Saturday, October 5, 2024

Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Contest Prizewinners

FICTION

AWARD: “Museum of Lota Smith” by Wilson R. M. Taylor

Wilson R. M. Taylor is a poet and writer. His work appears in Every Day Fiction, an anthology from Wising Up Press, and a few other journals and magazines. He is on the shortlist for the 2024 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Waking the Legend” by K. S. Dearsley 

K. S. Dearsley has had numerous stories published on both sides of the Atlantic. Her novel, Discord's Shadow, the third in the fantasy series The Exiles of Ondd, is available on Amazon at http://www.tinyurl.com/exiles-of-ondd.  Find out more at http://www.ksdearsley.com.

FLASH FICTION

AWARD: “Cowgirl's Calling” by Cameron Edrich 

Cameron Edrich is a poet and writer currently living in Austin, Texas. They write on topics such as love, family, and identity. When not writing, you can find them swimming in a lake or eating dry cereal.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Revolver Rita First Look” by Mandira Pattnaik 

Mandira Pattnaik is a former contributor to Bacopa Literary Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in IHLR, Emerson Review, The Rumpus and SAND Journal, among others. Visit her at mandirapattnaik.com.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

AWARD: “Reenchanted” by Angela Townsend

Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Pleiades, Terrain.org, and The Westchester Review, among others. She is a Best Spiritual Literature nominee.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Bones Within and Without: An Ode to the Wild Dead” by Marisca Pichette

Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. Find more of her work in The Razor, Door is a Jar, Room Magazine, and others. Her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-nominated poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press.

FORMAL POETRY

AWARD: "Nothing Else Matters" by Sherre Vernon

Sherre Vernon is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings, The Name is Perilous, and Flame Nebula, Bright Nova. Sherre has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions. She teaches creative writing and composition.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Let Your Shadows Lengthen on the Sundials" by Andrew Alexander Mobbs

Andrew Alexander Mobbs (he/him/his) is the author of the chapbook, Strangers and Pilgrims (Six Gallery Press, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Terrain.org, Frontier Poetry, Arkansas Review, and other solid publications. He's the co-founding editor of Nude Bruce Review.

FREE VERSE POETRY

AWARD: "Things that Remind Me of Birds" by Desiree Remick

Desiree Remick (she/her) is a creative writing student at Southern Oregon University and the fiction editor of Nude Bruce Review. Her debut short story was the runner-up for the 2020 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize. Her work has also appeared in Unlost, the Ekphrastic Review, and MockingHeart Review.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Sunrise in Future Goma without Roaming Bullets” by Eniola Arowolo

Eniola Arowolo is a writer from Nigeria. A Pushcart and BoTN nominee, he was shortlisted for the Inaugural Chukwuemeka Akachi Prize, and currently serves as a Poetry Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine. His works have appeared in 2024 Small Fictions anthology, The Republic, 4faced Liar, Temz Review, ANMLY, and elsewhere.

VISUAL POETRY

AWARD: "The Liberator" by Rebecca Loggia

Rebecca Loggia’s work has appeared in the Santa Clara Review, Allegory Ridge, and elsewhere. Her poem "Infirmary" placed third in the Phoenix Sister Cities 2017 Writers with Disabilities Competition. She is a reader for CRAFT and a Teaching Artist for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

HONORABLE MENTION: "The Breakup" by C. Maris Bounds

C. Maris Bounds is an English PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi with a focus on creative writing. She enjoys reading Jane Austen, writing out her feelings, and grading papers.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year's contest. Stay tuned for our upcoming journal release reading!

Monday, April 29, 2024

A Reflection on Haley Winan's "Burning Haibun at The Creek"

By Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani

To walk through your dead self is no easy feat. Haley Winans gives us a personal epic, something dark and yearning, something burning. Every line takes us into a fractured landscape, a mind with all its tangles; the direction is never decided. Sometimes it winds back upon itself, sometimes it skips into another dimension, but always there is the strange and unfathomable-- the self--that watches, experiences, and cracks like leaves.

The Haibun consists of one or more paragraphs of prose—imagistic, hallucinatory, and/or story-like, sometimes referred to as prose in a haikai style, coupled to one or more haiku. The form is exceedingly versatile, but both elements must complement each other. In Winans’ haibun, there is the self, but also the other, a “he”, defined by wants, a heart “covered in antlers”, and a tongue that moves as a “loaded gun”. The imagery is provocative, but not sentimental or maudlin.

