Announcing Call for Submission, Pratik's Australian Poetry Edition, Fire and Rain – co-curated and supported by APWT, Australian Poets Writers and Translators collaboration

 Announcing CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS,

Pratik's Australian Poetry Edition, Fire and Rain

– co-curated and supported by APWT, Australian Poets Writers and Translators collaboration 

+ $500 AUD Cash Prize  https://www.apwriters.org

Asia Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) and Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing invite submissions for Fire and Rain – a special edition of the magazine focused on Australian poetry. The theme acts as a kicking off point and is open to interpretation – we seek previously unpublished poetry that evokes a sense of Australia – either geographically, spiritually, politically, linguistically,culturally,or otherwise. This edition celebrates the diversity of Australian poetic perspectives and voices – we welcome submissions from both established and emerging poets, indigenous writers and LGBTIQ+ community. We are open to experimental forms and multiple submissions are permitted. Previous well received special editions of Pratik magazine have focused on writing from Ireland, Los Angeles and Nepal amongst others and we foresee Fire and Rain will contribute to this ongoing international conversation with vibrant new work from Australian poets. Pratik published quarterly is edited by the world-renowned Himalayan poet, Yuyutsu Sharma in Kathmandu and has become a significant international platform of creative writing. You can access previous editions of Pratik here http://pratikmagazine.blogspot.comand

it is also available for purchase via Amazon.

Readers for this edition will be editor of Pratik Yuyutsu Sharma, Executive Director of APWT and author Dr Sally Breen and celebrated Australian poet Jennifer Mackenzie. One entry selected by the readers will be awarded the $500 AUD cash prize. Submission is open to financial members of APWT – not a member? Join here: https://www.apwriters.org/become-a-member/

Visit our Submittable Page to enter: https://drunkenboat.submittable.com/submit

Submission close: April 1st 2022

Submission Guidelines

• Submissions are open to emerging and established Australian poets who are financial members of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators. New members are welcome to submit – you can join APWT via the following link: https://www.apwriters.org/become-a-member/

• Unpublished poems only.

• We accept simultaneous submissions but please notify us if your work is picked up elsewhere.

• No more than five poems may be submitted. There is no line-limit. Poems may be any length, any style, but must feature reference to some aspect of Australia as identified in the blurb.

• Multiple submissions are allowed, but each new submission requires a new fee.

• Please include a brief cover note with your professional bio and a brief introduction via the submittable page where indicated.

• Submission fee of $5 USD.

• Deadline is midnight April 1st, 2022.

• The decision of the readers is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding work submitted. If you have a general query about the callthen please feel free to contact admin@apwriters.com

Social Media Call for Subs Version

Fire and Rain – Call for Submissions

Fire and Rain – Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing Australian Poetry Edition co-curated and supported by APWT + $500 AUD cash prize for winning entry

Asia Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) and Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing invite submissions for Fire and Rain – a special edition of the magazine focused on Australian poetry. The theme acts as a kicking off point and is open to interpretation – we seek previously unpublished poetry that evokes a sense of Australia – either geographically, spiritually, politically, linguistically, culturally, or otherwise. This edition celebrates the diversity of Australian poetic perspectives and voices – we welcome submissions from both established and emerging poets, indigenous writers and LGBTIQ+ community. We are open to experimental forms and multiple submissions are permitted. Pratik published quarterly is edited by the world-renowned Himalayan poet, Yuyutsu Sharma in Kathmandu and has become a significant international platform of creative writing. You can read more about the call and enter via our Submittable Pagehttps://drunkenboat.submittable.com/submitSubmission is open to financial members of APWT – not a member? Join here: https://www.apwriters.org/become-a-member/Submissions

close on April 1st 2022

PRATIK LA ISSUE HIGHLIGHT: LAVINA BLOSSOM's Poem, "After James Wright"

 

LAVINA BLOSSOM

After James Wright

                             based on last lines of Collected Poems

 

Birds fly at dusk

between stars, hiding.

The shore sings

of twisted iron,

creep and drift.

 

A white feather

waves through

the hedge, slips

down quick.

 

The beautiful

white nakedness

of snow.

 

 

Lavina Blossom is a painter and mixed media artist as well as a poet.  Her poems have appeared in various journals, including 3Elements Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Literary Review, The Paris Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Poemeleon, Common Ground Review, and Ekphrastic Review.  She is an Editor of Poetry for Inlandia:  a Literary Journey.  

 

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FROM PRATIK ARCHIVE : Two Poems from Ukraine by VASYL HOLOBORODKO

 

 

VASYL HOLOBORODKO

Two Poems from Ukraine 

 Summer/Fall 2018 Double Issue

The Dragon Hillforts

 

All over Ukraine,

around every town and village

high walls jut from the landscape,

legend calls them serpents.

