ATPO 7 to feature International Tanka

Atlas Poetica 7, the Autumn 2010 issue, will have a special focus on tanka in translation from around the world. Poets are invited to subject tanka, kyoka, tanka sequences, tanka prose, shaped tanka, tanka acrostics, tanka book reviews, tanka articles, tanka interviews, and tanka resources in any languages. While poetry must be accompanied by an English translation, ATPO will published non-fiction, resources, and announcements in any language.

Atlas Poetica always welcomes international contributions and resources, but we are making a special effort to entirely fill ATPO 7 with international and translated works to focus attention on tanka in languages other than English and to promote improved communication among the various tanka communities of the world.

~K~

Atlas Poetica 5 Deadline Approaching

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place will close to submissions on January 31, 2010 for issue 5. Poets who are planning to submit should get their tanka, tanka sequences, tanka prose, and articles in as soon as possible -- the interest is high and competition will be fierce for issue 5.

Planned topics include: Vacation/Recreation, Women, Rainy Weather, and Microtanka

As always, we are open to book reviews, articles, announcements, and other items. We also collect international tanka resources, book notes, and other items which are published on a space available basis.

Complete submission guidelines and a previous issue are available free online at: http://www.themetpress.com/atlaspoetica/masthead.html

Poets who are not familiar with tanka poetry of place are strongly encourage to read the sample issue carefully to understand what we seek.

Please note: Atlas Poetica was published by Modern English Tanka Press of Baltimore, Maryland, for the first four issues. Those issues will continue to be available for sale through themetpress.com. As of 1 January 20101, Atlas Poetica will be published by Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland. A new redesigned website will be announced soon and will be the 'one-stop' up to date location for all Atlas Poetica archives and current information. Atlas Poetica was formerly published two times a year, but starting in in 2010, will be published three times a year.

Atlas Poetica is pleased to welcome Alex von Vaupel as our new technical director. Alex is a fine tanka poet in his own right, and will be serving as webmaster of the revamped site and assisting in other matters.

A press release with full details will go out when the new site is ready.

~K~

Call for Submissions — Reading Opens March 1, 2009

Call for Submissions — Reading Opens March 1, 2009

ATLAS POETICA:
A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka

ISSN 1939-6465

Issue 4, Autumn 2009


ATLAS POETICA : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka is off to an excellent start, with #'s 1 & 2 available now. Number 3 goes on sale March 1, 2009. The journal will publish an 8.5" x 11" print format (and in PDF and HTML digital edition) of tanka/waka/kyoka and its variants, as well as tanka prose, sets and sequences, two times a year. All poems will be poetry of place, in other words, poetry in which the natural or cultural place plays a role. Atlas Poetica aims at poetry in which the external and internal environments are connected, and which shows the diversity of the natural world and human experience. Tanka in both traditional and innovative forms are welcome, as are submissions in languages other than English as long as they are accompanied by English translation. Poets should send up to 40 poems that have never been published and which are not on consideration elsewhere. Atlas Poetica has the capacity to publish sequences or prose work longer than 40 verses in length, but prefers to be queried first. Non-fiction articles, book reviews, announcements, and other articles of interest to the readers of tanka poetry of place are welcome. International announcements can be in any language and need not be accompanied by English translation. For complete guidelines, visit AtlasPoetica.com. Reading window for Atlas Poetica 4: 1 March - 30 June, 2009.

Atlas Poetica is edited by M. Kei, editor-in-chief of the anthology, Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka(forthcoming), and showcases previously unpublished tanka in English and English translation from around the world. The Atlas welcomes individual tanka, sets and sequences, and tanka prose that are deeply steeped in the human and natural landscape, reflecting the particularities of life as it is lived in all its splendid interconnections. Atlas Poetica believes that diversity, locality, tradition, innovation, and a keen sense of the awareness of the web that binds the internal and external environments together is the essence from which poetry springs. It is by connecting with this place, this moment, and these experiences of life that we achieve deep insight and appreciation for ourselves, our neighbors, and our world. "Sense of place is not just something that people know and feel, it is something people do."—Albert Camus

Before submitting, please carefully read the complete guidelines which are available at www.atlaspoetica.com/submit.html along with information regarding rights sought, schedules, deadlines, and more. Submissions and inquiries may be sent to the editor at: submissions (at) AtlasPoetica (dot) com.

For further information contact:
M. Kei, Editor, Atlas Poetica
AtlasPoetica (at) gmail (dot) com
or visit: AtlasPoetica.com

Please share widely and forward to all appropriate forums.

M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka
AtlasPoetica.com

Please forward to any interested parties.

Atlas Poetica 3 put to bed

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place has been sent to the publisher. This issue is a good one -- technical problems transmitting work from a Mac to a PC to the printer have been resolved, so this issue looks the way I want it to look. The contents are marvelous, and include work in new directions and new poets.

