CAROUSEL

 

CAROUSEL has started an ongoing, international chain of response poems. 

WHAT IS THIS PROJECT ALL ABOUT?

Poems are often in conversation with other poems — from those that  recreate or re-envision long-standing formal conventions, to those  written “after” or “inspired by” poems that came before them. Here at CAROUSEL, we want to experiment with this tradition in a deliberate way, on a large scale, over time. We therefore bring you CHAIN,  an ongoing, global series of response poems — each connected to the one that came before it but also different enough to stand on its own and lead somewhere new. It starts with one poem — one link in the chain —  and it gets built, link by link, indefinitely. We want to make something massive, meaningful and maybe a little bit monstrous.  

THE CHAIN SO FAR:

Every chain needs a first link … to get things started, CAROUSEL commissioned the fabulous Canadian writer Andy Verboom to create CHAIN 01, the first poetic link in this project. We chose Andy because of his long-standing interest in collaborative poetics, both as an author of chapbooks like Full Mondegreens with David Huebert, and as a publisher of the ekphrastic journal long con and the multi-authored-chapbook press Collusion Books.

01 — ANDY VERBOOM Delusional Structures of the Inner Ear (Aug 2020)

02 — ZACKARY MEDLIN Tinnitus as a Form of Pareidolia (Sep 2020)

03 — ROXANNA BENNETT Ménière’s Apophenia (Oct 2020)

04 — KERRY RAWLINSON Lady Mondegreen (Nov 2020)

05 — JEREMY COLANGELO Foe Names (Dec 2020)

06 — winner announced FEB 08 

INSPIRED … WANT TO SUBMIT?

If you want to be the next link in this poetic chain, simply do this: 

· submit 1 poem for consideration that responds to the most recent poem in the chain

· include your FULL NAME, EMAIL, and a short BIO

· preferred file format is .DOCX (we will also accept .DOC and .PDF)  

· indicate which poem you are 'responding to' in the TITLE LINE of the submission

· we are interested in any and all forms of poetry including traditional, formal, experimental and concrete

EACH CHAIN LINK SUBMISSION WINDOW WILL BE OPEN FOR A 3 WEEK PERIOD (this month, it's from Jan 8-30)

As this project grows, visit this page often to read all the poems in the chain-to-date — remember, this is a forward-moving project and you should only be responding to the latest poem in the chain (it’ll always be the one at the bottom of the list) — pay close attention to this page, our blog, our social media, or join our email list for updates!

This call will remain open indefinitely; when we choose and publish a new response poem, it will be announced and added to the chain of poems above. At that time, the call will be updated, requesting a response to the next poem in the chain …

WRITERS! If you want to receive a reminder email each and every time a new link in this poetic chain is added, email us today at <you.me.rainbows@gmail.com> with the Subject Line: Next Link in the Chain and we'll send you a notice about the latest poem as soon as it is available. 

RIGHTS AND PAYMENT

· CAROUSEL reserves the First North American serial rights and the non-exclusive rights to reprint and/or electronically publish any materials that appear in the magazine, including subsequent use on promotional materials related to the magazine and/or its events 

· we also ask for credit to CAROUSEL for any future reprints on all published works

· copyrights remain with the author or artist

· payment is $20 for the accepted poem