Ephemera Newsletter Iss May.3

(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)

Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, Ynkerner! (Armenian for “friends”).

We thank you for your presence this month. Particularly, we thank May’s Poet @ Ephemera, Mark Saba.

• As a reminder: Starting this month on May 26th, if you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! (5 poems max). We will share a special portal for paid members on May 26th. We thank you for your support and look forward to reading your work. Free subscribers and anyone else can submit, too, with the reading fee and can submit up to 10 poems.

• Share and or submit to our residency: Ephemera runs another program called The Write-In which is a modest grant plus 10 books of our choosing from different independent publishers. It’s a staycation residency for folks who want to upgrade their writing space and home practice, for those who can’t or don’t want to travel.

This week’s features:
Music from Portico Quartet, a band that masters fusions of the Jazz-Electronic-Ambient varieties. Art from Dustin Yellin again with—these humanoid figures speak to the tiny iotas that make up are beingness—large glass, acrylic, and collage sculptures. Featuring our May poet Mark Saba. Our weekly lists of 3 magazines with open calls, 3 awards/prizes from respected institutions, 3 recent job listings. Check out an Interesante article on how Nick Cave on growing up and maintaining awe. Book recs and bonus content and our mini-essays!

---

Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.

---

Ephemera

Dear Readers,

We’re writing from the mountains, where winter has just relented and the days claw themselves towards warmth by late afternoon only to toe-dip cool, cool-cool by the eve. These mountains and the space to Be, simply, helps us rejuvenate; as a part of that renewal is restoring our sense of awe and beauty. As it’s been said these days, all of the stimuli modern life confronts us with tends to reduce our focus, our ability to find pleasure in simple things—all the things that, through dopamine, ask for repeat consumption quickly, quickly, ever so fast. Too much, too much. It’s easier to be open-minded, to think new thoughts when we’ve simplified our living, our food and beverage consumption, all the tech and company we keep. Simplicity resets our tolerance. We hope for some peace of mind for our readers. We hope you’ll take the occasional fast of isolation. Listen to Nick Cave’s idea just below…let’s think how we can approach our creative practice through a lens of perpetual, sustained living for beauty.

“Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world… Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being.”
—Nick Cave, from The Marginalia

Remember, there are well documented practices of asceticism and that these practices are not necessarily for the sake of religiosity as a means to an end. These practices, their core tenets, offer us a way of maintaining a sense of awe, offer us a means by which we can pursue being amazed, or astonished, or stupefied by beauty. We need it. Find your way. Find totems, a favorite view, a playlist of songs…whatever you can to deliver awe habitually. Buy a piece of art or a print. Frame it. Hang it. Spend time with a bliss you cultivate for yourself. Save moments of beauty in your notes. Invent them moments and live them in your imagination. Speak to others. Stories! Of course, read, and watch great film. Be awed whenever you can. When you sit at your seat and isolate your thoughts, work to recall these moments, or, if not the specifics, channel the feeling and bleed it onto your pages. Overwrite if you must. Pour and pour. You can pull back later, when you’re measured, when the awe has passed. Save moments and seek new bliss. Isn’t this what we ought to do for our readers? Isn’t this how we might contribute back to the human condition? Experience it. Then, maybe we can deliver wonder. Credibly. With force. Without anyone the wiser as to how.

Shnorhakalut’yun!
(Gratitude)

---

~We’re so happy you’re here!~

---

---

Poetry by Mark Saba

The Great Escape

The ocean waves—crest and trough—
ambling through a physics amplitude
roar in soft echo
and refuse to be named.

I heard them once in childhood,
imagined whole fleets of adventure
and the cold depths of wonder
before I learned the chemistry

of water, the salinity of our bodies
and ancestry of sand. I heard
the roundness of our globe,
the trade winds of history
so etched into textbooks.

Now I've given up on learning
the hows and whys of everything.
The waves roll back, and I go
with them, back to a time

that was once mine, a music
of inception, not discovery,
a willingness to see, at last,
the beginning of all things.

---

---

Learn About The Write-In Staycation

We all need more time to read and write, find new books, and publishers. In that pursuit, we’re partnered with The Write In Residency. The Write-In Residency will sponsor 2 individuals, where the winner is gifted a curated package of 10 new books in multiple literary genres from 10 independent publishers, a Moleskin & pen, and a $300 award to upgrade their writing nook or home office. It’s a staycation residency for the bookish!

The Write In Residency Details:

• 1-2 applicants will receive the residency.

• $300/each toward writing-room upgrades (or for whatever you like).

• 10 Books from indie publishers. (Full publisher list below).

• Moleskin & Pen.

• Optional: Each awardee may write an optional 2 page essay on the experience and Ephemera will publish it in our newsletter.

• ~$600 value all considered + Publication.

• $25 application fee. (Free for yearly newsletter subscribers).

---

Writers Submit: Three Magazines