Ephemera Newsletter Iss Nov.1
(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)
Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter free edition, Amigas (Portuguese for “friends”)
Thank you to all who submitted to poetry in September for our November issues and especially to our finalist, Deaundra Jackson who will be the poet for the month of November! You can review her poems altogether once they publish as well as artist statement and bio on this dedicated post on our Substack page. We thank you for checking out Deaundra’s work.
On to our standard content matters: Won’t you please check out last month’s free issue if you missed it.
And here are some reminders:
Yearly Subscription Drive:
We hope you’ll read through our annual subscription drive letter. It’s been a beautiful ride producing 4 letters a month along with extras here and there for going on 3+ years, as well as administering a poetry contest and two residencies. We’ve paid out $3,800 for poets and a couple thousand additionally for our residencies!Ephemera shares interesting articles and links quotes from artists, musicians, and writers to thinking on being a creative mind. We share music, thoughts on craft and the practice of being a writer, important book recommendations, journals we like, and timely links to prizes and grants. Ephemera is eclectic and germane creative miscellany!
Please consider upgrading to paid to have full access to every issue. Paid subscribers can submit to poetry for free. And yearly paid subscribers can submit to residencies for free or discounted.
In Brief…this week’s features:
Thoughts on Georgia O’Keefe her art and iconoclasm
Listening to the beautiful and dynamic album called “New Ancient Strings”
September’s poet, Deaundra Jackson’s first of four poems, “Cotton Fields”
Our weekly lists:
3 magazines with open calls
3 awards/prizes
3 recent job listings for editors and writers.
More ephemera: check out our Interesante Section, where we present an article or site or interesting bit of info—sometimes a study, sometimes a video, sometimes an interactive site, sometimes an experiment.
In this issue, a fun distraction website that allows you to have a kaleidoscopic experience out of an image you supply—and you can tweak the settings for fewer or greater fractals.
Book Recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!
Last Month’s Free Issue.
Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.
Ephemera
Dear Readers,
Now’s as good a time as any, they say. Be thyself right now. Embark. Lean in. Push for you and the you of your own concoction, not of others, not mediated by the critics—big or small ‘c’. That’s maybe what’s needed these days in letters. This week, we’re admiring Georgia O’Keeffe, her commitment to being herself and painting what she loves, as her vision demands bucking trends and schools of thought and even the chattering of her art peers and friends. Be like Georgia, we say. Be free from flattery and criticism alike. Write what you like but like what is authentic to you, but you must live and or have lived for the authentic you to mean what one means when one mentions that trope—what Georgia means when she passes along her lived wisdom. Maybe we ought to read a lot from O’Keeffe right now. Dress as we might want to dress, too, come to think on it. Or, at least, however dressing enhances our self exploration and manifestation such that our art grows, then pursue things on the side. Otherwise, fie and such. Back to work and walking prolifically (Georgia did).
“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Be leaned into your art. Remember, all the while, that O’Keeffe didn’t heed the chidings and chatter of those talkative classes vis-a-vis the vision she had for her work, for her life. We want that for our writing. For yours. It’s said that the MFA is wonderful, but all good things have tradeoffs, all things have tradeoffs, and one of those happens to be the dampening of the potential of otherwise would-be inventive and florid or even chance-taking writers. The writing school workshop is for writing school and has it’s place after, but we must remember to seek destruction by the class or coven or cadre. Or else seek to be the destroyer. How else can we become us, individually, and not we the chorus? Maybe there’s more we, more group than we ought to have let sit in the writing world. Whenever you’re there, with a few nice sentences, short enough to keep the imagined reader’s attention, neat enough not to brag, clear, of course, think on O’Keeffe, whose (mainly male) critics derided beauty and color in ways O’Keeffe adopted and made into her highly recognizable style. Maybe consider adding a sash, a cinch, a spot of color. Brag in the way of the sunset. Festoon prose by way of the flower, innuendo too…maybe.
Gratidão.
(Gratitude)
Poetry by Deaundra Jackson
Cotton Fields I touch cotton fields when I touch my father’s hands. When he and his great uncle who raised him picked cotton, it was two dollars per one hundred pounds. “A coke was just six cent,” he says. My daddy worked at restaurants that he couldn’t dine in. You can still see the cotton fields In south Georgia, they blur into snow at seventy miles per hour. Basquiat writes “origin of cotton” and I know he remembers for all of us. He crowns us still.
