I see myself in the line of Whitman, Williams, and Ginsberg, those great enablers of the inclusive democratic impulse, the corollary of which is formal openness. As a student I wrote in traditional closed forms, as did they—before they discovered the joy and meaning of open forms. To write in open forms is to improvise. Improvisatory verse is like doing a jazz solo: we know what we’ve just done, and the next line has to be connected to it, has to grow out of it somehow, but there is an essential unpredictability. This is an American invention because we act, in America, as if the future is partly shaped by the past, but is not determined by it. We are (a little bit) free.

Older Women Poets Kicking Butt – Happy Birthday Anne Porter!

And in the realm of women poets who got serious late in life then kicked poetic butt – Happy Birthday Anne Porter! Anne published her first collection, An Altogether Different Language, in 1994, when she was 83 years old. The collection was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Today is the birthday of poet Anne Porter (books by this author), née Channing. She was born in Sherborn, Massachusetts, in 1911. When she was 16, she met artist Fairfield Porter, and they were married by the time she was 20. She had been writing poetry since she was seven, but now, as a busy mother of five, she didn’t have much time for her own pursuits. The choir and women’s group at the Methodist church were her only social outlets, apart from playing hostess to her husband’s artist friends. Sometimes she modeled for her husband’s paintings, but they weren’t portraits of her; she compared the experience to being an apple in a still life.

When her Fairfield Porter died in 1975, Anne lived with her daughter Elizabeth, and then on her own after her daughter married. Porter felt alone and vulnerable in the quiet empty house, and fell down the stairs twice. She knew she couldn’t live on her own any longer, and was all set to move into an assisted-living facility when her daughter and son-in-law invited her to move in with them. They built an addition to their house just for her, with vaulted ceilings like a cathedral. It was there, at a modest desk surrounded by her late husband’s paintings, that she began to devote more time to her poetry. She collected bits of it on whatever scrap of paper she found lying around, and turned it over and around in her mind, and only when it was nearly complete did she sit down at her old typewriter and commit it to the page.

The Manuscripts Are Arriving! !שהחינו

 

The flood gates have opened and the manuscripts are coming in!  Jane and I just opened the first three to arrive and we are THRILLED!  All three:

1. followed the guidelines (which means the guidelines are clear and easy to follow!)

2. Included checks in the proper amounts (we have a 1st taker on a paid review/feedback!)

3. Are VERY STRONG writing! We know that there is an amazing amount of great poetry by women over 50 out there, and we’re going to prove it.

Happy poets, happy editors, happy Press Work day at Jane’s all day today. Email blast going out soon, then a publicity strategies conversation, then invitations for poets we love and admire to be on our advisory board.

Keep those manuscripts coming!