It’s always difficult to tell submitting poets what it is we look for. We do want variety: of forms/styles, of voices, of tenor. But formal poetry also involves a significant amount of craft—how the story evolves, its meter, rhyme, and flow, a surprising comparison or juxtaposition, a message, meaning, or emotion, that can be deeply personal, but must also be able to touch a universal aspect in us all. Winans succeeds in this, evoking an imaginative experience in the reader. Such an arrangement of sense, rhythm, and sound is a prime example of the type of work Bacopa encourages.

Haley Winan's piece "Burning Haibun at The Creek" was Bacopa Literary Review 2023's Formal Poetry Award.

About the contributor: Haley Winans is a garden-lover and bunny mom from Annapolis, Maryland. She has poetry published in Slipstream, The Shore Poetry, and elsewhere. She's in the University of Memphis MFA Creative Writing program. She's a founding co-editor of Beaver Magazine. During undergrad, she studied Environmental Studies and Creative Writing, with a focus on environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, and poetry. Find her on Twitter @winans_haley.

Monday, April 22, 2024

An Interview with Bacopa 2023 Fiction Honorable Mention Emilee Prado

By Bacopa Literary Review Fiction Editor Alec Kissoondyal

Emilee Prado's brilliant use of contrast is immediately evident in her story, "Red Yucca," a prose piece that takes place on a film set. Beyond using prose to tell a story set in the world of filmmaking, Prado contrasts the "real" locations in the story with their use in the context of the film and even the protagonists, Chico and Nina, play the role of extras even though their bittersweet love story is the central focus of the story. In the following interview, Prado discusses the characters in "Red Yucca," how her educational background in Film Studies factored into the narrative's authenticity, and her upcoming projects.

Q: The element that drew me into the story was the juxtaposition of issues in the characters’ “real lives” being dealt with on film sets. Where did this idea come from, and how did it develop over the course of writing the story?


A: As I developed Chico and Nina, I was thinking about downbeat characters who might feel as if they’ve been cast as extras in their lives in the same way they are cast in the film. For instance, the love story between the unnamed leads is captured perfectly by the camera, but Chico and Nina’s love story drifts, somewhat inconclusive, off-screen. This idea wasn’t specifically plotted, but sort of emerged organically as I began sculpting an ill-defined gritty and fragile love story. The use of film set as setting, however, came from my preoccupation with movies and my educational background (I have a BA in Film Studies). I love to explore fiction as if an omniscient narrator is also the eye of a camera.


Q: Speaking of film sets, the locations in the story are almost a character in and of themselves—the backdoor of a non-profit that is used as a club entrance in the film, the burned building, the alley with something rotting in the dumpster, etc. How did you decide on the setting?


A: The visual details I used in “Red Yucca” are loosely extrapolated from where I live in downtown Tucson, Arizona. I do a lot of commuting on foot and I often notice the dissonance between the appearance of alleys and how they function. I wanted to link this idea with how Chico and Nina feel misunderstood. I also wanted to communicate the film director’s naïve generalizations about a place he isn’t familiar with and how he shapes the set to fit his notions rather than adapting the script to the reality around him. (E.g. he has graffiti painted specifically for the film set, he asks Nina to change her appearance, and the club/non-profit disconnect).


Q: Are there any projects you are currently working on/forthcoming publications that you want to mention?


A: I have a few stories/essays slotted for upcoming literary journal publication and I have several larger projects that I’m slowly chipping away at. One of my projects continues my preoccupation with merging the real world with film and might eventually take the form of an essay collection that blends memoir with film criticism. 


About the contributor: Emilee Prado is a fiction writer and essayist whose work appears in Cincinnati Review, Wigleaf, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere. Emilee was raised in a working-class family. She has lived in Asia and South America and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Find out more at emileepradoauthor.com or on social media: @_emilee_prado_.

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

A Reflection on an Editor's Preferences

By Bacopa Literary Review Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

For this editor, there are very few things that are “automatic no’s”

Sue Hann’s “Portrait and Punctum” was the honorable mention for Creative Nonfiction in the Bacopa 2023 edition. In the piece, Hann deftly describes three snapshots from different periods of her life. In just these three snapshots and a brief 1000 or so words, Hann gives us such a depth of insight into her relationship (or rather lack thereof) with her father. I love a piece of writing where I can sink into someone’s skin for a bit. I felt the coldness and distance of the author’s father, and later, the overwhelming love that flowed watching her husband with their own baby.