New to ATPO is the work of Stanley Pelter, whose extremely modern, fragmentary, almost surreal style shows how the tanka form can evolve beyond its Japanese roots into a powerful medium for the expression of human lives. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Paul Mercken's tanka transcriptions of old Chinese poetry by Bai Juyi translated into Dutch by Prof. Idema, show how tanka is a form that can be used to understand the past and cross cultural barriers. Jo McInerney contributes a Wilsonian sequence in which tanka and haiku alternate in the sonorous rhythms of life by the sea. Jeffrey Woodward's sea in 'Seamen's Bethel' mixes ruminations on Melville with his steps through an old church in a New England port.

Continuing developments of earlier issues, tanka poets address the places of their pasts. John Daleiden's 'Old Memories in the Valley of the Sun' traces a different kind of segregation: growing up black in a predominantly Hispanic town in the time when cotton was picked by hand, culminating in the celebration of Junteenth--the anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves. Kirsty Karkow, 'Understanding the Patient,' reflects on her days as a public health nurse in Baltimore. Amid the turmoil of modern life, there are still quiet voices heard and appreciated. In Romania, Vasile Moldovan listens to the voice of a cricket joining the Vesper service. Angela Leuck finds redemption or at least closure by visiting her hometown in Saskatchewan on a bitter winter's day.

Topical Tanka for the issue include 'War and Peace,' 'Mourning,' 'Urban,' and Summer.' The responses to the 'urban' category were numerous, and taps into an aspect of tanka which is important and voluminous, but which is often neglected in the journals. The dominant themes of tanka at the opening of the 21st century were nature and love, often with the former as a metaphor or symbol for the latter. Bucolic scenes and small intimacies and miniature betrayals were a literary fruit that did not drop far from the ancient waka tree. The Japanese of the classical period didn't want to hear about war and misery--they got enough of that in the news. It is precisely this genteel escapism that so appeals to many modern readers, but a poetry that excludes the harshness of the world will slowly become irrelevant, moribund, and no sort of literature at all. Such large topics are difficult to grasp, but the lens of place provides a way to focus on the details that reflect the larger realities. Tanka's ability to evoke the unsaid is perfectly matched to expressing what is too large for human expression.

ATPO 3 is the first issue that will appear in the triple format pioneered by our publisher: print, ebook, and online. It goes on sale March 1, 2009.

ATPO 3 closed to submissions

The third issue of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka closed to submissions at the end of November and the final selections are complete. The cover and editorial are posted on the website. Meanwhile, layout and technical work continues, and the galleyproof should be available in about two weeks for contributors to review.

All emails have been answered. However, over the summer a catastrophic computer failure caused the loss of some files. In addition, some poets who submitted work do not have valid emails and our emails to them bounced. Therefore we believe there is a small number of poets (1-3) who may not have received communications from us. If you submitted to Atlas Poetica but have not heard from us, please follow up with us from a valid email account.

This issue's cover features Gosses Bluff, Australia, and is from the Earth As Art collection by NASA from which we have drawn our other covers. "142 million years ago, an asteroid or comet slammed into what is now the Missionary Plains in Australia's Northern Territory, forming a crater 24 kilometers in diameter and 5 kilometers deep. Today, like a bull's eye, the circular ring of hills that defines Gosses Bluff stands as a stark reminder of the event."

Tanka in this issue includes our usual mixture of sequences, sets, tanka prose, individual tanka, and non-fiction. This time we have a book review of Kitakubo's Cicada Forest , and we invite reviews of other works of interest to tanka poetry of place, as well as non-fiction articles.

Topical tanka includes 'War and Peace,' 'Mourning,' 'Urban,' and 'Summer.' Planned topics for the next issue include 'Winter' and 'Kyoka' (humor, satire, parody).

As always we are on the lookout for innovative new uses of tanka in both form and content, and we believe this issue shows many promising avenues of development for tanka. We were especially pleased by the large number of urban tanka we received and the variety of issues addressed via tanka. Over the past twenty years, tanka of social protest/commentary have not been popular, and some people have even thought it is impossible to address such themes in a form as short as tanka, but as more poets become aware of the poetry of Japanese North Americans of the mid-20th century who often touched such issues, and have turned their hand to such topics with an increasingly sophisticated level of artistry.

