Words for Worlds

Words for Worlds, full cover

Words for Worlds is an anthology produced by Porkbelly Press in Cincinnati, Ohio. This 38 page handbound booklet includes poems from members of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts poetry panel, also titled Words for Worlds. | open edition | $7.50

acknowledgements:

Some of the poems in this anthology are reprints and first appeared in such mags & books as: Azimov’s, Cthulu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness, Dissections, Drawn to Marvel, Goblin Fruit, Science Fiction Poetry, Strange Horizons, and others.

contributors:

Bruce Boston
Bryan Dietrich
Donna Hooley
Sandra Lindow
David Lunde
P. Andrew Miller
Donald Riggs
Marge Simon
Mary Turzillo
Gina Wisker

from the editor of the anthology:

There is stardust in each of us. It yearns to return to the vastness of space, the beauty of the cosmos. We reach for the stars with telescopes and space ships, probes and transmissions. Some of us reach through science and formulas. Others with paper and poetry. We create worlds from words and use words for worlds.

Poetry has been part of the literature of the Fantastic for a very long time. After all, the first epic poems were all fantastic in nature. At the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, poetry is celebrated with the Words for Worlds panels. First organized by poet Judith Kerman, the panels have hosted many current poets of the fantastic who, each year, share their visions of words and worlds. This chapbook features the poets who have been regulars at the conference and the poetry panels for many years. It is my pleasure to put this chapbook together.

If you ever have the chance to attend ICFA, please stop by the poetry panels. Until then, please enjoy our words for worlds.

P. Andrew Miller, February 2015

about the editor:

P. Andrew Miller is the author of the short story collection In Love, In Water and Other Stories (Post Mortem Press), as well as the lyric comic The Legacy of the Turquoise Knight (Finishing Line Press), and the prose chapbook Bodies in Water (Porkbelly Press). He has been an attending author at ICFA since the mid 90’s. He teaches at Northern Kentucky University.

Words for Worlds (ed. P. Andrew Miller), cover art by Jonathan Rountree

colophon:

Cover Art: “The Nursery” (24 x 18 inches, acrylic on canvas) by Jonathan Rountree. Design & Production by: Nicci Mechler, Porkbelly Press. The cover is printed on either acid free cardstock (laser) or Epson Ultra Premium Matte paper (inkjet). All are handbound.

Mouth of the Rat, (rob mclennan)

Mouth of the Rat, by rob mclennan (cover painting by Maralena Howard)

Mouth of the Rat (rob mclennan) is a lush little micro chapbook set ocean-side in Florida, collecting together the vivid, flashing colors of that coastline. The poet reaches back into the romantic history of the pirate coast, melding the gold and Spanish history of the beaches with the crisp blues of water and sky. It’s a glorious companion for the poetry lover dreaming of galleon strewn paradise. | open edition | $6

An excerpt from “Standing on a beach in South Florida, February:”

5.

Blackbeard buried $2,000 in casks
near the Boca Raton Inlet. One of many,

millions. Waves.

Rare Spanish coins have washed up, beached.

Lifeguard chalks up daily wave heights, warnings,
Man-o-War. Aquamarine: a swollen,

floating death.

6.
St. Augustine. The line returns, becomes
a closed form, shaped. Adheres to origins,

retires. Palm trees equidistant,
portioned. A tonal lilt, the gilded

Spanish tongue.

Open Edition Cover

The cover image (“Facing the Edge of Eternity,” acrylic/mixed media painting, 20 x 30 inches, by Maralena Howard) is printed on Epson Ultra Premium Matte paper (inkjet). The micro chapbook is handbound & each is trimmed by hand. Hand-cut flags, typed old school, are affixed to the verso. As they are handmade, no two are exactly alike.

About the Poet

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014, The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, 2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

About the Artist

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Maralena Howard is a painter, mixed media artist and writer. Her focuses on abstract and minimalist subjects are prominent. Of her work, Maralena states, “I celebrate the complex nature of detailed simplicity. Capture. Repossess. Release. In each piece, there is liberation.”

maralena.com  | @ArtistaForma | facebook.com/artista.forma

 

Strangest Sea by Ariana D. Den Bleyker

Strangest Sea (Ariana D. Den Bleyker) cover artist: Nicci Mechler

Strangest Sea intrigued us at the epigraph, which features lines from Emily Dickinson’s poem: “Hope is a thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all…” What follows is a series of linked prose poems packed with lyric moments, vivid capsules of blooming image, and a journey of the I in struggle/concert with Hope, “she is a body of barbed wire and dandelions, synapse and tendon, elegant architecture, a red handkerchief of bones, a throat filled with God.”  | open edition | $6

An excerpt from “HOPE wasn’t always like this:”

//HOPE wasn’t always like this—stuck to the hollows of my chest, my ribs, distinct as fish gills. She taught me how to swim, roping her fragile arms around my neck and squealing as I dove into the wide blue sea. But now, she emerges like night with its thick white tablecloth, where I eat before the pang strikes, the ache that calls forth the white room whose door I can’t seem to shut.—Now I wade into the water, allow the water to rise over the hills of my body, my breasts, finally breathing, finally, underwater—//

Open Edition Cover

The cover image (“Floating on Aubergine” by Nicci Mechler) is printed on both lignin & acid free cardstock and Epson premium matte professional paper (some laser, some inkjet). The micro chapbook is handbound & each is trimmed by hand. Hand-cut flags, typed old school, are affixed to the verso. As they are handmade, no two are exactly alike.

About the Poet

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in Upstate New York, a wife, mother of two, a writer and an editor. When she’s not editing or writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections, a novelette, a novella and an experimental memoir. Ariana is the Founder of ELJ Publications, a small press specializing in the author, featuring a number of serials, series and contests, including Emerge Literary Journal, scissors & spackle, Amethyst Arsenic, and The J.J. Outré Review. She can be found at:

www.arianaddenbleyker.com

What others are saying about Strangest Sea:

Ariana D. Den Bleyker masterfully gives Emily Dickinson’s ‘thing with feathers that perches in the soul’ – Hope – a second life as a ‘lovely, strange and cold’ lover who wants to be tongue kissed and cut open. The reader will know this familiar lover even in the dark, her body made of barbed wire and dandelions, her ‘throat … filled with God.’ This lush and haunting chapbook-length prose poem is a love letter to the self, to what longings inhabit the body. There’s a sense that no matter how rough the world has become, Hope is there, her ‘sweet slips of song cutting the first gray hints of light.’ This is not to say Hope doesn’t cause chaos, roughly unlocking the body and sticking her beak between ribs. But she is a very ‘real red thing,’ living in each of our bodies. This poem is a true testament to our resilience.” ~ Nicole Rollender, author of Bone of My Bone and Little Deaths

Strangest Sea is more than strange, it is brave. Ariana D. Den Bleyker’s voice “leans in” and divides the self into halves, making the reader as rapacious and hungry as she is in the search to know hope on a deeper level. Her intense clarity of thought and highly acute degree of sensory awareness coupled with her rich and vivid imagery makes it clear even discomfort has a place in hope’s fickle hands. Whether human, bird, or fish, above all — female, Den Bleyker communes with hope on different levels. Each movement of the poem is self-referential, and, taken as a whole, a kind of meta-narrative that is incredibly smart. We are just lucky to witness such courageous vulnerability, such stunning use of the metaphor, all of which serves as the “beautiful architecture” for each poetic movement. ~ Katherine MacCue, author of No Timid Electra