But there’s something else I itch to tell you about this piece, because maybe it will be helpful to potential submitters. I want to tell you that normally I am not a fan of starting with a quote. After reading hundreds of submissions, I have become fairly adept at knowing quickly which pieces will probably not be for me. Pieces that start with quotes, or have footnotes, are normally not what I choose.  Neither of those things are wrong of course, just usually a signal that a submission will not be my cup of tea. But upon reading Portrait and Punctum, I could see the quote was needed to provide the framework for understanding this piece. And I loved the writing that followed. I sunk in. I related. I was charmed.

I suppose I tell you this as a reminder that of course we as readers (and editors) have preferences, things we normally dislike, but if something works, it works. So if something works in your writing, do it.  There’s really not anything that’s an automatic “no” (maybe with the exception of sexism or racism, start with a sexist joke and I cannot wait to hit that thumbs down button!)

From Sue Hann’s “Portrait and Punctum”:

“A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” Roland Barthes

In the photograph, my father stands straight and stiff backed beside me as if facing a firing squad and not a camera lens. The corners of his mouth are stretched into a minus sign of forbearance. His brown suit is pressed and clean but his hair has grown out so it hangs over the collar of his white shirt. I can almost hear my mother’s voice chiding him about it. I am twelve years old and it is my Confirmation day. In contrast to my father, I am smiling but my smile for the camera looks polite, a reflex rather than a mood.

About the contributor: Sue Hann’s debut memoir in essays is forthcoming with Neem Tree Press. You can find her at suehannwrites.com and on Instagram @SueHannwrites.

Monday, April 8, 2024

A meditation on Sara Adams’s “1040A”

By Bacopa Literary Review 2023 Poetry Co-Editor Reinfred Addo

This piece, “1040A” by Sara Adams, is very understated. It’s not very ‘artsy’-looking, in the most obvious perception of what an artsy piece ought to look like. However, there is a certain X factor in its non-artsiness that makes it very artistic. The subject itself, IRS form 1040A, was a form used (prior to tax year 2018) by people in the USA to file their income taxes manually/on paper. True, taxes don’t exactly inspire artistic rapture, yet, Sara Adams somehow turns this bureaucratic, boring item into a thought-provoking visual statement. Taxes, money, and bureaucracy, seem to find themselves in every facet of our modern lives. If art is meant to shed light on the human condition, then what better subject than that which affects us all? Adams uses erasure to remove most of the text that would be found on a 1040A form, and leaves only a few words that, when combined, perhaps reveal the frustrations brewing in a person’s life. 

The lines of the form are very straight and clean, implying orderliness and high functioning-ness, much like the outward appearance that humans in a capitalistic world are taught to project. However, the form’s words themselves speak to the messy and complicated nature by which we often actually exist. Adams creates the statement “check here if you or your spouse will not change”, followed by a check box for You and a check box for Spouse. Is this form perhaps giving us a glimpse into a difficult romantic relationship as it’s being experienced by the tax filer? Does “will not change” suggest that finances are causing strife and magnifying a personality trait that is causing a strain in the couple’s relationship? There is also a section that reads “head of household is a child”. This may suggest that either the head of household acts like a child even though they are an adult (another personality trait straining the relationship), or that there is an actual child in the home and most of the financial, emotional, and time resources go towards raising that child (I’ve often heard the saying that one’s time and money are no longer theirs once they have a child).

Sara Adams’s excellent use of erasure reveals that not all may be as sanitized and organized as the straight lines and neatly stacked spaces of our lives would suggest. “1040A”, then, perhaps, is a warning that the paper that is our outward façade may look crisp, but the ink that writes our stories may fade and run when exposed intensely enough to the pressures of life.

About the contributor: Sara Adams’ chapbooks include Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press), Western Diseases (dancing girl press), Think Like a B (Trump erasure poems; SOd press; free to download!). and six Ghost City Press Summer Series Micro-chaps (also free to download). Check out more of Sara’s work, including chapbook links, at kartoshkaaaaa.com.

Sara Adams was awarded with an Honorable Mention for Visual Poetry in our 2023 edition.

Monday, April 1, 2024

Love, Laughs and Pastries: A Reflection on the 2023 Humor Prizewinner

By 2023 Bacopa Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

The other day I was in Trader Joe’s. Part of the feature display was a neat stack of Kringles and I literally squealed with delight when I saw them. (Thank god my kids weren’t with me or they would have fainted, literally died of embarrassment mom!)

The cause of my excitement was that I had never tasted or seen one before, but a Kringle was the featured pastry in the winner I chose for Bacopa’s 2023 Humor category.

2023 was our third time including Humor as a category in the annual contest. The gold standard, for me, is a David Sedaris type of humor writing. I am always looking for a writer who can achieve that delicate balance of tender and funny, with maybe a little edge of sarcasm. It’s tough to get it right. (I’ve tried!)