A few samples follow:

in place of the fields
rows of red tiled rooftops—
a jammed-up freeway;
only the distant mountains,
stark, empty against the sky

~John Daleiden, from 'Old Memories in the Valley of the Sun'


all shadows lost
to the jailhouse lights
a watchman
gives up his search
for Orion's belt

~Kirsty Karkow, from 'Understanding the Patient'


midday lunch
in a bustling city park
below chinatown
between knotted roots
the dimpled dens of rats

~M. L. Harvey


naive in Cleveland,
I never once thought anyone
would say I killed Christ
until a soldier in my army platoon
bruised my ears on a full-pack march

~Sanford Goldstein, from 'Pre-Holocaust : Growing Up in Cleveland'


grain elevators
torn down   railway lines
abandoned
my inner landscape, too
has changed

~Angela Leuck, from 'Middle Lake, Saskatchewan'


if I work hard enough
I may give up
this broom
for a clip-board
& a lunch break

~Owen Bullock, 'Imagining the Space'


in the mud
next to the asphalt,
a broken doll’s head,
a crow pecking
at plastic eyes

~M. Kei, from 'Legs of Invisible Desire'


during WW1
German soldiers shelled
Reims Cathedral—
the roof caught fire and gargoyles
spat liquid lead

~André Surridge


old bible
recording generations
of births and deaths
mine was the first divorce
in our family . . .

~Peggy Heinrich


But where there is war, loss, and despair, there is also hope, humor, and help.

our burden lightened

my sisters and brothers—

junteenth

for some, the curious shackles

a bleak museum exhibit

~John Daleiden, from 'Old Memories in the Valley of the Sun'


the beach
has a story
that waves obliterate—
this fresh page
of shining sand

~Marjorie A. Dyck


the garbage truck
came early today—
angry monkeys
bang an empty can
and hiss at me

~Bob Lucky


ten dolphins
in a nursery rhyme
two leaping
three surfing the waves
five cruising further out

~Amelia Fielden


¿Café de Arbol—
quien necesita cielo
mientras hay todavía
meseras  hermosas
en este mundo? 

Coffee Tree Café—
who needs Heaven
while there are still
beautiful waitresses
in this world?

~James Tipton


while children play
my new friend whispers
fears of HIV
the promise to go with her
to the inner city clinic

~Kirsty Karkow, from 'Understanding the Patient'


First refrigerator—
neighbors come to visit
our Coldspot
as if it were
a sacred shrine.

~Alexis Rotella


just when
everyone seems to
want something from me
the branches are bare
on the beeches

~Owen Bullock


today I found
a pale blue egg
laying in the grass
I took it inside, kept it warm
and thought of second chances

~Trish Fong


bright blue cornflower
          tucked into his buttonhole
                   commuting to Wall Street
star sapphire cufflinks
          pawned for daily bread

~Bobbette A. Mason


road songs . . .
I used to hitchhike
to the city
the old house nothing
but a roof between rides

~Ella Wagemakers


autumn hunt:
way down there in the village
a sinner
enters the clapboard church:
God’s got binoculars too?

~Guy Simser

I hope you will enjoy the third issue of Atlas Poetica 3. It's a diverse, interesting, challenging, and rewarding issue. It was a great pleasure to put it together.

Cordially,

~K~

M. Kei
Editor

Atlas Poetica 2 now on sale

Dear Friends and Poets:

Atlas Poetica 2 is finally complete and on sale! We had major technical challenges with this issue between the changes at the printer and the death of my computer, but we persevered and overcame them all.

The cover is especially beautiful this issue. It features the Dasht-e Kevir, or 'valley of desert', the largest desert in Iran, as photographed from space. It, like all the covers for Atlas Poetica, is drawn from the 'Earth as Art' collection, courtesy of the United States Geological Service (USGS) and the NASA Landsat Project Science Office. Issue 1 featured the Anti-Atlas Mountains in Morocco, and the cover of issue 3 will feature Gosses Bluff in Australia. Many thanks to Denis Garrison, our editor-in-chief, for the covers and other technical assistance.

Issue 2 features tanka sequences, tanka prose, and individual tanka in a variety of forms and formats. Poets take us to twenty-three countries as they search for their past, present, and future, seeking their own sense of place in a very large world. Whether confronting the ancestral church or the closed gates of prison, searching the family farm, temples, subways, or seas, our poets find themselves with a world of strangeness on their doorsteps, and a world of familiarity half way around the globe. The poets of ATPO 2 ask what it means to be who they are, what place is their home, and why it matters. The ragged lines of war and tragedy cross their personal histories, but beauty and memory persevere.

Blurb for the issue:

"We believe that tanka’s accessibility is directly related to the conversational way in which it was classically used, and that now more than ever, human beings need to speak to one another—not with the rants and shrills that are the usual public discourse, but with eloquence and grace. By speaking about their experiences of place, the poets of Atlas Poetica have touched on many deeper issues: the value of the natural environment, the importance of our communities, the travails of the modern world, and the everlasting love of beauty that may be the only true definition of civilization. The appreciation of beauty is not a luxury and not a fascination with superficial features, but the ability to peer into the details of existence and find joy. Nowhere is this more important than when burdened with the devastations that humans wreak on each other and the environment."

