Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, Bandhurā! (Bengali for “friends”).
July’s first newsletter means the full letter is available to everyone. Firsts of the month are really fun because we get to introduce a new poet! Please give your attention to July’s poet @ Ephemera, Heidi Kasa. (Link takes you to her dedicated page within Ephemera). We present a stand-alone poem this issue which moved us and stood out amongst a really good field of submissions. Thanks to all who sent in work.
Also, check out last week’s letter if you missed it. And here are some reminders:
Call For Subscriptions and Submissions: If you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! Free subscribers and anyone else can submit, too, with the reading fee and can submit up to 10 poems. Paying the reading fee will grant you 1-month paid access. Now accepting submissions for the August issue.
In Brief…this week’s features:
Music from Purity Ring, Canadian electronic duo with poetic vocals woven between highly processed sounds.
Thoughts on art from Alberto Giacometti, one of the most notable sculptors and artists of the 20th century.
July’s poet Heidi Kasa and her poem “With Dust”
Our weekly lists:
3 magazines with open calls: Interim, Momentist, Workers Writer
3 awards/prizes from respected institutions
3 recent job listings.
More ephemera: check out an Interesante article on evaluating the Amateur vs the Professional; Book recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!
Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.
Ephemera
Dear Readers,
Our airconditioning went out and so now we’re whirred to sleep by, if but slowly and in fits, several small fans. In those fits, we’ve discovered, a proclivity toward worry and doubt, planning and preplanning, myriad and sundry not-fast-enough-to-sleep concerns pertaining to our art—creative and professional. Ay, these nocturnal traps that seal us in to slow-moving mornings, too much coffee be-gulped past 4 PM. The dramatics of having an ever-present pet of a practice, and unending ceaseless art for its tax on the mind. The only solution is to jump up and sit at the desk sleep deprivation, treatment of your spouse or significant other the next day be damned (sorry loved ones). But maybe take some relief by observing an appropriate prophylaxis: that certainly involves writing every day, whether notes, reading, or focused thinking; that can involve purposeful thought about craft and expression as it pertains to how we practice it, how we conceive of it, and whether we’re living up to our loftiest ambitions. Our Interesante article today (see below) offers a useful checklist, a self pinch if you will. Are we as thoroughly as we ought, as we might, as we should…are we in the best faith way treating our art professionally? In considering, we hope you’ll be invigorated, animated, ice bath-ed.
“Amateurs see feedback and coaching as someone criticizing them as a person. Professionals know they have weak spots and seek out thoughtful criticism.”
—From Farnum Street Blog (See Interesante below)
Remember the feel of freshly washed sheets against bubble-bathed skin. Gravel, grass, and sand on bare feet. Kitten fur. Your own callused hands applying sun block. Cold pasta too cooked or oil-logged or al dente with perfect dressing. Texture is a rule and we’re a forgetful lot. Well, we’re heuristic animals that learn to look past experience when it’s not essential. But let’s be purposeful. Let’s take aim at noticing texture routinely and bring what we see to the page in pursuit of the reader, the sound we’re creating with our words whether we remember to acknowledge this truth or not. Maybe write rhyme then go back and cut and abruptly change course here, there, maybe several courses until… Maybe consance and assonance your way into a trembling paragraph and craft a lead-in or end that controverts your sound. Elide. Imply a sound by omission. Use a non-standard word artfully, expand that further, absurdly. Abrade your reader with a caustic note…if it’s called for. Ponder: what can texture do for larger meaning? Can it enhance emotion or imbue a story or poem with dread or delight? Surely, an easy, coherent read subordinates too-clever sounds and chanciness to the narrative, to readability, to publish or perish imperatives. We don’t know…maybe fie to anything outside of the art, the pursuit of expressing our words to the fullest the medium can hold, to bursting its seams at times, to achieving experimental failure, a fullness of the page that’s blasphemously chock-full or mouse-tailed quiet. Let’s try a thing now and again. Blood flows where pinched.
Kr̥tajñatāra sāthē!
(Gratitude)
~We’re so happy you’re here!~
Poetry by Heidi Kasa
With Dust
A Ulysses butterfly passes
the bathroom window.Under a tumult of water
no eyes catch black-tipped wings.Blue flash again by the sill.
To preserve, press glass down.Long hall.
Sundry of still antennae.Dim except for
tiny lit up namesas in Ulysses and a fast blue,
startling eyes out of their silence.After, water touches skin
and a great blue wing
flaps through pouring.
