Danae Younge’s Melanin Sun (−) Blind Spots: An Award-winning Debut

By Editor-in-Chief J.N. Fishhawk

Former contributor Danae Younge (Prose Poetry: “Emissary on the Wall,” Bacopa Literary Review 2021) is the author of the award-winning chapbook Melanin Sun (−) Blind Spots. The manuscript was chosen by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies as winner of their annual College Undergraduate Competition. NFSPS is a conglomerate of the state poetry societies involved in the institution of Poet Laureate, and their CUP competition is considered one of the largest poetry undergraduate competitions in the country. Melanin Sun (−) Blind Spots, Younge’s debut chapbook, was published and made available for purchase in summer 2022. Younge describes the book as “a micro-collection of 10 cohesive poems.”

Reviewers cite the powerful way that Younge uses experimental techniques in these poems to craft a narrative through-line that expresses her grief at her Black father’s passing. This grief is filtered through and commingled with her struggle to find a clear sense of self, history, and identity as a biracial, queer woman in white supremacist, queerphobic, male-dominated U.S. society. 

The poems in Melanin Sun build on and expand outward from the deftly deployed experimental elements that drew Bacopa Prose Poetry Editor Kaye Linden to choose “Emissary on the Wall” for inclusion in Bacopa 2021. The experiments include mixing techniques of erasure, such as government style black-rectangle redaction and the copy editor’s tactic of strike-through typeface with the deft use of more conventional poetic tactics such as innovative line breaks and fresh, lively metaphors and similes. Younge breaks her poetry apart from the inside out, exposing her own inner processes of self-criticism and the struggle for coherence and cohesion within her work and within her consciousness, boldly writing the kind of self-talk usually reserved for our most intimate inner monologues directly into her lines:  

Tender hearts like soft 

mollusks caught, heavy in some old white man’s net 

behind a reed-woven tugboat, like love—no stop, STOP 

doing that. Epic similes are the same deal; “like” carves a 

crawl space, but there’s not enough room to hide unless 

you make a home in the shadows…

In the months since this, her first chapbook’s critically acclaimed debut, Younge has not rested on her well-earned laurels. She tells us that she is currently working on a project with her college's letterpress printing shop to create broadsides with five poems from the collection and the work of visual artists from her campus community. She and her collaborators asked artists who connected with the themes of struggling to self identify or battling grief to submit. These broadsides will be displayed and sold at a pop up event in Los Angeles before being permanently moved to Occidental College's library.

To learn more about Danae Younge’s work, read reviews of her chapbook, and order a copy for yourself, check in with her at https://www.danaeyounge.com/.

Bacopa Literary Review 2023 Submissions Period & Contest, March 19th-April 16th

Bacopa Literary Review is an annual international print journal published by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Florida. We are seeking submissions in six categories this year: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Humor, Formal Poetry, Free Verse Poetry, and Visual Poetry. This blogroll shows the quality of writing we seek by highlighting work we respect from previous Bacopa issues as well as other sources. We ask that all potential contributors submit their work anonymously, as we read blind for fairness’ sake. See detailed instructions for submission on our Submittable page at: https://writersallianceofgainesville.submittable.com/submit

The submissions period for our 2023 edition will open on March 19th and close on April 16th, 2023. There is no submission fee. Our contest features a $200 Award and a $100 Honorable Mention in each of the six categories. Contributors whose work is selected for publication will receive a complimentary copy of the journal. Prize winners and honorable mention awardees will each receive two complimentary copies in addition to their cash rewards. Authors, please submit to only ONE category. Submissions to more than one category may result in disqualification. When the contest opens, entries are to be submitted via Submittable only, at the web address listed above. 

Although Bacopa Literary Review is organized, funded, and published by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, it is a truly international journal. Our feet are planted on the sandy earth and our hearts flow with the spring-fed rivers of North Florida, and we work hard to encourage submissions from writers in our local area, as well as the rest of the Florida peninsula. But we also reach out to the world, and the world sends us its words. Over our thirteen-year history, we have published the work of authors from all fifty U.S. states, as well as Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Europe, China, Japan, and Australia. Though Bacopa is an English-language journal, we have published a variety of works by authors from bi- and multi-lingual backgrounds whose creations blend, mix, and play with multiple languages, and/or contain internal translations. We are honored to feature the work of a truly global community of creators.

About our parent organization: The Writers Alliance of Gainesville (WAG) is a nonprofit organization based in Gainesville, Florida. WAG promotes, encourages, and supports aspiring and experienced writers in Alachua County and the North Central Florida region as a whole. Monthly programs for writers are free and open to the public. Members receive a free copy of Bacopa Literary Review each year, and may have their work critiqued by joining critique pods. WAG promotes its members' books, services, and websites/blogs. To learn more about WAG and meet some of its members, click on this video.