So when I read Mary Liza Hartong’s Kringle my heart squealed like a middle aged woman who just saw a giant pastry in a grocery store.  In Kringle, Hartong’s mother has cancer, her relatives have irritating habits, yet the piece still oozes warm sweetness. I couldn’t even tell you how, the same way I can’t tell you how a lump of gooey ingredients turns into a flaky puff of pastry. But it does.

I’ll be microwaving popcorn and catch her in the act of writing the email, hair swept back in a clip, reconstructed breasts in a tennis tank. When she was diagnosed, I was fourteen. I thought, if my mother dies I will never know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Against the pop-pop-popping of the kernels, I attempt to dissuade her from sending this aggressive missive. What if Nancy is sicker than you were? What if she never cared for jogging in the first place? What if she needs someone to say, “there, there” and not, “show me some hustle”? Despite my pleas, my mother inevitably hits send.

Starting in on the popcorn, I’ll wonder why my uncle can’t just dole out gift cards, my mother, casseroles. It’s the sort of familial algebra we all do, especially around the holidays. Add some common sense, subtract the urge to talk about tennis, take the square root of good intentions, and maybe I could end up with a normal family.

And yet, by the time I finish the popcorn, Nancy will return the email.

“Thank you, Mary,” she’ll say, “This is exactly what I needed to hear!” 

No matter the category, I am always looking to feel something when I read submissions. There’s more to good writing than including all the right ingredients. When I read Kringle, I felt tenderness, love, a dash of sadness and the need to roll my eyes at people I love dearly.  Most importantly (this won the humor category after all) I laughed at a story about someone’s mom having cancer, and that is writing magic.

(In case you are wondering, the Trader Joe’s Kringle was delicious! Bigger than I expected. It’s pizza sized, so you can share it with your whole irritating but lovable family.)

About the contributor: Mary Liza Hartong lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. She's a Dartmouth grad, a Fulbright Scholar, and a proud aunt. You can read more of her writing and buy her novel "Love and Hot Chicken" here.

Monday, March 25, 2024

An interview with Bacopa 2023 Fiction Prizewinner Lisa Isaac

By Bacopa Literary Review Fiction Editor Alec Kissoondyal

Lisa Isaac's short story "In the Red" brought me along for a character-driven ride filled with humor and heartbreak. Isaac's story follows the protagonist's day of misadventure with her strange new employer, Leslie, weaving together lighthearted moments, day-to-day anxieties, and existential melancholy to create a rich tapestry of the human condition. In the following interview with Isaac, we discuss the inspiration behind her character, Leslie, her writing process, and her upcoming projects.

Leslie is such a complex and captivatingly strange character. How did you come up with him?

Once upon a time, I met someone like Leslie. Because I didn’t understand him, I made up a backstory complete with past failed relationships to try to solve the problem: why would someone act this way?

An element of the story that captured me was how, despite only getting glimpses into both characters’ lives, there is a perfect amount of detail to make them feel real. Did you have a process for deciding what details to include and what to omit?

Mostly, writing is editing for me. Like a whittler with a wooden block, the more details I cut away from an original draft, the clearer I see the faces in a story. Character details only make it to the last draft if they propel the story forward. 

Are there any projects you are currently working on/forthcoming publications that you want to mention?

I have many pots boiling on the stove, but right now I’m mostly attending to an interwoven collection of flash nonfiction. 

About the contributor: Lisa Isaac writes from her lakeside central Florida cottage where she lives with her wife and a smattering of entitled pets.  Between working and writing, she tends a wild but flower-full garden. She studied fiction at Florida State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

A meditation on Matthew J. Spireng’s “Two-faced Abecedarian”

By Bacopa Literary Review 2023 Poetry Co-Editor Reinfred Addo

The abecedarian form is one of those poetry forms that doesn’t always get its fair praise. People love haiku for its tendency to awaken all senses in just a few lines of verse. People love sonnets for the drama inherent in a volta. Other forms also get their fair share of admirers due to the unique twist they add to the exercise of complexity. The abecedarian, in contrast, seems so simple and elementary that poets tend to move past it once we consider ourselves to be “real”, “serious” and “good” poets. Yet, it’s within this deceptive simplicity that, to me, the abecedarian has honor. I dare anybody, from a novice writer to a seasoned Poet, to write a poem whereby each line starts with the letters of the alphabet (line #1 starts with A, line #2 starts with B, etc.) without making the final product read like a bad remix of “A for Apple, B for boy, C for cat…”. It’s hard as hell, ain’t it? Yet, it’s in this challenge that Matthew J. Spireng’s piece, “Two-faced Abecedarian Poem”, thrives. The content, which tells a tale of lying, mimics the form itself. “Arrive in a new town up north and people you meet may quiz/but you don’t have to tell the truth.” Simple, just lie about your past. However, as the voice in the poem continues, the simple becomes complicated.

