Submissions are open!

Bloodroot v. 9

Bloodroot's Second Digital edition just went live!

Check it out here: http://www.bloodrootlit.org

Bring some new work to read or just come hang out with us tomorrow night at 7PM at Left Bank Books in Hanover for our launch party. If you can't make it, we'll raise a glass for you. Thank you for being part of our literary community

Guest Post from Joanne M. Clarkson

Fate afforded me the opportunity to write for this Blog.  More precisely, “The Fates,” and an old hotel.  My manuscript by this auspicious title won Bright Hill Press’ annual contest and will be published in late spring 2017.  I wrote to Bloodroot’s editors to obtain permission to reprint my poem, “Hotel ZZZ,” which had appeared in Bloodroot 2014.   They then invited me to blog something about my poetry writing/reading process and my upcoming collection.

Most often I write to answer questions, to make sense of something mysterious or incomprehensible to me.  Formulating the question using the best language is an answer in itself.  Because I worked for years as a Hospice RN, lots of my work deals with the why of suffering and death.  I found the Greek myth of the Fates, the Three Sisters who spin, measure and sever  the thread of life, apt when contemplating the what’s up with this? of living and dying.

Not all the poems in the book are about death.  Many more address different aspects of life, affirmations of life.  A good example is my hotel poem. 

In 2013, my husband spoke at a conference and they put us up in a quaint hotel that was a remodeled very old grade school.  We were in the Math Room, never my best subject.  I always travel with fresh notebooks – yes, I write on paper first, in my Catholic schoolgirl cursive – and then polish and transition my words into technology.  That night I thought I could actually feel the people in other rooms.  I wondered what brought them here and what we all might have in common.  My poem was born from one moment of united dream.

In the highest sense, I see all poetry as dreams-in-common.  I believe strongly in a chain of inspiration.  Poetry is a different form of thought: life through the linguistic lens of beauty or despair.  And certain sounds and combinations of sound facilitate this.  That is why immersing ourselves in the canon of poetic expression is essential to being a poet at all.

I have a ritual when I write. I start by looking out the window and thanking the day by finding something individual and extraordinary.  Like a cloud shape, a nameless bird, wind in the branches, an empty swing.  Then I read a poem sometimes at random and often from a collection I am working through.   Recently at a friend’s book sale, I bought The Poets Laureate Anthology (W.W. Norton, 2010).   I thought I had a pretty good acquaintance with famous American poets of the past 70 years.  I was awe-struck by what I uncovered in this volume. Fate, right?

I realized I had never really known greats like Stanley Kunitz, Joseph Brodsky and Mona Van Duyn.  I went to the library and checked out more by these amazing writers.  In return, each gave me a poem of my own.  I am now working on Louise Gluck.  One of the other bloggers mentioned her.  My absolute favorite book right now is her Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) which won the National Book Award.

Another aspect of “The Fates” is my attempt to both understand and honor my maternal grandmother, Esther.  She was a psychic and a seamstress, a Fate in her way. She came to America with her sisters expecting to find love and riches.  Instead she found hard work.  Her older sister learned to read cards from Gypsies in an alley behind their boarding house.  Grandma became very good at it and read cards for extra money all her life.  But her ability to predict events in people’s lives seemed to afford more torment than pleasure.    

In a way, poets are ‘mediums.’  We get into our ‘poetry place’ and write what our Muse dictates, what society shouts, what suffering whimpers, the fervent spark of joy.  Emotion passes through us and becomes – a fortunate word.

I am very excited about Bloodroot’s new online format and direction.  I am forever grateful to people who have the courage to invest their time, finances and spirit into promoting what they honor as most true.  What could be truer than words forged in passion?  Although I believe Fate is real, I believe even more strongly in Will.  We can create!  Thank you Bloodroot editors, supporters, readers and writers.  You make me proud to be a poet.

Welcome Sara Biggs Chaney!

Bloodroot is committed to a rotating editorial team. This year we welcome the celebrated poet and teacher Sara Biggs Chaney. Sara’s been a Lecturer at Dartmouth since 2005. She teaches writing and writes in the time left over (what there is of it). She has two chapbooks and a full-length collection in search of a publisher called Hagia Animalia. It’s about the relationship between women and animals, especially in the Catholic tradition. Sara’s poems have recently appeared in Whiskey Island, Hotel Amerika, RHINO, The Normal School, The Superstition Review, and elsewhere.


1. Who are you reading right now?

Right now, I am reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Composition and Cornel West, by Keith Gilyard. In terms of poetry, I’m always reading new work by contemporary poets… a few of my favorites are Solmaz Sharif, Maggie Smith and Kaveh Akbar. I also look forward to every new issue of Waxwing, Muzzle, and Blueshift. These online magazines are, in my opinion, publishing some of the freshest and best work around.


2. Do you write on paper or use your computer to generate a first draft?

Either/or. Usually paper first, and I’m not sure I’d even call it writing—more of a jotting of notes, fragments, relevant vocabulary. Those notes might become a hand-written draft (usually written really fast…I often feel as though I have to outwrite my mind or I’ll never write at all) that later becomes a draft on the computer.


3. What books/authors do you keep coming back to?

I’m sort of embarrassingly narrow in my poetry loves. The first will be the last. I am forever going back to Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus and Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris. I’m dimly aware that it’s not too cool to love Glück these days, but love her I do.


4. Are you working on a larger project right now?

I am trying to expand a collection of poems inspired by iconic scenes from film noir. But to be honest, the recent election has me thrown into uncertainty about what to write and for whom. I’m trying to think more about where I can be of most use. I’m thinking that maybe I should try my hand at essay writing, along with other forms that could reach a broader audience.


5. What inspires you?

Weird & magical bits of information. Like, one time I decided to learn about bioluminescence and I learned that one of the enzymes responsible for bioluminescence is actually called LUCIFERASE. I mean, the mere fact that such a word exists is cause for a celebratory poem! Another time, I learned all about dragonfly eyes and *wow* that was nightmarishly cool. I’ll tell you, my science education was mediocre at best, so when I discovered what a compound eye looks like my world was pretty much transformed. Visual images are a great inspiration to me. An complex or unfamiliar image helps me write because it helps me surprise myself.

Thank You Nancy!

Thank you everyone who came out last night to support Bloodroot! Very special thanks to Nancy Cressman, pictured above, who picked us the most delightful flowers just before the reading started.

Bloodroot at Left Bank

We will have a Bloodroot reading & meeting at Left Bank Books in Hanover, NH this Tuesday, October 4th at 7PM. Left Bank Books is located over the Dirt Cowboy Cafe, on Main Street. Bring a friend & bring a piece you want to share!

Submissions

We will be accepting submissions from September 15-December 31. Please send us a word doc or docx with 3-5 pages of poetry or 10-12 pages of fiction. Anything outside that scope, like an experimental form or digital project, please send a one-page proposal and we will be in touch if we want to see more.

We are looking for new, unpublished work.
Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if it's been chosen for publication elsewhere.

There is no submission fee. Please send your submissions here: bloodroot.literary@gmail.com

We will let you know our decisions by February.