 

Pottery historians – archaeologists – study

where they belong -

even radiocarbon dating

can’t specify their age;

if we cannot determine a date –

if we cannot fathom the age of the hillforts,

they must have been here

as long as the Ukrainians.

 

Those walls are called serpents because

once upon a time

a dragon was harnessed to a plough

by the holy blacksmiths Kuzma and Demian

this tillage jutted into the Serpent’s Wall.

What else could have ploughed these forts but a dragon!

 

Epiphany:

a dragon – no-dragon –

a symbol, by definition, of:

“someone who possesses great power”.

 

The hillforts were built to protect

against the cold creeping in from the forest,

so some people believe,

or for protection against

raw meat eaters from the forest,

so others believe,

or for protection against

invaders from the forest,

so the third party believes.

 

But no, dragon ploughing did not raise those hillforts,

our grandfathers wrapped them

around every town and village

to protect the dragon

from the cold given off by the forest,

from the raw meat eaters of the forest,

from the invaders lurking in the forest.

 

Epiphany:

dragon – no-dragon –– 

a symbol, by definition, of:

“someone who wields great power

whose purpose is to observe our Custom.”

 

So rising all over Ukraine,

encircling every town and village

lofty hillforts,

dragon hillforts,

still protect our Dragon,

still protect our Custom.

 

Every year, the hillforts grow taller,

not because we, with every hatful, build them up little by little.

but because the graves of warriors force them upward,

defenders of our Dragon,

defenders of our Custom

buried in the hillforts,

around each town and village.

When I die,

bury me in a dragon hillfort,

so that the dragon hillforts around our Ukraine

grow taller by the thickness of the sheet of paper

on which this poem was written.

 

 

Translated from the Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina

 

 

2.

I Pick Up My Footprints

 

I know that from here you cannot escape by plane –

you have to be able to fly on your own.

Cats in the house, so many cats,

gathered from the whole neighborhood

(how did they catch a whiff of my departure?)

not our cats but feral cats,

although there is no such a thing as a cat gone wild.

Cats as a warning and threat to my flight

as a bird,

they notice a red spot on my chest

like a linnet’s,

so I’m forced to take flight in the form of a dandelion seed:

I leave the house in search of wide open spaces,

past my garden and into the street

and float toward

a direction very remote –

now the wind gusts will

carry me away, away!

 

Translated from the Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina

Vasyl Holoborodko is a living classic, a National Shevchenko Award winner and the pioneer of blank verse in Ukrainian poetry. His work is strongly influenced by Ukrainian folklore and symbolism.

 

Born and educated in Eastern Ukraine, Svetlana Lavochkina (Gitin) is a poet, novelist and translator of Ukrainian and Russian poetry. She was the prize-winner in the Paris Literary Prize 2013 and Tibor and Jones Pageturner Prize London, 2015. Svetlana currently lives in Germany with her husband and two sons.   

Svetlana Lavochkina

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PRATIK'S CURRENT ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : BASQUE POET MIREN AGUR MEABE'S Poem, "The Geography Of Silence"

 

MIREN AGUR MEABE

The Geography Of Silence

 

These are the frontiers of my silence:

the fridge, the sink and the oven to the north,

the cupboard and front door to the east,

the junk room to the west,

and the calendar of Basque landscapes to the south.

 

I grow in the centre, a diaphanous tree on a floor tile.

Under the tile an abyss opens up,

the orphan signs of language a de-structure of winter flowers.

They echo a yarn, a painter’s whim.

If the air pollinates my head,

a root might surface and climb up my lap,

seeking my breast to suckle.

 

Morning silence of the kitchen.

The geography of fecundity.

 

Miren Agur Meabe (Lekeitio, 1962), writes for both adult and child-youth audiences. She is also dedicated to literary translation and has participated in numerous international meetings. Throughout her career, she has received the Critics’ Prize for the books, Azalaren kodea (The skin code) and Bitsa eskuetan (Foam in the hands), as well as the Euskadi Prize for Youth Literature on three occasions. Her novel Kristalezko begi bat (A glass eye) and the volume of short stories Hezurren erretura (Burning of bones) were warmly received by critics and the public. She will soon publish his fifth collection of poems. She has translated part of the work of the Iranian Forough Farrokhzad and the Rwandan novelist Skolastique Mukasonga into Basque.

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PRATIK SPECIAL LA ISSUE HIGHLIGHT: ARTHUR VOGELSANG'S Poem, "Jr. High"

ARTHUR VOGELSANG

Jr. High

 

When it was called that I was there,

Studying, my favorite thing after ball

Where I was awarded one of three

Best athletes.  Because I was smart

It was a very good school and neighborhood and a

Black doctor moved in with a black son 13

And naturally in the house other blacks.

We didn’t call them that then.