...Soon it will seem

old hat, lying like that. But be careful

playing the game. A quick

question could trip you up. Like did you meet a certain Raj

running some northern state in India? I

sure wouldn’t envy you if you answered wrong. You might wish

to crawl in a hole, getting

unveiled like that.

To me, an abecedarian takes serious craftsmanship because, more so than a lot of other forms, every single line of an abecedarian has to be solid on its own in order for the whole poem to also get praise. An average or bad line is not able to easily hide amongst the well-crafted ones; it will most often stick out unpleasantly. Also, some forms tend to be more forgiving to what I call “the mushy middle”, whereby the middle of the poem is not quite as resounding as the beginning and/or end. Yet, so long as the beginning and end have weight, the poem will generally compensate for the mushy middle’s shortcomings. Not so for the abecedarian, any part that does not stand on its own will sour the whole poem and take the reader out of the world the poem is trying to build.  Spireng is able to avoid weak lines in his poem, which takes some great deft. In this abecedarian, we soon find that navigating life from A to Z is anything but elementary, especially when there’s a secret to keep.

About the contributor: Matthew J. Spireng’s 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize-winning book Good Work was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press. An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also author of the full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, and five chapbooks.

Matthew J. Spireng was awarded with an Honorable Mention for Formal Poetry in our 2023 edition. 


Monday, March 11, 2024

Formal Poetry vs. Free Verse, a Practical Commentary

By 2024 Bacopa Poetry Co-Editor J. Nishida

All poetry has form.  


Edward Hirsch likens a poem’s form to a human’s body—a necessary physical incarnation of spirit.  But how does one go about finding the appropriate form for a particular poem?  Mary Oliver asserts, “I believe content determines form, and yet that content is discovered only in form.  Like everything living, it is a mystery.”


To address this mystery, let’s take a practical look at free verse vs. formal poetry.*


Free Verse


Mary Oliver reminds us that free verse poetry “is by no means exempted from the necessity of having a design.”  Ron Padget also warns that free verse does not mean a free-for-all:  “It means that every poet who writes in this form must work to create his or her own rules.”  


Both these experts emphasize free verse poetry’s lines—line lengths, line breaks, spacing between lines, repetition of lines. What do these choices achieve when a reader first sees the poem?  As the reader reads the poem?  Oliver speaks of repetition of patterns in syntax, patterns of stress or rhythm, how a poet can build up expectations and then either fulfill them or pull the rug from under the reader’s feet.  Each of these choices will vary in each free verse poem, but internally, they should have intent and logic.


Study brilliant free verse poems and ask yourself WHY-WHY-WHY?  Why does the poet establish specific patterns?  Why does the poet break them?


John Murillo recommends Lucille Clifton’s “miss rosie” for such an exercise.  Look at the line lengths, capitalization, repetitions…  WHY-WHY-WHY?  All of the poet’s choices do work.  All of your free verse choices should do work—they should guide the reader in your absence.


“So, free verse offers no excuse for sloppy writing,” Padget concludes.  “In fact, it demands more of the poet, because her or she must question every word, test the shape and sound of every line, and be able to defend the choices made.”


Formal Poetry


“Form is a straightjacket,” Justin Quinn proclaims, “in the way that a straightjacket was a straightjacket for Houdini.”  


Mark Strand & Eavan Boland open their Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by stating, “For many people what is off-putting about poetic form is the belief, sometimes based on an unlucky class or exam, that these are cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them.”  They and Edward Hirsch, editor of the 700-page tome A Poet’s Glossary, beg to differ.


They explain that poetic forms around the world were developed and honed over generations by skilled artists to express diverse aspects of humanity—language, voice, music, culture, emotional needs, political and aesthetic movements—whether in concert with the establishment or in opposition to it.  The exploration of these forms can be a type of time travel, a way to experience the breadth of human communication and art.  Boland reminds us that poetic forms “are not abstract, but human,” stressing their diversity and multiplicity of their purposes.  They are not “imposed” rules, but something organic, “rooted,” which will “liberate and not constrain.”


But established forms do require study.  Stephen Dunn advises, “Think of learning [poetic forms] as acquiring the tools of your trade, which you may or may not choose to employ.  A carpenter doesn’t always use a drill, though it would be disastrous for him not to know it exists.”


