Open Reading Periods

Here are some haiku and speculative magazines with current open reading periods:

- Acorn: open through Aug 31st
- Frogpond: open through Aug 1st
- Goblin Fruit: open through Sept 1st (pays $5/poem)
- Ideomancer: open through July 31st (pays $0.03/word for fiction, $6/poem)

Star*Line, which used to have scheduled reading periods, is now open to submissions all the time.

Deadlines

If you were planning to submit haiku or other short poems to tinywords, today is the last day to do it until their next reading period opens up.

For anyone wanting to enter the 2013 Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar Competition, submissions must be postmarked (or emailed) by the end of the month.

Mu also closes to submissions on the 31st.

If you have haiku that you can't get in to Mu or tinywords in time, you can submit to Acorn through the end of February.

Some upcoming deadlines

There are several markets that are open to submissions right now, but will be closing soon.

- Twilight Times and Space and Time will both be ending their current reading periods on August 5th.
- Acorn is open to haiku submissions (5 to 15 at a time) through August 31st.
- Abyss & Apex will be accepting speculative fiction submissions (up to 10,000 words) through August 31st.
- Goblin Fruit is open to fantasy poetry submissions through September 1st.

Acorn, Vicious Verses, tinywords

I haven't had much time to read lately, but I have managed to skim through two things -- the current issue of Acorn, and Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes, the book of zombie poems from Coscom Entertainment.

Acorn #23 is, of course, filled with good haiku. There is a very poignant poem by C. William Hinderliter, and a nice pairing of two unrelated haiku by Peggy Willis Lyles and Jennifer Gomoll Popolis. Robert Epstein has a three-word haiku that takes the form's brevity to heart.

There are many more poems in this issue, including two good ones by Timothy Hawkes, and some of the other contributors include Gary Hotham, Chuck Brickley, Ferris Gilli, and John Elsberg.

Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head doesn't have as many haiku as Acorn (though surprisingly it does have a few, including two of mine) but it does contain a lot of good zombie poems. This collection is a follow-up to Bits of the Dead, an anthology of zombie flash fiction.

Not every poem in the book is a winner, but there is definitely something for everyone (well, everyone who likes zombie poems). There are limericks, a couplet, and even a "Zombie Love Sonnet." Humorous poems occupy a lot of pages, including some good ones by W. Bill Czolgosz, J.H. Hobson, and Zed Zefram. Charles Gramlich has a haunting poetic tale of Gettysburg, and Michael Kriesel's haiku sequence "Last Year" is excellent. "Reanimation" by Casey Quinn is one of the best poems of the book, short and sweet with an eerily nursery-rhyme-like rhythm. Albert Melear's "Say Cheese" is another good one, with graphic description and a good use of line breaks.

Some other notable poems include Rich Ristow's parody of Dylan Thomas, "Rage, Rage in the Dying of Twilight," Paul A. Freeman's long poem "Payback Time," and Lester Smith's "Git Along, You Zombies," which offers a unique way to make zombies useful to society. Vicious Verses has over 135 pages of zombie poems -- plenty for any horror fan to chew and digest.

Ed Markowski passed along some good information today -- tinywords is making a comeback, and it's currently open to submissions. In its new incarnation, it will include all forms of micropoetry (not just haiku) as well as artwork. Read the complete submissions guidelines here.

Review: Acorn #21

Acorn is a small cardstock-covered journal of English-language haiku, published biannually in April and October. Editor Carolyn Hall has collected an impressive array of poems for the current issue, #21.

Like a haiku, Acorn's format is simple and unassuming. A sketched acorn adorns the front cover, drawn with an Eastern use of white space and lines. The haiku are presented one or two to a page, leaving each poem plenty of room to stretch. This format works especially well for haiku, which (like the line-drawn acorn) rely as much on what they don’t say (the white space) as on what they do.

The list of contributors for this issue of Acorn includes many names familiar to haiku enthusiasts: Bruce Ross, John Barlow, Stanford M. Forrester, John Stevenson, Gary Hotham, Billie Wilson, George Swede.... The list goes on and on.

And now onto the poems themselves. Below are some of my favorites.

William Cullen Jr. treats us to a view of not only a job, but a whole way of life that is slowly vanishing:

steam whistle
coal miners disappear
into the dusk

Rich Heller takes us back (or forward) to spring:

March thaw
children swoop
at the ends of kite strings

Elliott Nicely reveals the uglier side of things, but does it lyrically:

the promise
it won't happen again
black-eyed susans

The magazine contains over one hundred haiku in all -- poems about all four seasons, plenty of one-line haiku, and even a couple of humorous poems, like this gently comic one by Jennifer G. Popolis:

summer solstice—
the drinking fountain
overshoots its rim

Individual issues of Acorn are available for $6 each (for U.S. residents) or $12 for a two-issue subscription. Poem submissions are accepted by mail or email – no previously published poems or simultaneous submissions. See Acorn's website for more information.

Haiku, anyone?

I've been reading Jack Kerouac, Book of Haikus, and it's gotten me interested in haiku again. I've been writing a lot of scifaiku/horrorku (which are fun too) but lately not so much your flower/sun/dog smiling ku. It's a great little form, and very relaxing to write (as long as you're not worried about whether or not they're actually good).

Anyway, for anyone who likes haiku and likes technology, there's a neat contest over at ThinkGeek.com: write a "techie" haiku, and you could win a $50 gift certificate.

And for those interested in "regular" haiku, here are some haiku magazines to either check out or submit to:

- Frogpond
- bottle rockets
- Acorn Haiku Magazine