Bobby Kennedy hadn’t yet called them

Negroes because he wasn’t Bobby Kennedy.

Since I liked the son, 13, and thought

I was an untouchable star, brain and body,

I talked a lot to the bright dark kid and got in a little trouble.

It wasn’t enough trouble for my parents to say

Look, I wouldn’t hurt one but I wouldn’t

Want to live near them, when mom and dad came to school

To see the vice-principal about me.  I persisted. I sat

Next to him in assembly, the seat next to him

Empty though there were standees

Because the entire school was required to be informed about

Nuclear weapons.  We both already knew that stuff and

Whispered and laughed about the speaker.

This persistence got me cornered in the men’s room

Where I was hit and pushed until I did their bidding

Which was to say the word we can’t say now.      

 

 

 

Among  Arthur Vogelsang’s seven books are Orbit from the Pitt Poetry Series, Cities and Towns, which received the Juniper Prize, and Twentieth Century Women, which was chosen by John Ashbery for the Contemporary Poetry Series.

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PRATIK WINTER ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : CELEBRATED BASQUE POET KOLDO IZAGIRRE's POEM, "Late Arrival Romantic"

KOLDO IZAGIRRE

Late Arrival Romantic

 

Welcome to the tomb of the immortal

come in, don’t be afraid

you who come in search of truth

uncover your eyes

rest your hand on these frozen walls

there are not theologians here

the lizard by the gate assured me

 

the devil asks me to wait

we’re soon to read the mass

which will cover Rome in ash

but I’m bored

of waving these useless wings

instead of breaking those windows

the snake on the altar told

 

he only loves sensible utopias

not to pay attention to the north

to carry on sharpening the blade

and take silence’s advice

without waiting for the dust’s revolt

the eagles on the capitals advised me

talking through their wound-up fishtails

 

listen to the movement of the stars

a total eclipse of sadness is coming

the time when midday and midnight come together

those that love each other

what they will be able to love

the toad at the font whispered to me

it’ll be frightening, you’re better off here

the world won’t come in here

 

and you, what will you be then

begging for a part

burying treasures

believing in new parables

what, what, what

the winged dogs barked at me

 

get out of here

the bell-tower’s tawny owl laughed

in the wind which makes stones

 

 

Translated from the Basque by Aritz Branton

 

 

Koldo Izagirre (born 21 June 1953 in Pasaia, Gipuzkoa)  remains a major Basque writer who has worked in several genres of literature, including poetry, novels, and tales. He has translated works by classic authors into other languages and has produced journal and magazine articles, and written television and film scripts. In 1978, he founded the literature magazine Oh! Euzkadi  with Ramon Saizarbitoria and other writers.

 

 

 

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Valantine Day Special: PRATIK'S LA ISSUE Editorial Poem, "Un-stitching a California Poem" by Yuyutsu Sharma

 

EDITORIAL

YUYUTSU SHARMA

Un-stitching a California Poem

 

For days and weeks

I wondered what she meant

 

as she departed with my red necktie

I‘d bought a week before at Macy’s.

 

“I can’t believe they have

you here all the way from the Himalayas

 

to teach poetry at the University,”

she began in her Southern accent,

 

staggering on her high heels

in a dimly-lit bar

 

that Jeff had asked me to rush to

from the Fisherman’s Wharf where I had stood

 

for hours watching the famed coastline,

a clam Chowder bread bowl in my hands.

 

Her red Marlana one shoulder

Ruffles Bodycon dress bellowing

 

bleats of slithering sea lions,

the stories of her little town on the Northern California shore

 

that her father had to leave

for scandalously shooting a bear

 

who came every evening

to lick the fruits in her lush garden.

 

In the cab amidst the swirl of merry gossip

and anecdotes of mighty mad men as we drove

 

to an Albanian place only a few blocks down

the Valencia Street lured by Jeff’s assertion

 

that he had his photograph

with one of the Jazz celebrities hanging on the wall,

 

she teased me from the back seat,

“You need to prove it, Mister, that you’re a poet,”

 

and later in the waiting lounge

timidly touching my red tie,

 

“You dress too elegantly

to be a poet from Tibet or wherever you say you are from.

 

Let us see if you can write

a poem for our birthday girl tonight.”

 

As evening progressed,

I learnt more of the birthday group,

 

of the tall boyish birthday girl,

 ‘kind, compassionate, of Ohio origins’

 

her loaded on makeup

and gaudy dress at first glace

 

suggesting a transvestite,

one more time she hurled the rebuke –

 

“So, Yoyo, what would it take for you

 to write a poem for my friend.” 

 

And to my nervous assurance,

‘Sure, I’m working on it, I’ll write one,

 

one for you and one for your friend,”

she cheered out loud, nearly knocking off

 

the lone candle

on a tiny square of cheese cake that

 

we spooned out and licked in honor

of a hi-hygiene California ritual.

