March is out like a lamb…into National Poetry Month!

I am very excited to announce a new opportunity for Trellis Magazine’s writers and readers.  Lewis Turco, the author of “The Book of Forms”, is compiling a new manuscript collection entitled “The Book of Odd and Invented Forms” and he’s inviting your submissions of suggested forms and poems.  I hope our Trellis Magazine writers and readers will take advantage of this special opportunity to contribute to an interesting new book!

 Turco’s current collection of forms and poems is available at the website http://lewisturco.typepad.com/odd_and_invented_forms/.  After you have read the current collection on Turco’s website, including his submission guidelines at the beginning of the collection, you are invited to send your best contributions to Turco to add to the manuscript.  Your contribution could be:  a suggestion of an odd form to add to the collection, your own or someone else’s invented poetic form, your own or someone else’s clever variation on a standard form, your poem or someone else’s poem that is an example of one of the poetic forms in the collection, or simply your personal comment on the collection.  (Please note that Turco is not interested in nonce forms — that is, one poem written once in a particular form by one person.  For invented forms he is interested in forms that are in use by other people as well as the inventor.) 

 The forms in the manuscript so far are:  blues sonnet, bref double, carol sonnet, cento, conditionelle, confutatione, curtal sonnet, Dada prosody, Dagwood, descort, diminishing verse, dorsimbra, double dactyl, dreamsong, droighneach, Dryden roundelay, echo verse, ellanalliv, FAQ, fib, five-four, fobie, found poem, fugue or round, ghazal, ghazanelle, hypallogo, hip-hop (podics), isoverb, lira, madrigal, merismaticus, mote, movie-q, Nasher, numerics, Once (on-say), ovillejo, ovillejo-sonnetto, paradelle, paradigm, parenthetics, penta rima, pentina, progressive hendecasyllabics, quatern, rabbet, rhopalic verse, rimas dissoluta, rime couee, roundel, rubliw, sampler, samsong, sentina, shadowbox, sonnenizio, sonnetto rispetto, sonnet variations, terzanelle, textspeak, torno, triple redondilla, tritina, triversen, twiplet.  

 The manuscript is missing example poems for a number of the forms, so this is an opportunity to get your poem published as an example!  If your poem has not been previously edited for publication, then I encourage you to allow our volunteer editorial staff to help you check your example poem carefully before you send it to Turco to consider for the manuscript.  You are welcome to send your example poem to us by email at info@trellismagazine.com.

 April is National Poetry Month!  The Academy of American Poets has posted this year’s suggestions, programs, and nationwide calendar of events at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41.  I encourage you to take advantage of the emphasis this month on poetry in schools, libraries, and bookstores nationwide.  Carry a poem in your pocket, and share it with the people you meet.  You can read my suggestions in last year’s National Poetry Month posting at http://trellismagazine.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/april-is-national-poetry-month/

 This year, I have some additional suggestions for teachers.  Crayola has some interesting material at their website http://www.crayola.com/calendar/detail.cfm?event_id=145&year=2010.   You can make a bookmark of a short poem — see this author’s website for example bookmarks http://www.jpatricklewis.com/visits_bookmarks.shtml.  Explore 30 days of poetry for children at the site http://gottabook.blogspot.com/.  Use free lesson plans from this teachers’ site http://www.poetryteachers.com/poetclass/poetclass.html (I recommend these lesson plans related to poetic forms: clerihew, acrostic, similes, limerick, sick poem, haiku, and backwards poem).

Advertisement