Lamar University Literary Press is pleased to announce Unlocking the Word, the first major anthology of found poetry, and invites all poets who are currently exploring the form or who may be interested in doing so to submit their work for consideration.
“Found poetry” is a literary form that uses words not meant to be a poem (as they originally appeared) and turning those words into a poem. A found poem works because the poet who discovers it is able to find poetry in ordinary language and discover or understand the aesthetic possibilities of all words no matter where they originally appear. Found poetry therefore involves an appreciative sense of the innate aesthetic possibilities of all language. The goal is to use poetic sensibilities to find the right text and to ensure its thematic and narrative integrity even while restructuring its form through spacing and line breaks. The original words therefore should not be changed, and the original text should not be edited or revised.
Sources can be any published text, including textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles, letters, emails, advertisements, speeches, and other “non-creative” publications. The anthology will not include found poems discovered in any literary text (poetry, fiction, or drama).
Unlocking the Word will focus on the joy of the discovery of the transformative aesthetic elements in everyday language and the poetry that resides all around us. Jonas Zdanys is an award-winning bilingual poet and literary translator.
How to Submit:
- Submissions should be emailed, as a Word document attachment only, to Jonas Zdanys: 26marketstreet@comcast.net
- Submit up to 5 found poems, on or before December 1, 2017. Include your name and email address on each poem. Previously published poems should be acknowledged.
- For each found poem, indicate the exact source of the original text.
- Include a short biography and a listing of books published, if any.
Poets will be notified in early 2018 if their works have been selected for inclusion in Unlocking the Word.
Other anthologies from Lamar University Literary Press include:
- The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, Jerry Bradley and Ulf Kirchdorfer, editors
- Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems, Jonas Zdanys, editor
- A Shared Voice, Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer, editors
- The Beatest State in The Union, Chris Carmona, Rob Johnson, and Chuck Taylor, editors
- Texas Weather: An Anthology of Poetry, Short Fiction, and Nonfiction, Terry Dalrymple and Laurence
- Musgrove, editors