SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN FOR APJ 13.1 ‘place, nonplace’ – GUEST EDITED BY SARA M SALEH AND AUTUMN ROYAL
APJ 13.1 or ’Place, Non-place’ seeks poetry that challenges, documents, inhabits and observes the physical, digital, and liminal locations we occupy and pass through. Places or non-places we have reminisced, navigated, or imagined. How did these places or non-places come to be as they are and how did you become to be in relation to them?
‘Non-place’ as zones, according to Marc Augé, when describing generic, anonymous spaces of transience—stairwells, public bathrooms, airports, and hospital rooms. ‘So many places have fabulous names…Discover the World of GE-OG-RA-PHY!’ urges J. Patrick Lewis. Or as Mei-mei Berssenbrugge observes, ‘I’m not limited to what I observe, rather than feel.’
Poetry itself is both a place and a non-place—a portal, a body, a building, an ecosystem, an institution. ‘Gumtree in the city street, / Hard bitumen around your feet’ writes Oodgeroo Noonuccal. How do you commune with internal or external places? Where have you been and where are you going? How do you understand yourself according to the place, non-place you long to be in, the places we conjure where displacement and sanctuary are twinned?
We will be reading your work in places that are both personal, public, and in between—how is your poetry anchored in this, and how does it unsettle further?
Submissions Open: Wednesday 6 September 2023–Sunday 1 October 2023, 11:59PM.
Submission Form: >>Wufoo form here<<
or through the link here: https://apsubs.wufoo.com/forms/m7nj515195igfh/
Information and enquiries
Adalya Nash Hussein
Managing Editor
Email: associate@australianpoetry.org
Formal Guidelines
- Submissions must be sent via an online Wufoo form found >>here<< (or via link: https://apsubs.wufoo.com/forms/m7nj515195igfh/)
- Poets, both Australian-born or international, are invited to submit up to three poems.
- All poems submitted must be previously unpublished and not currently submitted elsewhere.
- All poems should appear in a single document, which should be uploaded in both Word and PDF format
- Poets must also include a bio (third person, 50–100 words) and contact details (email, phone, mailing address) in their submission.
- Successful submissions will be notified in November 2023.
- Each poem selected for publication will be paid $80, in accordance with current ASA rates.
- 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.
- Guest editor/s of APJ may approach a number of poets directly for submission to each volume.
- Please specify for statistical purposes, if you are a subscriber to Australian Poetry. Poems are chosen by the editor/s based 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 (link: https://www.australianpoetry.org/subscribe/)
Sara M Saleh is an award-winning writer/poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. Her debut novel Songs for the Dead and the Living was published by Affirm Press in September 2023 and her poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat is forth coming (UQP 2023). She is co-editor of the groundbreaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other and her poems, short stories, and essays have been widely published nationally in English and Arabic. Sara made history as the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review’s 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. She lives on Bidjigal land with her partner and their cats, Cappy and Lola.
Autumn Royal creates drama, poetry and criticism on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Autumn is an arts worker and interviews editor at Cordite Poetry Review. Her poetry collections include She Woke and Rose, Liquidation and The Drama Student.
Photo Credit: Leah Jing McIntosh