As we reopen for our third issue, Weave Magazine has had to make some changes to our submission guidelines regarding longer pieces of fiction and creative non-fiction. Here is a synopsis of the specific guidelines we have changed.
- For both fiction and creative non-fiction, unsolicited submissions should be no longer than 1500 words. For pieces longer than 1500, please submit a query letter and include the title, word count and a basic synopsis of the piece.
- For all submissions, please submit only ONCE during the reading period, unless otherwise requested by an editor.
If you have already submitted fiction or non-fiction during this reading period, the first change does not apply at this point. Anyone submitting fiction after 12pm today must follow these new guidelines.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at weavezine@gmail.com.
April 27, 2009
April 22, 2009
Review: Also in Arcadia by Andrew Mulvania
Also in Arcadia by Andrew Mulvania is both a subtle and striking journey through childhood, loss and recognition set amidst the landscape of the Midwest. Mulvania, a native of Missouri, has written a collection of poems that pay homage to the people and places with keen eye for the small things that shape daily rural life. This work provides a glimpse into the past and holds its breath for the possibility of a more hopeful future.
Mulvania begins with the first of three sections entitled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where rural life is subtlety magicked through the eyes of the imaginative youth. This section travels through a variety of rural places: home, barn, church and county fairs and actions: harvesting, farrowing and berry-picking, as is reflected in the book’s first poem “Blackberry-Picking”;
We wanted the easy harvest,
the berries that would drop
in the bucket with a touch, the ones
left unguarded by spiders
and within reach.
But more common were those
you’d have to stretch to grab—
maneuver your hand
through an ambush of brambles,
as though reaching through
a broken window—
With a gentle, but wise voice that reflects awe and reverence for nature, rather than dominance or mastery, Mulvania shares the childhood lesson that life does not always provide the painless path. From there, Mulvania pulls back and focuses more on exhibiting child-like wonder at the world, yet maintaining the attention to detail required of any good artist.
Family, home and religious tradition are also explored in poems like "Sunrise Service, Solid Rock Baptist Church” where the narrator grounds spiritual doubt in the natural world: “I don’t know if I felt all that I was supposed to feel, /or whether I believed what they said when they said, / ‘He is not here whom you seek,’ I knew / the red fox would run the banks of Pointer’s Creek that day, /the wild iris rise up from a shroud of dew.”
The book's middle section journeys down toward death as the title Katabasis suggests. Here, a somber voice describes how frequently death has touched the narrator’s experiences with simplicity and normality. We are reminded that death most often comes not in a grandiose fashion, but in the course of daily ritual, as with the poem “Elegy for Gary Wolfe”,
Mulvania begins with the first of three sections entitled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where rural life is subtlety magicked through the eyes of the imaginative youth. This section travels through a variety of rural places: home, barn, church and county fairs and actions: harvesting, farrowing and berry-picking, as is reflected in the book’s first poem “Blackberry-Picking”;
We wanted the easy harvest,
the berries that would drop
in the bucket with a touch, the ones
left unguarded by spiders
and within reach.
But more common were those
you’d have to stretch to grab—
maneuver your hand
through an ambush of brambles,
as though reaching through
a broken window—
With a gentle, but wise voice that reflects awe and reverence for nature, rather than dominance or mastery, Mulvania shares the childhood lesson that life does not always provide the painless path. From there, Mulvania pulls back and focuses more on exhibiting child-like wonder at the world, yet maintaining the attention to detail required of any good artist.
Family, home and religious tradition are also explored in poems like "Sunrise Service, Solid Rock Baptist Church” where the narrator grounds spiritual doubt in the natural world: “I don’t know if I felt all that I was supposed to feel, /or whether I believed what they said when they said, / ‘He is not here whom you seek,’ I knew / the red fox would run the banks of Pointer’s Creek that day, /the wild iris rise up from a shroud of dew.”
The book's middle section journeys down toward death as the title Katabasis suggests. Here, a somber voice describes how frequently death has touched the narrator’s experiences with simplicity and normality. We are reminded that death most often comes not in a grandiose fashion, but in the course of daily ritual, as with the poem “Elegy for Gary Wolfe”,
The hogs must be persuaded with the shocker,
and Gary ignores his heart as it starts to pound—
the hogs must all be loaded for slaughter.
In the final section, Of Foreign Lands and People, Mulvnia pays formal homage to home, family and the great writers that have clearly shaped this writer’s voice. With detailed imagery, Mulvania eloquently invokes the spirits of Frost and Whitman, often using formal poetic forms and subtle rhyme. Just as the farmers painstakingly tend their fields, Mulvania has expertly crafted a collection of poems bright with imagery and rich in emotion. Also in Arcadia is a beautiful book that I highly recommend reading.
In fact, Andrew is a featured reader at this month's Poetsburgh, Thursday, April 23rd at 8pm at Zany Umbrella's performance space in Lawrenceville. Come out and hear him read from Also in Arcadia and pick up a copy. Don't miss it!
