Thursday, October 15, 2009

CELLPOEMS Calls for Poems of 140 Characters or Less


Cellpoems is a new poetry journal to be distributed via text message. (We believe we are the first to do this, but we are probably not.)

Starting on October 1, 2009, we will send new poems once a week via text message to as many people as we can in hopes that a small dose of contemporary verse and criticism will increase the general public's interest in both. Cellpoems will also be available as tweets at http://twitter.com/cellpoems.

The goal of Cellpoems is not to shrink attention spans, or to reduce good writing and writers to the inanities of text message abbreviations. Rather, in the tradition of great, short poems, we hope to present work that has undergone the duress of revision and come out hard-boiled and slim, like St. Antony of Egypt.

In her poem "Poet's Work," Lorine Niedecker said that there was "no lay off from this condensery." We're looking for work that demonstrates the fruit of such labor; strange, profound, weird, and memorable language condensed into 140 characters or less. We thank you, in advance, for your contributions, and for your attention in the months ahead.

We want you to be critical! In keeping with our mission of garnering more readers for poetry, we are seeking your recommendations and reviews of contemporary works of poetry. And we'd especially love it if you found a relatively unknown book and you'd like to tell us about.

We'll also be critical of you! Have a new book of poetry, or a new issue of your journal, and want us to review it in 140 characters of succinct analysis? Send me, Chris, an email, (chris@cellpoems.org), and I'll tell you where to send your work. Then, one of our editors will review it via a text message sent to a boatload of people.

There are two ways to submit:


via the online form on our website

or through text messages to: (317)426-POEM.


If you choose to text, please send us two messages: one with your name and the title of the poemor work you are reviewing, and another with the actual poem or review.


Chris Shannon, Founder
CELLPOEMS
(317)426-POEM

chris@cellpoems.org
http://www.cellpoems.org
http://cellpoems.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/cellpoems

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