Bacopa Literary Review's 2023 Editorial Team

Editor in Chief J.N. Fishhawk is a poet and freelance writer. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks and Postcards from the Darklands, ekphrastic poems accompanying artwork by artist Jorge Ibanez. Info at fishhawkandrocket.com. The second book in his and illustrator Johnny Rocket Ibanez’s ongoing World of Whim Sea children’s series is forthcoming in 2023.

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 needle 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 Reinfred Addo is a Ghanaian-American writer, and author of the poetry collections Washed Over and The Dedicadas. His work has been published in various publications and by various organizations. He currently lives in Gainesville, Florida and enjoys the area’s arts initiatives, including Bacopa Literary Review, Poetry Jam, DOPEnmic, and ARTSPEAKS.

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 15 years as a freelance editor and teacher of languages.

Editor Emeritus 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.

Girl, Sunsplit: Beautiful Language Tells an Unusual Story

By Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

Girl, Sunsplit by Neethu Krishnan, was Bacopa’s Creative Nonfiction prizewinner for 2022. One of the things that stood out instantly about this piece was how words were so carefully selected to create beautiful images. In the very first paragraph, "talons" of heat foreshadow the author's painful condition, and the use of the word “snail” perfectly conjures the image of a large procession moving slowly.

I’m cross-legged on my bed, the AC safeguarding me from the talons of South Indian heat. Padding to the dark-tinted, curtained windows of my bedroom, I keen my ear to the thuds and clangs, trying to gauge how long till they snail to the road facing the front of our house.

The language is beautiful throughout, but the words don’t distract from the story itself, that of a young girl reckoning with an unusual illness, at odds with her very environment.  And in fact, the beauty of the images created seem at odds with the anguish the author is experiencing.

A surge of cold cocoons me. Relieved, I nestle into the dryness. I keep my eyes trained on the muted sun, nose-pressed against my window, as the cold kneads its chilly fingers into me, reconstituting me from an infinite incoherence of molecules into a finite and mostly non-ionized human-approximating whole.

When reading creative nonfiction, I am also easily charmed by an unfamiliar world I can spend a few minutes in and feel at home.

Steel plates loaded with rice and curry in hand, we emerge from the dark cave of the bedroom into the corridor, where there’s no dearth of sun. Large sections of the outside-facing walls are criss-crosses of vibrant, kingfisher blue painted wood, just like the twin front doors and their frames. Seating ourselves on the narrow bench and desk in the corridor, we finish our meals, large diamonds of warm light tickling our sweaty backs.

Girl, Sunsplit was a complete immersion into someone else's world, with all the beauty and all the pain. For me, writing like this is what makes creative nonfiction so compelling.

Neethu Krishnan is a writer from Mumbai, India. She holds postgraduate degrees in English and Microbiology and writes between genres at the moment. Her work has appeared in The Spectacle and is forthcoming in Seaside Gothic and the anthology "Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging" (Volume Silver) from Improbable Press.

Bacopa Literary Review 2022 Award Winners

FICTION

AWARD: "An Act of Kindness" by Murzban F. Shroff

Murzban F. Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. His fiction has appeared in 75 literary journals. He is the winner of the John Gilgun Fiction Award and has seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His short story collection, Breathless in Bombay, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and rated by the Guardian as among the ten best Mumbai books. His collection, Third Eye Rising, was featured on the Esquire list of Best Books of 2021. His novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, was a finalist for the Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize and will be published in the U.S. in Fall 2022.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Benny & Bjorn" by Lilia Snowfield Anderson

Lilia Snowfield Anderson was named after a great-great-uncle she never met. Bartending shifts consume her nights and her debut novel draft consumes her days. She lives in a small, Minnesota lake town. Her fiction can be found in The Marrs Field Journal, The Agapanthus Collective, Blood & Bourbon, and more.

 CREATIVE NONFICTION

AWARD: "Girl Sunplit" by Neethu Krishnan

Neethu Krishnan is a writer from Mumbai, India. She holds postgraduate degrees in English and Microbiology and writes between genres at the moment. Her work has appeared in The Spectacle and is forthcoming in Seaside Gothic and the anthology "Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging" (Volume Silver) from Improbable Press.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Waiting" by Miki Lentin

Miki Lentin completed an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, was a finalist in the 2020 Irish Novel Fair for Winter Sun, placed highly in competitions including Fish Publishing and Leicester Writers, and published in Litro, Storgy, Story Radio, and MIR, among others. Miki volunteers with the refugee charity Breaking Barriers and with foodkind in Greece, and dreams of one day running a café again.