Music: New Ancient Strings
This album caught our attention immediately upon a random listen after following musical white rabbits down instrumental holes, i.e. we were cruising the “you might also like” suggestions as deep as they could take us away from what we might normally have chosen aiming for a not-us we, a we who found a non-us music (sometimes you gotta be not you). There are plenty of world music albums composed to appeal to the ear of westerners, falling into tropes and following the pieties of easy listening, yet, the Malian musicians Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko, each an expert at the lute-like kora, to our ear, avoid any of the aforementioned trappings. There are some truly unique and virtuoso sounds and skills displayed in these eight tracks. Sometimes, when we listen (and we’ve been barreling through this whole album on repeat for weeks), we’re stunned out of our novelty and delight comas by a strange but alluring riff or an odd-sounding arpeggio that nonetheless shreds, so to speak.
As we’ve come to learn, this album has made its way around some well-known contemporary musicians and music acts, such as Bjork and Childish Gambino. It’s on folks’ radar, and some mainstream papers have reviewed and called attention to it in the past. We’re happy to be echoing their nods of approval. Released in 1999, New Ancient Strings feels like a classic. Performed as a duet by the late Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko both of Mali and both descendants of a long line of musicians.
“Why do you like musical dialogue so much?
I like this question a lot. What is it to be farsighted? Before I went elsewhere in the world, I first played with different artists at home in my country. I gained experience with these artists. Then I thought it would be wise to observe what’s being done elsewhere, outside of my country, to immerse myself in it and see how knowledge from abroad could be combined with that of my country’s in order to move my art forward. That doesn’t mean I’m neglecting my musical roots, or that I’ll forget them. It’s not that at all. You know, having vision is about marrying different skills that can enrich any other skill. If you develop your abilities, it can only benefit you. That’s being farsighted.”
—Ballaké Sissoko in pan-african-music.com
When we listen, we hear harp, and then flourishes of flamenco guitar, and maybe picking akin to the banjo. We hear traditional song elements as well as movements from classical composition, along with those aforementioned flourishes and even contemporary guitar work. The amalgam works. The disparate styles are held together by recurring themes, a feat that works in the way of jazz. What we don’t know for sure, but what we intuit after reading about the origin of the instrument and the musicians’ backgrounds, is that the structures that hold together the flourishes act like narratives structures in writing. From there we analogize the flourishes to be elements of character and plot and beauty. By tradition, the Kora was learned by a caste of people who accompanied storytellers or who were storytellers themselves, the upholders of the Malian cultural narratives which were largely spoken.
One of the things we’ve been thinking about for a while is how to integrate patterns of oral storytelling, from the ancient poets and bards, into our writing as a means of connecting with the past, for sure—continuity of the human experience—but, too, in order to create a more attentive reader. There are repetitions and flourishes baked into storytelling such that the listener stays focused and can recall portions of the narrative that occurred earlier, maybe hours, or even days, which mimics the time scales for most readers. When we listen to New Ancient Strings for the umpteenth time, we now listen to movement and flow, how innovative and technically expert sounds adjoin the main work, keep us tuned in. This album might serve as a Rosetta Stone of sorts for translating the how of musical beauty to the page, for the reader, for the writer wanting to make compelling work, readable work, and artful work all at once.
Interview with Ballaké Sissoko in pan-african-music.com
Interesting Article delving into how the album was produced and envisioned by the record label.
Writers Submit: 3 Magazines
An online magazine based in Queens, NY, and was founded by Queen’s College MFA. The all genre magazine has published sporadically since 2018, but has featured some well known writers, alongside new writers. DEADLINE NOVEMBER 30
An online magazine reading poetry and seeking “cutting, strange, and daring work from new and established poets.” The magazine has published some great poets and has published fifteen issues since 2019. DEADLINE DECEMBER 1
The online only magazine is looking for work in all genres. The magazine has a rolling publication and publishes work throughout the year, submitted in the previous year. They also feature a cartoon section. DEADLINE DECEMBER 15
Weekly Artist: Georgia O’Keefe
It was 2019, the good ol’ days, back before life went on hiatus when we were on a business trip to meet with an advertiser for the ad network and combined that with lunch with a new author for the press. Things were swinging, per the slang of some bygone era. We were in Cleveland for the first time—a spot of good weather heralding our stay—and had the good timing to overlap with Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, an exhibition of O’Keeffe’s style over the years as well as some of her art hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Art. On a side note, that museum is pretty fantastic architecturally and has a great permanent collection. We’ve had O’Keeffe waiting in the wings for a while, and are happy to be discussing her work and our writing in conjunction this week.