 

Later as I was on my way

to the rest room, she approached me again,

 

“I love your tie,

can you please give it to me,”

 

I looked into her green eyes

and saw wild animals prowling there

 

and meekly handed it over to her.

“You are so sweet,” she said,

 

“But I have stitches in my vagina,

sorry, I can’t make love to you tonight.”

 

She left with my blood red tie,

I kept my promise and wrote the poem.

 

 

Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu Sharma is a world renowned Himalayan poet and translator. He has published ten poetry collections including, The Second Buddha Walk, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems, Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, Nepal Trilogy, Space Cake, Amsterdam and Annapurna Poems. Three books of his poetry, Poemes de l’ Himalayas (L’Harmattan, Paris), Poemas de Los Himalayas (Cosmopoeticia, Cordoba, Spain) and Jezero Fewa & Konj (Sodobnost International) have appeared in French,  Spanish and Slovenian respectively.  In addition, Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma appeared recently. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts Creative Writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. 

Currently, Yuyutsu Sharma edits, Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.

 

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PRATIK's CURRENT ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : AMERICAN POET SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY'S NEW POEM, "Man Fishing"

 SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY

Man Fishing

 

Ink black shoreline, a cloud scribbled on blue slate,

and far out on Lake Erie I spy a boat, a shadow 

casts a line so far out from shore

I didn’t even notice when I took the picture.

It reminds me of those Chinese scrolls,

the one with the four mountains over eighteen feet long,

and then you read the title, so you squint

and in the foreground you find a hut and a man fishing.

Why should we care about this small figure?

When we are given the sky with its glorious sentences

of clouds, the mountain’s black lines sketched serene.

I want to ask Wu Zhen; does the man have a wife?

Are there other anglers asleep inside the hut?

I look down at the digital photograph I hold,

the slim stranger casting his line, the gulls swoop

and dive above the Cambodian men who smoke

and fish on the public pier, filling their white buckets

with perch and crappie. I bait my hook, ponder

how would Wu Zhen paint us if he were here to bear witness?

A few quick whisks from his wrist, and we would appear: 

 

a pier

of matchstick-

thin

old men—

 

 

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of twenty books including Death Prefers the Minor Keys (forthcoming BOA Editions) and The Dead Are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press book contest. 

 

 

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PRATIK LA SPECIAL ISSUE HIGHLIGHT: MAURYA SIMON'S POEM, "The Strand"

 

MAURYA SIMON

The Strand   

                      

Photo courtesy of Robert Falk

      

She’s flying. Surf-song beats its tambourine in her ears as she whips her bicycle down the long esplanade. Only the cold sun follows her this wintry evening. Fleetingly, Mélusina glimpses the elegant shadows draping themselves in banners from Dewey’s sea-staring windows. A brown pelican hovers above her, a chaperone. A tall boy waits for her on the pier, his lips red as pomegranates. There’s a rush of blood in her groin, a tautness in her breasts. The air sizzles and her heart practices a strange catechism as her calves pump furiously, the iodine wind drying her slick skin. When she spots him—his black hair and alarming smile—she whispers, Ravish me.

 

Maurya Simon’s ten volumes of poetry include The Wilderness : New and Selected Poems, recipient of the 2019 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Booksellers. Her poems have been translated into Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Farsi. Simon’s a Professor of the Graduate Division and Emerita Professor at the University of California, Riverside. She lives in the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains.

 

 

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PRATIK'S UPCOMING WINTER ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : FORMER CZECH PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL'S POEM

 

VACLAV HAVEL

September Sunday,

 A Poem in Prose

 

It was a day of vermillion and everything blue

when a friend and I stumbled upon a man

in the park, alone, face down to the ground,

his soul trembling as if to ward off death.

We harnessed him between our shoulders

to the nearest physician, a stern gray

contemplative type, who treated the man

for hours with numerous injections, soup,

and the last brew of coffee in the house.

We grew wary as to the charge he would exact

and how and where to hustle up the money.

When later in his referral letter to a clinic,

we found a hundred crown note for taxi fare—

he mumbled words into blushing.

A half-year later we read that the physician

was sentenced to death for high treason

and activity with subversive intent. It was then

I thought to myself, what vagaries of capital

punishment, there were to comprehend.

 

Translated from the Czech by James Ragan

 

Vaclav Havel, playwright, poet, essayist and dissident, served as 1st democratically elected President of Czechoslovakia (1993-2003). His poetry appeared in samizdat editions in the 1960’s. His collection, Antikody, consisting of calligram word designs, is some of his most renowned work. The poem “It is I Who Must Begin,“ published in Kosmos, is anthologized widely, and appears in Teaching with Fire. Over 20 plays, including The Garden Party and Audience, have been staged world-wide.

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