Submissions: open 15 September – 1 November 11.59 pm 2019
Australian Poetry Journal 9.1 (‘resist!’ poetry guest edited by John Kinsella) is now available. You can purchase a copy here
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SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN FOR APJ 9.2 – ‘DIS─’. POETRY GUEST EDITED BY ANDY JACKSON AND JENNIFER HARRISON
Published with the support of Australia Council for the Arts Projects Grant 2019 and Creative Victoria multi-year funding. The volume will also include other articles. Publisher is Jacinta Le Plastrier.
Write Andy and Jennifer:
Around one in five of us are disabled, but what about the poems? Maybe, on one level, poetry has always been disabled – the limping pentameter; the disrupted, fragmented speech; the unsettling shapes they make on the page and in the ear. But it also seems that disability has been under-represented, and still holds the unfulfilled promise to expand and renew what poetry can do.
Submissions to Australian Poetry Journal issue 9.2 “DIS– ” are open to everyone, though the editors will seek to prioritise the voices of people with lived experience of disability. This includes those with pain conditions and chronic illness, depression and mental illness, deaf and Deaf people, the neurodiverse, those who are scarred or deformed, even those who aren’t entirely sure if they are disabled. Editors will also consider poetry of solidarity or affinity from carers, family, friends and others. Poets submitting in this character may want to flag this in the email body with their submission.
We see disability not as a medical diagnosis, but the result of how society is organised for people whose bodies or minds are different. Stairs instead of ramps. Stares instead of acceptance. We acknowledge, too, that disability disproportionately affects indigenous peoples, LGBTQIA+ people, and women.
The issue will be titled “DIS–” because we believe there are profound insights – personal, social, political and aesthetic – that can only be found from outside “ability”. We’re interested in writing that speaks back to a disabling world, that critiques ableism, or that even unsettles the idea of what “ability” is. So, send us your poems that crip the lyric, that deform the forms, that (dis)able the reader.
Submissions: open 15 September – 1 November 11.59 pm 2019
Email your submission to: apjsubmissions@gmail.com
Formal Guidelines
- Submissions sent outside the set reading dates will not be read or considered.
- Poets, both Australian-born or international, are invited to submit, in one email, up to three poems. Requirements for consideration are: each poem must be sent in both doc and pdf formats. A bio must be included but there is no need to identify as having a disability in the bio, which will be published if selected. We suggest you alert the guest editors to your identity in this regard in the email body, if you wish to. The pdf versions are used for proofing purposes. Only three poems will be considered by any one poet so please do not submit more. The word.doc bio would be up to 50 words and includes your contact (phone, postal address, email) details.
- Also please specify, for our statistical purposes, if you are a subscriber to Australian Poetry. Poems are chosen by the editor/s on merit and there is no advantage given to subscribers. Subscription however is strongly encouraged as it makes our publications viable and vital. If you are not yet a subscriber, please subscribe here.
- We are committed to prompt turnaround on the reading of poems. All poets who submit within the guideline submission dates will be contacted in Dec/Jan with acceptance notices ONLY. If you are not contacted, this means regrettably that your poetry was not selected.
- Published poems, selected from submissions, will be paid at $50 flat rate per poem.
- APJ in 2017 introduced a submissions policy, with its new guest editor model, where the guest editor/s can organise submission for a number of poets directly each volume.
- All poems submitted must have been previously unpublished in print and not currently submitted elsewhere.
- APJ requires that the use of any other work by another author in a submitted poem is clearly acknowledged and cited. The responsibility for this remains with the poet.
Andy Jackson has performed at literary events and arts festivals in Australia, India, USA and Ireland – including the Castlemaine State Festival and the Queensland Poetry Festival, with Each Map of Scars, a puppetry-poetry-film collaboration on grief, bodies and empathy. His poems have been included in five of the last six annual Best Australian Poetry anthologies, and his most recent collection, Music our bodies can’t hold (Hunter, 2017), which consists of portrait poems of other people with Marfan Syndrome, was recently featured on ABC Radio National’s Earshot. He has almost finished a PhD in poetry and bodily otherness.
Jennifer Harrison is an Australian poet who studied medicine and then specialised in child neurodevelopmental psychiatry. Since her first volume of poetry, Michelangelo’s Prisoners, in 1994, she has published several more, winning the 1995 Anne Elder and being short-listed for the 2000 Kenneth Slessor Prize. In 2011 she won the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry. She founded and manages The Dax Poetry Collection for the Dax Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent book of poems is Anywhy (Black Pepper 2018).