We like O’Keeffe for her independence. It’s said that her work, despite spanning seven decades (she lived to be 99!), defined capture by any contemporary movement or style. As the aforementioned exhibition demonstrated, she was also a character of her own creation, dressing in an iconic, self-made style that defied conventions for women of the time, even across decades and geographies, from NYC in her 30s and 40s to New Mexico in her so-called mature years. Her husband’s photography, which robustly made a subject of her, also enhanced her notoriety and iconoclasm. Yet, her paintings, while not realism—they’re usually referred to as modernist—focused on things that were real to her, the beauty she saw in flowers and landscapes, particularly those of the south west, and, regarding the flowers, described as relating to female genitalia—particularly her Red Canna paintings—though it’s said she denied doing this intentionally.
“The passion generated by art should have a unique signature, a thickness and depth in the principles that each drop of paint houses, therefore, I must tell you that they [critics and peers] do not bother me in the least, without needing to mention that they do not cause interest in my person”
—Georgia O’Keeffe in See Below
Iconoclasm is important. If we aren’t looking for a bit of it, we aren’t looking to contribute as a self to letters. Maybe that’s a harsh take? Nonetheless, we abide by that in these newsletters in our essays and buried amidst our thinking on writing. Be a someone to yourself in a way that engages your self-expression and, even if in small ways, allows you to feel as if you’ve expressed yourself plainly, as you might sans audience, even if that includes your wardrobe.
Be you. An ethos we feel comes off the canvas in O’Keeffe’s work. We feel her presence in her eye for color particularly. Reading up on her life and of her words, we believe she meant to bring the beauty as she felt it through her eyes and experience alive in her paintings as a means of transference to the viewer, the collector. We feel it. Her work connects. Much like an El Greco, it seems easy to identify an O’Keeffe. Maybe it’s the saturation, the amount of light, the depth of view—particularly with her flowers—the conversation of brush stroke with pigment and eyesight. Shadows factor in. And so we think of writing style, how we might express ourselves so righteously and consistently that a style develops easily, without affectation or hindrance. Discover a you to be. Pursue you. Be you. While making sure to be adept, adroit, and beautiful. Nice and easy.
Partial Interview as recorded by Richard Wilcox (source of above quote)
Video exposé on O’Keefe’s style via youtube
Cleveland Museum of Art
Interesante: Visual Breaks
From: optical.toys/kaleidoscope/
— (1 min to Forever)
Sometimes we need a break from reading and thinking about our lines. Enter optical.toys’ kaleidoscope “game.” You can play around with the number of panes and you can upload any image you like to see the effects generated and lose yourself in the fractal nature of this online toy. We go to it to cleanse our thought palates. To feel mesmerized for a few minutes. Sometimes we get some good ideas going deep into the thoughtlessness of the images. Play! —Procrastinate by engorging your eyes
Prizes/Awards/Stipends Winter ‘24
Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers awards $1,500 and publication in Boulevard for a short story from a writer without a full-length book. The award is significant for emerging writers. $1.5k + pub. $18 fee. DEADLINE DECEMBER 31
Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award gives one poet $1,000 for 10 pages of poetry for a manuscript in-progress. Hosted by Poetry Society of America which offers many awards for poets. $1k award. $15 fee. DEADLINE DECEMBER 31
Steinbeck Fellowship gives $15,000 to finish a significant writing project. Fellowships are given to creative writers (excluding poetry), but writers may come from many other fields of study. Hosted by San Jose State U. $15k + reside in SF. No Fee. DEADLINE JANUARY 5
Bookstore: Guides, Gifts & Classics
Please consider supporting our letter and literature by buying books. It helps us and others! Bookstore via Bookshop.
Rivka Galchen — we’re fans — in a collection of essays:
Last Month’s Book Rec: Dali and Paranoia Method
»»»Remember last week’s letter has urgent deadlines!«««
Thank you for subscribing to Ephemera. We appreciate your support very much! It means a lot to have you as a reader and paid subscriber. We look forward to growing the letter and bringing you new content and conversation along side our staples. At present, we’re considering creating a book volume containing a large part of our content, including artwork and essays. We’re also considering other projects, such as a monthly podcast, mini-videos, and a Q&A with our editors. Let us know if you have any ideas on how we can improve.
~~~Adeus~~~
(Goodbye)
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