HUMOR

AWARD: "How Busy I Was" by Marjorie Drake  

Marjorie Drake, after more than thirty years practicing law in Hartford, Connecticut, recently closed her practice to concentrate on her writing. Her work has appeared in Parhelion Literary Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Five on the Fifth, and elsewhere.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Show and Tell to Remember" by Victoria Lynn Smith  

Victoria Lynn Smith writes short stories, essays, and articles. She has been published on Brevity Blog, Wisconsin Public Radio, Moving Lives Minnesota, Better Than Starbucks, 8142 Review, Red Cedar Review, Spring Thaw, Hive Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, and Jenny. Read more at writingnearthelake.org. 

FORMAL POETRY

AWARD: "Amelia's Freckle Cream" by Shauna Osborn

Shauna Osborn is Executive Director of Puha Hubiya (an Indigenous arts nonprofit). Their poetry collection Arachnid Verve was a finalist for an Oklahoma Book Award. Other honors include a New Poets of Native Nations Scholarship, a Crescendo Poetry Fellowship, and a National Poetry Award from the New York Public Library

HONORABLE MENTION: "All love poems are horror poems when you are the creature" by R. Thursday

R. Thursday (they/them) is a writer, historian, educator, and all-around nerd. When not subverting middle school social studies curriculum, they can be found reading, playing video games, or writing about space, vampires, comic books, queerness, and on good days, all of the above.

FREE VERSE POETRY

AWARD: "Listen to Gala's mutterings" by Sylvia Anne Telfer

Sylvia Anne Telfer is an international award-winning Scottish poet/short story writer frequently published in anthologies and magazines, a qualified English teacher, and one of her jobs was In-House Publications Manager at the University of Hong Kong. She is a campaigner to halt climate change, a feminist, and an equal rights activist.

HONORABLE MENTION: "In the Name of the Name" by Sunyoung Kay

Sunyoung Kay is a poet located near St. Louis, Missouri who is just beginning the journey of revealing the stories held within.

VISUAL POETRY

AWARD: "A Change in Mood II" by Karla Van Vliet

Karla Van Vliet’s newest books are She Speaks in Tongues (Anhinga Press,) poems and asemic writings, and Fluency: A Collection of Asemic Writings (Shanti Arts.) She is a Forward Prize, three-time Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net nominee. Van Vliet is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal.

HONORABLE MENTION:"NEWS" by J. Nishida

J. Nishida is a Gainesville poet, writer, editor, tutor, sometimes teacher, and mom. She is one of the hosts of the Thursday Night Poetry Jam at the CMC. She enjoys travel and theatre; studying literature, linguistics, languages, mythology, and fairy tales; and annoying other poets with her experimental poetry.

 

 

Visual Poetry: A Dynamic Interplay

by Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani

Fig. 1. Typescract 63
Dom Sylvester Houedard,
1963, 20x12.5 cm

Visual poetry bends the script, the letter, the consonants, the vowels. It allows for a transition from oral tradition to written text to imagery of the written text. Modern visual poetry is as dynamic and diverse as any art form. It can, but does not have to push a dialogue (dialect?) between visual arts and literature, between representation and abstraction, between constructions and deconstructions. 

Visual poetry spans lettering, typography, handwriting, and collage. From the typestracts of Houedard and other typography (Figs. 1 & 2) to concrete poems and calligrams (Fig. 3) that recapitulate the shapes of objects and things, visual poetry allows for a dynamic interplay that connects the eyes and ears in the experience of poetry (click on images to enlarge).

Visual poetry also has a rich history of rebelliousness, whimsy, social commentary, and even scathing political exposure. As stated by Derek Beaulieu, "The libidinal excess typified in concrete poetry is not tied to a biological author, but rather to the excess and waste caused in the production by business machines of 'correct' and legible documents." (Beaulieu, The Last VISPO Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008, pg. 75).

Fig. 2. Calligram, Guillaume Appolinaire

Many visual poets chafe at "accepted conventions of Poetry," and seek to challenge and push boundaries of subject and object, form and function. The "distortion" of text into a visual aspect that cannot be separated from the text itself can be seen as an echo of the "conceptual structure of reality" espoused by Hegel. 

Fig. 3, Amanda Earl

If things exist for actualizing "a priori pure concepts," vis-ual poetry can provide poten-tially unantici-pated sources of "sense impressions" that seem to hint at but can unnervingly obscure underlying concepts of our social reality.

For additional information concerning visual poetry and examples see "Visual poetry: what it is and examples," "Visual Poetry Today," "The Vispo Bible: John," and "Guillaume Apollinaire."