Learn your tools, and then employ the appropriate tool for the appropriate task.  Want to capture a snapshot of a moment along with its insight?  A haiku might be the right tool.  Want the poignancy of a haiku, but with a little more room for commentary?  Try a waka/tanka.  Perhaps you need to drive home a sense of inescapable repetition, or explore how repeated elements intertwine and interrelate.  Have you studied the pantoum?  Wish to juxtapose a diversity of concise images and experiences loosely linked by a repeated rhyme or word or refrain?  The answer could be a ghazal.


Whichever form you use, it should support and enrich the content of your poem.  If you are forcing words or rhymes or rhythms in boxes they simply don’t fit, consider a different form.


There are innumerable resources on poetic forms available to teach you the tools of your trade—websites, books, YouTube videos.  I recommend studying multiple sources when researching a form, as well as reading numerous (diverse) examples.  If you wish to learn about a form from a culture not your own, try to include commentaries and examples from that culture.


Formal poetry need not be limiting.  Hirsch reminds us that “the devices work the magic in poetry.”  Explore that magic.


Innovation and Subversion of Established Forms


In his Redress of Poetry, Seamus Heaney states, “In any movement towards liberation, it will be necessary to deny the normative authority of the dominant language or literary tradition.”  


Poets have always subverted, converted, played with, and innovated forms—none so much as contemporary American poets.  While it is natural for poets from historically marginalized cultures to reject the “canonical” forms of the cultures who oppress them, many, such as Carl Phillips, argue that claiming and/or changing a form “is how to make it one’s own…  I’m using what’s been handed down to me, but to my own purposes…a conversation that insists on the inclusion of my language…my refusal to be invisible…”


In the recent renaissance of formal poetry, anti-establishment poets are leading the charge.  Patricia Smith, who famously began her career winning poetry slams with her spoken word masterpieces, also publishes poems that “include, but are not limited to the dramatic monologue, the political elegy, the sonnet, the ghazal, the golden shovel…” (Terrance Hayes).  Her brilliant 2021 crown of sonnets, “Nap Unleashed,” is a tour de force of the form.


Terrance Hayes, the creator of the golden shovel form as well as forms involving such devices as anagrams, has famously reshaped the traditional sonnet, replacing “conventional rhyme schemes with much denser sonic arrangements, often untethered line ends [and] midline rhymes….  He’s also inverting traditional stories about power and tragedy in the making of lyric poems” (Stephanie Burt).


The sonnet form seems to invite innovation.  Lisa L. Moore states, “The form invites complexity and contradiction because ‘sonnets can think.’  This is precisely [what gives] the sonnet its political force.”  Phillips discusses how the “restless” form of the sonnet with its ever-shifting rhymes, its volta, the rebellious little couplet, invites revolution.


Look up Jericho Brown’s sonnet “Independence” (and/or Nate Marshall’s “African American Literature” if you can’t handle strong language).  Examine how they both use and subvert the traditional form to startling effect.


If your poem’s content demands tension, contradiction, reversals, subversion, deconstruction, innovation, taking and making a traditional form your own might be the answer.  But, again, be sure your choices guide or challenge your reader with intent.


Final Thoughts 


Whether you choose to write/submit formal poetry or free verse, be sure the content of your work is in genuine conversation with its form.  And be sure the content of your poem is poetry.  


As Lucille Clifton reminds us, “Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.”  A poem should be a journey, an exploration, often with unexpected (if not for the author, at least for the reader) shifts and turns.  The volta of a sonnet, the twist in a haiku or sijo…  The unexpected juxtaposition of images, the multiple-reading created by a clever line break…   The best poetry is free of cliché and predictability.  And free of mere self-focus.


If you wish to preach (unless, perhaps, it is preaching to power), write a sermon.  If you wish to tell a simple story, write a simple narrative.  “A poem means itself.  You create something, rather than define it” (Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill).  As Andrew Johnson rather poetically explains, “The poem is both the winding road and the wild horse that gallops past us as we read, so that when we come around the last bend, there it is, waiting for our shock of recognition.”


Above all, revise your poems until each word and punctuation mark and space and break and choice does the work it needs to do, serving the content.  “Poetry is…speech in which the words come in an order which could not be changed without ruining the verity and power of the whole,” according to Robert Nye.


“Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.” 

—James Tate


*For thoughts on Bacopa’s other poetry category, see my co-editor Oliver Keyhani’s excellent blog post, “Visual Poetry:  A Dynamic Interplay.”