Submit to Poetry at Ephemera (August)
We want to bring original creative work to our readership in conjunction with our content offerings and mini essays, to enliven the read and build a variegated creative experience. We select 1 writer for the month (4 issues) and one poem per issue. Please find more details by clicking the image which takes you to a dedicated post, or navigate to our Submittable page for more information (the button).
We look forward to reviewing and publishing your excellent work!
Writers Submit: Three Magazines
Reading for their 2023 print edition in all genres, Interim is an international literary journal housed at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where The Believer and Witness are also published. They publish online and in print. DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 4
A well-designed online magazine that features some great writing featured in a high-key way. They are reading in all genres for their 4th edition and also publish translations. DEADLINE AUGUST 4
Blue Cubicle Press publishes this magazine, founded in 2005, and is best known for neat small editions. They are seeking poems and fiction focused around home offices. DEADLINE DECEMBER 31
Featured Music: Purity Ring
Purity Ring is electro pop (maybe weirdness to some ears) with heavily processed sounds and vocals, and lyrics that fit in with the now of contemporary writing (particularly poetry) regarding the positioning of the body as a focal point. The Canadian duo managed a fast rise with their first album in 2012, teasing listeners with several early singles before the band had officially formed as far as people knew or could see. Their album was a success in many ways because of the texture they created, maybe a loose format, to which all of the songs adhere to one degree or another but uniquely in each case for each of them to stand alone, for nearly all of them to be listenable if not likable. Sounds and techniques of processing sound as well as filling space repeat, but so too do concepts in the lyrics, bones and sweat and body parts. While enjoying the total package quite a bit (they were on rotation for years in our minds and playlists), we draw your attention to the lyrics and texture.
A sample of lyrics from the opening verse of “Loftcries:”
Green, green thunder and the loud, loud rain
Lead our woes asunder
'Neath the proud, proud veins
Of trains let bleed the gunmen of our
Pumping earthly hearts
Wean our joys in plunder
Peel our shining teeth
Bid our hold on happiness
We’re not passing judgement on this work as written work. We mean to simply document that there’s a noticeable poetic impressionism in the lyrics that make this group’s songs of particular interest to us. That said and while one can always quibble with art assessments—we’re not singling out poets but we’re certainly looking over at them now that we mention it—we do find laudable and interesting rhyme, slant-rhyme, rhythm and figurative language from even a writing perspective. It’s not that we want to shy away from opinion on writing lest we be judged; it’s more that picking apart song lyrics as poetry explicitly unmoored from the surrounding instrumentation is frought, at best. Anyway, we’re not critics and don’t intend to be in the well-worn sense. We want to find good things that are exemplary in one way or another and attempt a look-see into why that is, what draws us in, how we might borrow from what the artist or musician is doing in their field and apply those notions to writing.
In that pursuit, notice the texture of all the sound, the feeling it creates. This is music according to any standard sense, but it’s also something more, music+ let’s say because of the texture. Bands like Coil and maybe artfull heavy metal in general, certainly composers, particularly of film scores—there are pure sound musicians dedicated to non-composition and or non-order (does jazz fit?)—these types of musicians also deal with the creation of texture as a primary component of their tunes. We think about texture in writing below under the auspices of considering this week’s artist, Alberto Giacometti, as well. Whereas with sculpting and visual art, we focus more on the seeing component of texture, with Purity Ring, and other music, let’s obviosuly consider the sound, which is a tad more apropos to the sounds of words—again the poets know this. Can we allow the sound of our writing as read aloud suffice as the reason for a word choice or sentence structure, a layering at the paragraph level? What are the drawbacks, the costs, the benefits? Let’s read or work to ourselves in effort to hear it, feel the texture auditorily.
Weekly Artist: Alberto Giacometti
Influenced by cubism and surrealism (no doubt being the son of an impressionist painter had an effect) Alberto Giacometti became one of the most notable artists of the 20th century and, while also a painter and printmaker, is probably best known for his distinctive bronze statues of the human form, oddly and meticulously shaped into thin, spectre-like, and sinewy figures. Giacometti had a somewhat privileged upbringing in rural Switzerland and, despite Switzerland’s neutrality, was heavily affected by World War II, the history and aftermath of which he attributes to his thinking and ideas about human experience and the body. Early career, he was much a part of the surrealist movement (as easily seen in his earlier cubist and surrealist sculptures) and was even one of André Breton’s Surrealist group members, alongside Salvador Dali and other notable artists.
