The launch of the newest issue of Meridian will be feted with a reading during which contributors from across the nation will converge at the Bridge PAI for an evening of poetry, fiction, a dramatic interpretation of a creative non-fiction by Lisa K. Buchanan and previously unpublished poems by Breece D’J Pancake.
The slate of readers includes Mike Antosia, Lisa K. Buchanan, Miranda C. Dennis, Matthew Hotham and Yael Shinar. The readers will be introduced by Meridian editors Jazzy Danziger, Kevin Allardice, Memory Peebles, Jasmine Bailey and Hannah Holtzman. Light refreshments will be provided.
Mike Antosia lives and writes in Rhode Island. His most recent story, “The Last King of China” appeared in The Massachusetts Review.
Fiction and essays by Lisa K. Buchanan have appeared in numerous literary journals including Fourth Genre, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, New Letters, and Quick Fiction. She lives in San Francisco.
Miranda C. Dennis attends the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst, where she teaches college writing and eats the local apples.
Matthew Hotham received his MFA from Syracuse University in 2007. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Stone Canoe, 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, anderbo, and Verse Daily, among others. His chapbook, Early Art, was published in 2006 by Turtle Ink Press. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and works as poetry editor for the online journal Slush Pile.
Yael Shinar was born in California and now lives near Cambridge, Mass., where she is working towards a degree of master of divinity at Harvard University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, The Drunken Boat, Slush Pile, Beloit Poetry Journal, Third Coast, and other publications.
Breece D’J Pancake (1953-1979) was a native of West Virginia and studied creative writing at the University of Virginia. He published six short stories in his lifetime, mostly in The Atlantic, and was posthumously nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake.
Founded in 1998, Meridian has featured the works of numerous Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners and established writers, including Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Seamus Heaney, Ann Beattie, John Casey, George Garrett, Heather McHugh, Richard Bausch, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Cathy Song and Eric Pankey. However, as a magazine edited by young writers, the publication values nothing more than showcasing tomorrow’s talent, often publishing a new author’s first story or poem.
Current MFAs in fiction and poetry at UVA had a great fall semester. Here is some recent publication news. (This may not be a complete list.)
Steve Barbaro had poems chosen for Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, and Spinning Jenny.
Jazzy Danziger’s poem “Earthquake in Wabash Valley, Three Months Before Our Engagement” will appear in the spring 2010 issue of Mid-American Review.
Carolyn Creedon had poems published in the summer issue of Ploughshares and the November issue of Alehouse.
Jonterri Gadson had poems accepted by TORCH for their fall/winter 2009 issue.
Lee Johnson had a story chosen for publication in Alaska Quarterly Review.
Sam Taylor’s poems were chosen for publication in New Letters, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Confrontation Magazine, Asheville Poetry Review, and Poetry International.
Mark Wagenaar’s “Gacela of the Bright Omen” appears in this fall’s Atlanta Review, “Chiropractic” was accepted by Subtropics, “Slow Migration Towards Ecstasy” by the South Carolina Review, “The Joke,” by Hiram Poetry Review, and “Elegy with Two Lemons” by Harpur Palate.
Well, we had a really nice week with Claire Messud. She was our 2009 Rea Visiting Writer in Fiction and gave a craft talk, held individual conferences with our fiction students, and gave a public reading. Here’s a video snippet from that reading over at the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library. Her text is her last novel, The Emperor’s Children. Special thanks to Kelly Miller for helping us set that event up. It was a great way to end Claire’s stay with us.
Last year’s Meridian fiction and poetry editors, Aja Gabel, George David Clark, and Paul Legault, have made their Pushcart nominations for the forthcoming edition. Of course, hundreds of other literary magazines are doing the same thing … but we wish our authors good luck in making the final cut:
Poetry Nominations:
Alice Notley, “Diary Entry,” Issue 23
Carl Phillips, “The Grass Not Being Flesh, Nor Flesh the Grass,” Issue 22
Karen Rigby, “Nightingale & Friends,” Issue 23
Lindsay Turner, “[today happens as an urgent letter],” Issue 23
Fiction Nominations:
Nahal Suzanne Jamir, “In the Middle of Many Mountains,” Issue 23
Alyssa Knickerbocker, “When No One Rakes,” Issue 23
You all have to take a look at this hilarious blog post from HTML Giant, “Top 5 MFA Rankings Rearranged“, that places UVA at the top of P&W’s rankings (where we belong, of course). Here’s an excerpt:
1. University of Iowa in Iowa City University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Need I say more? I’ll take it however we can get it! YAY UVA MFA! lol
MFAs at the University of Virginia read at Charlottesville’s Bel Rio each Tuesday night for the program’s reading series. We think you’ll enjoy these two videos from last night’s reading, featuring poet Christa Romanosky.