Resources:


  • The American Sonnet, Dora Malech & Laura T. Smith, eds.

  • The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations, ed. Dennis O’Driscoll

  • “The End of the Line:  Terrance Hayes and Formal Innovation” (Kenyon Review, 12/22/2016)

  • Handbook of Poetic Forms, ed. Ron Padgett

  • The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Mark Strand & Eavan Boland

  • A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver

  • A Poet’s Glossary, by Edward Hirsch

  • “The Politics and Play of Terrance Hayes” by Dan Chiasson (New Yorker, 7/2/18)

  • The Redress of Poetry, by Seamus Heaney

  • Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, W. N. Herbert & Matthew Hollis, eds.

  • Watch Your Language, by Terrance Hayes

  • “Voluntary Imprisonment” by Stephanie Burt (Slate, 5/28/19)

Monday, March 4, 2024

A meditation on Martins Deep’s “how to sing in an electric chair”

By Bacopa Literary Review 2023 Poetry Co-Editor Reinfred Addo

In the 2023 edition of Bacopa Literary Review, the poem that received an honorable mention in the free-verse poetry category was “how to sing in an electric chair” by Martins Deep. This poem felt to me as a sort of vignette, a moment in time, of George Stinney. George Stinney was a 14-year-old African-American boy who, in 1944, was executed by electric chair for the murders of two white girls in Alcolu, South Carolina. It was later determined that Stinney was wrongly convicted, especially considering the courthouse was made up of a cast of an all-white jury and judge. Even the attendees were all white as African-Americans were barred from entering the courthouse during the trial proceedings. In his poem, Martins Deep paints a heartrendingly vivid picture, using a semi-omniscient, semi-personal voice, to narrate the passage from life to death of a boy being executed in an electric chair. The voice views George Stinney’s moment of dying as a vision whereby Stinney is going through the act of joining the atmosphere and his ancestors. Perhaps, this voice is Stinney’s spirit itself, using the word “you” to refer to itself.

somewhere in this vision, you’re swallowing an anther, for the pollen it’ll bear

in your throat, so that whenever you sigh, you become airborne:


black boy, light as pollen grain. black boy carried in his own breath,

slipping through the fingers of time.

--

in this vision, you’re leaping off the edge of a bible to the railway track

in alcolu that leads straight into your mother’s bosom

A number of poems have been written of African-Americans being murdered for crimes they didn’t commit (“Silhouette” by Langston Hughes and “Afterimages” by Audre Lorde are examples that immediately come to mind). What makes Deep’s unique is that the author himself is from and lives in Nigeria, half a world away from the location in which the poem is set. This, however, does not make Deep’s poem any less powerful. See, there is a collective trauma that is felt across the Black diaspora and across generations, however spread around the world Black people are. In some ways it’s spiritual, thus, it’s not too far fetched to imagine that the spirits of Black ancestors who suffered under white supremacy and slavery moved upon Martins Deep to allow him to write this poem of his spiritual distant relative George Stinney. In a way, it makes the past the present and transports the reader into that execution chamber in 1944. Martins Deep’s poem is so powerful that it morphs the room of the reader into an execution chamber to reveal a black boy singing his own elegy, a song of innocence, as electricity passes through him. This electricity is so powerful that, for however long the poem lasts, it seems to jump from the page. It seems to bounce off the walls. It seems to pass through George Stinney. And it seems to pass through the reader. 

About the contributor: Martins Deep (he/him) is a poet of Urhobo descent, a Taurus, photographer, digital artist, & currently an undergraduate student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He says hi @martinsdeep1.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Editor's Reflection on Visual Poetry 2023 Award Winners

By Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Co-Editor Oliver KeyhaniA close-up of a form

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Honorable mention: "1040A" - Sara Adams


In visual poetry, an image is created. In some instances, the image challenges the viewer in an uncertain manner. Maybe it is something familiar, something cultural, something that defines a key characteristic of our society, but altered, almost disturbing in a nearly unconscious manner. We know something is missing, and it can be that very missing space which reminds us of the fragile nature of individual identity in the amalgamation of our social contract.


What is more universal than death and taxes? But what if the taxes themselves were effaced? What if all the numbers: income, social security, withholdings—the numbers that define our transactional society, were removed, save one? Save the one that is us? This is what Sara Adams does in this deceptively simple rendering of the ubiquitous 1040A form. The visual impact seems impersonal, nothing to make the individual, a bureaucratic white space, save for the "1", the zeroes, and the final "1". The "1" that reminds us we are there.