Review by Laura E. Davis
____
and Gary ignores his heart as it starts to pound—
the hogs must all be loaded for slaughter.
In the final section, Of Foreign Lands and People, Mulvnia pays formal homage to home, family and the great writers that have clearly shaped this writer’s voice. With detailed imagery, Mulvania eloquently invokes the spirits of Frost and Whitman, often using formal poetic forms and subtle rhyme. Just as the farmers painstakingly tend their fields, Mulvania has expertly crafted a collection of poems bright with imagery and rich in emotion. Also in Arcadia is a beautiful book that I highly recommend reading.
In fact, Andrew is a featured reader at this month's Poetsburgh, Thursday, April 23rd at 8pm at Zany Umbrella's performance space in Lawrenceville. Come out and hear him read from Also in Arcadia and pick up a copy. Don't miss it!
Review by Laura E. Davis
____
Andrew Mulvania is the author of Also In Arcadia, published by The Backwaters Press in 2008. His poems have appeared in an array of journals, including Poetry, North American Review, Bellingham Review, Green Mountains Review, and others. He was the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Creative Artists Fellowship in Literature. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Washington & Jefferson College.
April 15, 2009
Weave Magazine Reopens for Submissions
Just a reminder to everyone that Weave Magazine is now officially open for submissions for issue 03, due out in October 2009. Please be sure to read over our submission guidelines; we often make updates to clarify any questions we receive via email. Also keep in mind that our release reading for Weave Magazine Issue 02 is Sunday, April 26 @ 6pm at Your Inner Vagabond in Lawrenceville, PA. We will feature readings from eight issue 02 contributors as well as complimentary beer and wine. We will have copies of issue 01 & 02 on sale and more information about Weave's workshops and the submission process. You can RSVP to the event on our Facebook page. We hope you can make it!
April 14, 2009
Spring Comes to Weave
Hi there, it's yer friendly neighborhood web-elf, bringing new spring graphics to Weave to celebrate the roll-out of Issue #2. I wanted to take a moment to thank the very lovely Hilde Vanstraelen of Belgium for her charming illustrations, seen in the new Weave banner graphic. You can visit her profile at Stock.Xchng here.
You can visit me at daisybones.com and my art shop here. And, if you haven't picked up your Weave Issue #1, you can even find me there.
Peace out, Heidi
You can visit me at daisybones.com and my art shop here. And, if you haven't picked up your Weave Issue #1, you can even find me there.
Peace out, Heidi
April 13, 2009
No Water by Renée Alberts
Renée Alberts’ debut collection, No Water, published by Speed and Briscoe (2009), is the story of a young woman who journeys through a landscape that shifts from nature to the urban and back again. A resident of Pittsburgh, Alberts is an active figure in the poetry community, both producing and performing in readings independently and as a part of the Carnegie Public Library, and it was with great excitement that I picked up her book.
The poems in No Water are mostly narrative and full of magical imagery, taking the ordinariness of, for example, the flight of helicopters overhead near a hospital and transforming them into events that make the speaker “dizzy/ with the countless life flights/fluttering against my breast”.
Alberts has divided the book into three sections; Spread to Map, Black Saturday, and Animal Prayers. In the first section, Spread to Map, she explores the concept of birth and beginnings, utilizing earthy imagery and, as in the rest of the book, a feeling of the magic of her world. The poems feel like an introduction to the landscapes that Alberts continues to pull the reader through throughout No Water, and many of them are not tame places to be, as she reveals in the very first poem, “Palm Sunday”,
“The cat stalks a monarch
feeding on zinnia.
She folds its wings
between her paws; this
is how we pray here, love –
with claws.”
The first section also introduces the reader to a number of themes that recur in the book, including a set of poems framed around the Lenten season, including the Christian Holy Week, at least one of which appears in each section of the book. By my estimation, these poems help to mark a theme of each section, the themes of life/birth, death, and rebirth, respectively. The second section is full of images of decay, death, and leaving – the impermanence of things, and the third of rebirth, be it a physical or symbolic one. There’s a beautiful depiction of a rebirth of sorts in the poem “Grace” wherein the speaker cuts open a pepper to find four “fetal peppers” nestled inside.
The aforementioned set of Lenten poems are part of another theme in No Water, which is that of an inner conflict between the religion that the speaker has been brought up with and which in its own way helps to define who she is or at least who she sees herself as, and the need to find her own spirituality. This particular conflict can be felt acutely in the poem “Contrition” which says, “Father, is this off the record?/Yellow-robed monks swept mandala grains/into the dustpan, center scattered/between floorboards – it thrilled me.”
The theme of the absent or “ex” father is also one that runs throughout the book. The father is an almost mythic figure and he offers up what is perhaps my favorite poem in the book, “My Ex-Father Eats a Live Honeybee”, which appears in the last section of the book and in which Alberts writes,
“But when you stood in front of the sun
like a blackspot and dropped a live bee
on your tongue, could you taste nectar
smeared on her needle feet?
