Ephemera Newsletter Iss March.3
(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)
Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter free edition, Tomodachi! (Japanese for “friends”)
Thanks to poet of the month, Sherry Rind! We invite readers to review her intriguing artist statement and bio on this dedicated post within our Substack. By promoting writers thinking about their own art, we hope to expand the conversation about writing and art, to encourage writers to consider themselves artists and their work purposefully, and to raise the community’s sophistication. In order for literature to thrive, we need to have a sophisticated people. Share and discuss widely, even with non-literary folk. The better you can constellate yourself in relation to your own writing, the better able to attract new readers and supporters.
Thank you for checking out Sherry’s work and for contributing to the poetry program.
On to our standard content matters: Won’t you please check out last week’s issue if you missed it.
And here are some reminders:
Activated readers: We’ve emailed our top free readers a special offer on the yearly rates. Please check your emails from us. It may have gone to spam. Deadline for the offer is March 25!
Call For Submissions: Open now for May. March 31 is the deadline. If you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! (We email you a secret link at the end of your second consecutive paid month and every month thereafter for as long as you are a paid subscriber). 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 to Ephemera’s full letter. Learn more or:
In Brief…this week’s features:
Thoughts on Boundary, electronic music artist from the Dominican Republic and his track, “Las Rosas en el limite del noveta y ocha.”
Louise Bourgeois and her Spider and other sculptures.
March’s poet, Sherry Rind and her third of four poems, “Tree Hug.”
Our weekly lists:
3 magazines with open calls
3 awards/prizes
3 recent job listings for editors and writers.
Sponsor:
**C&R Press is reinvigorating the literary landscape with talented writers who focus on craft and character and sophisticated risk-taking. We publish Literary, experimental, hybrid, upmarket, and even art books. Check out their history book on women’s roles in literature: Women in the Literary Landscape, which is the well-researched product of the Women’s National Book Association.**
More ephemera: check out an Interesante selection, Language learning and brain health—how learning new languages may enhance our literary thinking;
Book Recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!
Support us on Bookshop - See our past book recs and others. A highly curated list.
Last Week’s Issue.
Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.
Ephemera
Dear Readers,
In case anyone has any doubts, you matter. We, each of us, matter to our peers and larger communities, particularly. Still, we matter to the culture at large, to people we don’t know, if for no other reason than we might serve as a beacon for those not yet on a healthy, self-fulfilling, functional path. There’s always someone “ahead” and always someone “behind” so our utility to each other is unending. Thinking on this subject yields many branches, avenues of thought. Our intent is to galvanize folks towards acting as if they matter to themselves, first and foremost. Even if you experience doubt, act as if. Acting is some nine-tenths of being a thing. Act and ye shall become. Don’t agree? Start walking and think it over. Exercise in general yields enumerable cognitive benefits by our experience and as demonstrated in the myriad scientific studies coming out these days. Check out this study with results affirming the idea that walking yields creative enhancement. Be positive by walking. Be creative by walking. Your ability to coalesce disparate experiences will improve. Happiness too, which is no small side effect. If you have to, if lengthy unidirectional walks are not possible, try circles.
“The Pandarams were great fabulists, because they had nomadic minds. They spin endless tales about the Tamil country…In these tales the pilgrim progressed over unrelieved chalk-stone landscapes under a relentless sun, but at the end of a day’s journey there was always a village, a woman, a god.”
—O.V. Vijayan, from his novel The Legends of Khasak
Think of the traveling bards. Think of the nomads with tales. Think of the ancient poets who went about learning all they could, the historians, too, of a sort. Of course, market conditions encouraged these walkabouts—new ears, new coin—but the walking served product, apparently, the skill of the orator or scribe. The peace of mind, the rest from being overstimulated—or poorly anti-stimulated—is an adjoining benefit, which reinforces the natural-walk prerogative. Circumambulate! When in doubt pace! The great minds did, do. Think about cloisters in monasteries…walking in circles around well-manicured flowers and gardens…the stepping occupies the busy mind freeing the creative and expansive mind to float and flow. We could link to many studies, even more articles pointing to the salutary benefits of walking, but prescribe three weeks of test walks. Spring yields a lively step. Hopping, a spirited springy mindset. Take care of yourselves. You matter. And your creative improvement does too.
Kansha!
(Gratitude)
Poetry by Sherry Rind
Tree Hug
When the poet from the desert visited rainforest country where I live,
she hugged a tree, and her friends thought her drunk. Because
this happened before my time, I do not know which tree she hugged
as closely as a beloved friend not seen in years.
She believed a tree feels
in its cells and sap; and even a human being, a creature running
on words, could for one or even two seconds stop
percolating and know how it feels to be rooted, unknown
to words, in one place but nodding with the wind.
After she discovered the tree lived with the indifference of another world
she told her students the story, spreading her arms in a balletic pose,
wanting to teach them against their natures,
not to grab the next beautiful thing.
All this air held in my arms,
she said, this nothing gives everything.
Music: Boundary
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