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Visual Poetry Award Winner: "Snow" - CJ Sheu 


There are many diverse iterations of what constitutes visual poetry. In one aspect, actual discernable letters are used. However, these letters can move, mutate, rearrange themselves in ways that can direct and/or challenge the eye or gaze. No two letters, no two words, no two poems seem alike in CJ Sheu's "Snow". Like its referential title, the type seems to fall down the page, white on black, like a gentle snowstorm in the night. But the darkness brings with it some apprehension, as if something not quite perceived, not quite understood. When you look at the "snow" some disconcerting or disturbing voices are seen: "no", "no no", "on", "won", "now", "own". These emerge and fade back into the "snow". The visual nature cannot be ignored; the "w"s, the "o"s, the "n"s, and the "s"s all seem to lull the eye. The overall effect is surprising, a combination of calm and disorientation, an impressive accomplishment!


What do we look for in terms of visual poetry? The two award winners offer examples, but not limits for submission. Much in a basic way, is subjective. However, several points can be kept in mind. (1) If we have many submissions of one kind: for example, poems in the shape of an object, e.g., an animal, vegetable, etc., we are likely to only take one such visual poem-be unexpected. (2) We are limited regarding the size of the page and color can be problematic-those are some unfortunate limits, so please see if your visual poem would translate well and in enough detail in the format of the journal. (3) We are not just looking for interesting and appealing images, there must be some element of poetry—be able to define that in your mind and hopefully we will be able to see it too.


About the contributors:


Sara Adams’ chapbooks include Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press), Western Diseases (dancing girl press), Think Like a B (Trump erasure poems; SOd press; free to download!). and six Ghost City Press Summer Series Micro-chaps (also free to download). Check out more of Sara’s work, including chapbook links, at kartoshkaaaaa.com.


Chingshun J. Sheu is Assistant Professor of Applied English at Ming Chuan University in Taoyuan, Taiwan. He's also Taiwan's premier Anglophone film critic, indexed on Rotten Tomatoes as CJ Sheu. Tweet at him @cj_sheu.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Editorial Team

Editor in Chief J.N. Fishhawk is a poet and freelance writer. A founding co-host of the Civic Media Center’s open mic Thursday Night Poetry Jam, he is also the author of three chapbooks and Postcards from the Darklands, ekphrastic poems accompanying artwork by artist Jorge Ibanez. He is co-creating the ongoing World of Whim Sea children’s book series with illustrator Johnny Rocket Ibanez at fishhawkandrocket.com.


Managing Editor T. Walters is a poet, writer, and musician living among the orange trees. Their work appears in Nymeria Publishing’s Descendants of Medusa. Books, baking bread, and pulling needles through thread make up a significant portion of their life. They live to connect, create, and marvel at nature’s many wonders.


Poetry Co-Editor J. Nishida holds a BA, MA, and EdS, as well as a TESOL graduate certificate. She is active in the local poetry community as an organizer, teacher, editor, and performer, and is a co-host of the Thursday Night Poetry Jam at the Civic Media Center. She was Bacopa 2021’s Fiction Editor and will lead a poetry workshop for the 2024 Bard & Broadside North Central Florida Poetry Festival.


Fiction and Flash Fiction Editor Alec Kissoondyal is an undergraduate at the University of Florida pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English. His fiction has been published in Zephyr Literary Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, The Bookends Review, Roadrunner Review, Let’s Stab Caesar! Magazine, Retro Press Magazine, Drunk Monkeys Magazine, The Centifictionist, and The Los Angeles Review. He has a forthcoming short story to be released in Cornice Magazine.


Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani is a visual and performance artist, poet, and writer. He is a member of the Gainesville Fine Arts Association and a founding member of the Carousel of Souls Curiosities Circus Troupe (CoSCCT). His short experimental poem-play “Children of Gaia” has been produced at the Tank Theater in NYC. His hybrid visual-poetry works the “dada manuscripts”: thé avec dada and the book of dada dandies have received international acclaim, with forthcoming releases planned.


Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin studied English Literature and French at the University of Florida. She has published humor, short fiction, and personal memoir and spent over fifteen years as a freelance editor and teacher of languages.


Social Media Manager Mary Ansell, an outreach librarian by day, lives and creates in Gainesville, Florida. Her writing has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Whale Road Review, and Pithead Chapel. Find her literature recommendations on Instagram @once.and.future.reads.


Editor Emerita Mary Bast‘s creative nonfiction, poetry, and flash memoir have appeared in a number of print and online journals, and she’s author, co-author, or contributor to eight professional books from her career as a psychologist, leadership consultant, and Enneagram coach. Bast is also a visual artist.