Did your glacial teeth
crunch her downy abdomen?”
I first heard this poem at a reading of Alberts’ and was struck by the intensity, both of the act of eating a live bee, notably female, and of the way in which the father is presented as a dark presence, blocking out the sun and devouring the soft, feminine bee. This is a theme for the father when he appears in the book – a distant and looming figure who seems to wield an almost inhuman sort of power.
No Water is full of lush imagery and a strong sense of womanhood. Alberts is able to deftly navigate themes from spirituality to abortion to urban decay and have the reader follow eagerly along behind. It’s a lovely debut and definitely worth checking out.
Renée Alberts can be found at AnimalPrayer.com where you can also pick up a copy of No Water. She will also be the guest on Pittsburgh's poetry radio show, Prosody, on April 14th at 91.3 WYEP at 7pm, where you will have the opportunity to hear her read from her book.
Speed and Briscoe is a Pittsburgh small press and writing collective founded by Jerome Crooks in 1998. Since its inception, Speed and Briscoe has held numerous performances and readings. Its membership, events and publications have included some of Pittsburgh's most prominent writers and musicians. No Water is its eighth publication. Their most recent publication was in 2007 with Karl Hendricks's chapbook of short stories, Stan Getz Isn't Coming Back.
speedandbriscoe.com
http://smallpresspittsburgh.wikispaces.com/Speed+and+Briscoe+Press
Review by Margaret Bashaar
The poems in No Water are mostly narrative and full of magical imagery, taking the ordinariness of, for example, the flight of helicopters overhead near a hospital and transforming them into events that make the speaker “dizzy/ with the countless life flights/fluttering against my breast”.
Alberts has divided the book into three sections; Spread to Map, Black Saturday, and Animal Prayers. In the first section, Spread to Map, she explores the concept of birth and beginnings, utilizing earthy imagery and, as in the rest of the book, a feeling of the magic of her world. The poems feel like an introduction to the landscapes that Alberts continues to pull the reader through throughout No Water, and many of them are not tame places to be, as she reveals in the very first poem, “Palm Sunday”,
“The cat stalks a monarch
feeding on zinnia.
She folds its wings
between her paws; this
is how we pray here, love –
with claws.”
The first section also introduces the reader to a number of themes that recur in the book, including a set of poems framed around the Lenten season, including the Christian Holy Week, at least one of which appears in each section of the book. By my estimation, these poems help to mark a theme of each section, the themes of life/birth, death, and rebirth, respectively. The second section is full of images of decay, death, and leaving – the impermanence of things, and the third of rebirth, be it a physical or symbolic one. There’s a beautiful depiction of a rebirth of sorts in the poem “Grace” wherein the speaker cuts open a pepper to find four “fetal peppers” nestled inside.
The aforementioned set of Lenten poems are part of another theme in No Water, which is that of an inner conflict between the religion that the speaker has been brought up with and which in its own way helps to define who she is or at least who she sees herself as, and the need to find her own spirituality. This particular conflict can be felt acutely in the poem “Contrition” which says, “Father, is this off the record?/Yellow-robed monks swept mandala grains/into the dustpan, center scattered/between floorboards – it thrilled me.”
The theme of the absent or “ex” father is also one that runs throughout the book. The father is an almost mythic figure and he offers up what is perhaps my favorite poem in the book, “My Ex-Father Eats a Live Honeybee”, which appears in the last section of the book and in which Alberts writes,
“But when you stood in front of the sun
like a blackspot and dropped a live bee
on your tongue, could you taste nectar
smeared on her needle feet?
Did your glacial teeth
crunch her downy abdomen?”
I first heard this poem at a reading of Alberts’ and was struck by the intensity, both of the act of eating a live bee, notably female, and of the way in which the father is presented as a dark presence, blocking out the sun and devouring the soft, feminine bee. This is a theme for the father when he appears in the book – a distant and looming figure who seems to wield an almost inhuman sort of power.
No Water is full of lush imagery and a strong sense of womanhood. Alberts is able to deftly navigate themes from spirituality to abortion to urban decay and have the reader follow eagerly along behind. It’s a lovely debut and definitely worth checking out.
Renée Alberts can be found at AnimalPrayer.com where you can also pick up a copy of No Water. She will also be the guest on Pittsburgh's poetry radio show, Prosody, on April 14th at 91.3 WYEP at 7pm, where you will have the opportunity to hear her read from her book.
Speed and Briscoe is a Pittsburgh small press and writing collective founded by Jerome Crooks in 1998. Since its inception, Speed and Briscoe has held numerous performances and readings. Its membership, events and publications have included some of Pittsburgh's most prominent writers and musicians. No Water is its eighth publication. Their most recent publication was in 2007 with Karl Hendricks's chapbook of short stories, Stan Getz Isn't Coming Back.
speedandbriscoe.com
http://smallpresspittsburgh.wikispaces.com/Speed+and+Briscoe+Press
Review by Margaret Bashaar
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