This issue also includes poet biographies for the first two issues, as well as announcements and international resources. Remember to send your announcements well in advance; the editorial staff at Atlas Poetica plans ahead so that difficulties can be surmounted while still bringing the journal out on time. Some of the announcements sent to us were not included because they would have been over by the time the journal hit the stands. Remember that the journal goes on sale on March 1 and September 1 every year. Only announcements that address the journal's interest in tanka poetry of place will be published. (Haiku-only announcements will not be published. There are plenty of venues already for haiku news.)

Atlas Poetica 2 can be purchased online either through Lulu.com or Modern English Tanka Press.

http://www.lulu.com/content/2940354

http://www.modernenglishtankapress.com/catalog/ATPO/atlaspoetica2.html

Now that ATPO 2 has finally been put to bed, we will be working on revamping the website and submission guidelines. But first, I am taking a bit of a breather to work on the skipjack Martha Lewis, the old wooden sailboat I crew aboard. Martha still dredges for oysters in the winter months, making her one of the last vessels in North America to fish commercially under sail. Between the demands of work, changes in my personal life, and the difficulties of the journal, I have not had much time to spend with Martha. You will see the promised changes starting in September.

The reading window for Atlas Poetica 3 is September 1 - December 31, 2008. ATPO 3 will be on sale on 1 March 2009. Planned topics for the topical section include the urban/suburban/built environment, and summer.

Thank you for your support,

~K~

M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica
A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka
Published by Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, MD

AtlasPoetica.com
ModernEnglishTankaPress.com
AtlasPoetica.blogspot.com

To keep abreast of developments, please subscribe to Keibooks-Announce list at or via sending email to: Keibooks-Announce-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com

Update

Beginning with Atlas Poetica 3, Spring, 2009, we will be making changes in rights and presentations. In particular, we will be acquiring rights to publish an e-book as well as hard copy, and the right to reprint select poems in a 'sample' page for the website.

The website will be revamped and the guidelines updated before the next submission period to reflect the changes.

~K~

M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka

Atlas Poetica 1 Reviewed

The current issue of Stylus has a review of Atlas Poetica 1.

Brief excerpt:

"Many of the poets included in Atlas Poetica are well-established American tanka poets writing in well-established traditions, exploring many experiences, but for the most part centred on a particular locality. There are also many poems from poets around the world. Although this collection of tanka is autobiographical in inspiration, based as it is on the poetry of place, it brings new levels of artistry, innovation and appreciation of the tanka form."

Thank you, Stylus, for promoting our journal!

~K~

M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica 1

Changes at Modern English Tanka Press

Galleyproofs for ATPO 2 were promised for June, but due to significant changes at our sister publication, Modern English Tanka, we are delayed. You can read more about the changes for MET at: . The major news is that Modern English Tanka will be available as an ebook. This will be much less expensive than the print version, and will make it easier and more affordable for poets and readers around the world to get the journal.

As might be expected, Atlas Poetica will also be going through some changes to keep ourselves in sync with our sister publication, and those will take a little time to finalize. An announcement will be made later, but readers and poets can expect a more accessible journal as a result.

Thank you for your patience as Modern English Tanka Press and its journals grow to serve you better.

~K~

M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica

Atlas Poetica On Sale Now

Issue One of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka is available now. It can be purchased through the Modern English Tanka Press storefront at Lulu.com, or direct from the publisher at ModernEnglishTankaPress.com.

Featuring over 500 poems by more than 40 poets and with content in 12 languages, it is a handsome new journal with a full color cover. It publishes tanka, tanka sequences and sets, tanka with prose, and non-fiction and news, including the award-winning 88 poems sequence, Round Faces and Nesting Dolls by an'ya and Alexis Rotella that was a winner in the Tanka Splendor Awards last year. Also included is work by Eastern European, indigenous, and international authors, many in their original languages side by side with English translation.

The reading window for the next issue of Atlas Poetica is March 1 through May 31, 2008.

~K~

M. Kei
Editor-in-chief
Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka

Structure and Autonomy in Tanka Sets and Sequences

When submitting tanka in sets and sequences to Atlas Poetica, the following criteria should be met:

1) autonomy -- each verse must be autonomous. That is to say, the content and grammar must be self-contained and make sense on its own.

2) gestalt -- the sum must be greater than the parts.

3) necessity -- if a verse can be omitted without damaging the set or sequence, it should be.

4) structure -- there must be some organizing principle tying the set or sequence together.

5) discipline -- the set or sequence must say what it has to say, then stop.

6) compactness -- the individual verses and set or sequence as a whole should imply more than it states, it should have what Denis Garrison calls 'dreaming room.'

7) flow -- especially necessary for longer sets and sequences, there must be movement within the length that helps to sustain and reward the reader's interest.

I have written at length on structure and autonomy, which can be found in my article, "Structure and Autonomy in Tanka Sets and Sequences," published in MET5.

~K~