Blue Boy: Seeing beyond Perception by Dash Cox
Illustrations by David Dibble
There is a particular kind of poetry that I’ve seen in literary magazines: so-called literary works from literary minds, masters of fine arts, doctors of poetry with the passion schooled straight out of them. Some are clever, some surprising, some witty, some are examples of poetic forms that died in 14th century Persia, and some comment on the soulless, branded present—but how few have that ragged sound of a verse shrieked into a pillow, lines written because, left unexpressed, they would like a pile of stones on a human being’s chest drive out the breath and blood and life, leaving the corpse of a poet unmourned in the dust.
Such are the verses of Dash Cox—they are his struggle, his confession, his pain and his confusion and, finally, his freedom.
“Dash Cox was born in Monrovia, Liberia. When he was eight years old, a coup broke out in his native home, and two years later his parents sewed five hundred dollars into his back pocket and stuck him on a plane to live with his aunt in Arlington, Virginia.” So says the introduction to Blue Boy. It continues, “Arriving in the United States, he was proud of his African heritage, proud of who he was, and proud of his color. But that all changed. In his new home he met a very light skinned black man who often said to him, “Dash you’re so black, you’re blue.” So when he was around, Dash’s nickname was Blue Boy”.
Divided into three books, Bondage, Emancipation, and Freedom, Dash deals with his coming of age side-by-side with his growing sense of racial awareness in blunt, barely poetic terms that speak directly, half-growling, half-howling of the unjust truths that were forced on him. It would not be a stretch to compare him to Langston Hughes, writing of the explosion of a dream deferred, though some of his more traditional rhymed poems have the more polished feel of Countee Cullen. Much of the writing in Blue Boy is free verse, for lack of a better catch-all—in fact, most of the forms seem to be of the poet’s invention, and come in such a great variety that it would be futile to try to describe them all. In general, Cox has a playful attitude towards the page, letting his lines move spatially, and sometimes in unexpected ways, such as when they break into nearly indecipherable curlicues in God: Who, What, Where?
If it is the intensity of his voice that gives power to these poems, their value comes from their look at America—black and white—and their passion comes from the poet looking within himself. Looking at America: “Scars on my back / blood on the floor / Please, Massuh! Please, Officer! / Don’ beat me no more!” Looking at himself: “Blue Boy, Blue Boy, / Man, you’re a new boy. / You didn’t have a clue, boy, / How it would be for you, boy.”
These are not poems to be forgotten. No exhibitions of kooky language and unexpected line breaks, they are simple words taken from the deepest of places, the place where we keep our love and our hate and our spirituality, our fear, prejudice and pride—the place where real poetry comes from. These are poems to be ignored at our own collective peril.
For a copy of Blue Boy, as well as for interviews and speaking engagements, e-mail Dash Cox at dashfs@mac.com.
We’re excited to announce that we are now accepting entries for the 2010 Editors’ Prize Contests in Fiction and Poetry. Deadline December 15, 2009.
For a $16 entry fee, you receive a chance at a $1,000 prize and a one-year subscription to Meridian (entries from outside the U.S. will receive only the prize issue due to additional mailing costs.) You can either submit them in separate files (which allows you to withdraw them individually) or as a single file.
We expect to announce winners in early March 2010.
All submissions will be considered for standard publication in Meridian.
Fiction writers may submit one story of 10,000 words or fewer. Poets may submit up to 4 poems.
You may enter more than one time; however, in the past, entering multiple times has not significantly increased a contestant’s odds.
Submit your work through ManuscriptHub.com. Make sure that your account includes a working e-mail (one valid through March of 2010). It’s the only way for us to contact you.
Best of luck!
Contest Eligibility Rules:
UVA alumni who graduated before June 2007 may enter the contests.
Current UVA students, staff, and faculty are NOT eligible.
Former Meridian staff are not eligible. (If you’ve been on our masthead, don’t enter.)
Friends, relatives, and former teachers and students of current Meridian staff or its advisor are not eligible.
Current subscribers may enter the Editors’ Prize Contest for the same $16 fee. Your subscription will be extended by one year (and you will remain, as always, one of our favorite people in the world, even if you get treated like everyone else for the purposes of the contest).
Hello, Meridan blog followers! I’m Zayne, a first-year poet.
A friend of mine now living in Minneapolis sent me an article about an event going down on October 20. (You can read the article yourself here.) The event itself will be a screening of several ‘motionpoems’—collaborations between poets and animators, rendering what seems to be akin to a 21st Century take on the broadside (or, perhaps, the poetic form of a music video). Several pieces can be found at motionpoems.com. What seems interesting to me (aside from the motionpoems themselves), is that Todd Boss (one of the poets pioneering the project) is looking for ideas from the audience about the directions, applications and nature of the motionpoem project. As someone whose work often treads the lines between page and stage, these motionpoems seem to be another means of allowing more poets (particularly poets of various aesthetic varieties) to enter into spheres of distribution that many spoken word artists (and, indeed, musicians) have learned to tap into. Any ideas yourselves, dear blog readers?
Written by Jazzy Danziger on January 11th, 2010