Giacometti passed in 1966 and is survived by an important foundation that serves to maintain his work and also educate the public as well as aid new artists, the Giacometti Foundation. During his career he received many commissions and international exhibitions, and his work continues to be exhibited around the world. Despite his success and near universal acknowledgement, Giacometti’s creative struggles are well documented. Particularly with his thin sculptures, pieces he often worked and reworked until, in some or many cases, he excised so much clay, reformatted, thinned and thinned until they fell apart; and yet on more than one occasion he declared, “…the more I take away, the fatter it becomes.” His studio has been described as full of half-finished but also wrecked work he never intended to break. It’s true that Giacometti suffered at the behest of his creativity, something most creatives, certainly nearly any writer, can relate to, particularly the adding and subtracting until the piece, whatever it is, is unrecognizable, too fat or too lean—woe the workshop process and too many feedback perspectives (but of course, praise be those same workshops for the community, comradery, and seams of fantastic feedback).
“‘The more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.’”
—Giacometti from NYT Article “The Complexities of Seeing”
Much is to be gleaned from the intention and technique of Giacometti, and we’ve been drawn to his conception and exploration of beingness and the textures by which he produced his sculptures—what these textures say, what they reveal as measured by the emotional reaction of the viewer. A couple of thoughts come to mind. First, we wonder about how writers texture their work, whether there’s an impulse to texture, whether it makes sense to imbue a piece with texture, to even conceive of writing in that way—there’s an inevitable texture to writing even if the artist doesn’t explicitly consider it and yet texture can be so subordinate as to appear mute. Poets work with this component more fluidly, more explicitly, and there’s often an expectation of texture and certainly many expositions via the poem that deliver texture, sometimes above other considerations or even to their exclusion. What of stories and longer forms? How do narrative-driven writers navigate the need for sense versus a call to sound and form? We bid writers directly consider this element of style. We bid them access to whilst skirting the line between fully-realized technique and obsession.
Interview published by The Guardian.
Interesante: Amateurs vs Professionals
From: FS.blog (Farnum Street)
— (5 min read/20 min study)
“Amateurs give up at the first sign of trouble and assume they’re failures. Professionals see failure as part of the path to growth and mastery.”
A list-like article that distills some of the key differences between the mindset of a professional and that of an amateurs (with no stigma placed on being an amateur, of course). But, as creatives, we ought to consider some of these differences and might improve our processes, our craft, if we orient more effectively. We found the process helpful. Not every item makes sense for the creative field, but still worth circumspection given nearly all of us have 2nd work or professional lives. Most of the items are extremely helpful. Let’s orient ourselves as best we can and test our practice in order to strengthen it and our resolve. —Read the article.
Prizes/Awards/Stipends Spring ‘23
Academy for Teachers Flash Fiction Contest grants $1,000 & publication in A Public Space. The story’s protagonist, or its narrator, must be a K-12 teacher. Karen Russell is this year’s judge. 749 Word limit. $1k + Pub. No Fee. DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 1
The Publishing Lab Prize advances $10,000 & publishes a novel or short story collection at U. New Orleans Press. There are no restrictions on subject or focus.
$10k advance + Pub. $28 fee. DEADLINE AUGUST 31
The George Garrett Fiction Prize advances $1,000 & publishes a novel or short story collection w/ Texas Review Press. The prize began in 1998 and has published one book each year since. $1k + Pub + 10 copies. $28 Fee. DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 30
Bookstore: Guides, Gifts & Classics
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Artist Book from Guggenheim Museum Publications:
Last Week’s Rec:
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Thank you for subscribing to Ephemera. We appreciate your support very much. It means a lot to have you as a reader. We look forward to growing the letter and bringing you new content and conversation along side our staples. Let us know if you have any ideas on how we can improve.
~~~Bidāẏakālīna anuṣṭhāna~~~
(Farewell)
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**Select Job Postings**
Integrated Resources: Proofreader. PT/FT. 1-2yrs exp. BA. $28/hr+. Remote.
The College: Content Wr. FT. 5+ yrs Exp. BA. Portfolio. ~$55k. Remote.
Ephemera Programs
Poetry at Ephemera:
I use Ephemera for its joyful presentation of the Arts and the list of opportunities for poets and non-fiction writers.