Poetry Partners Hold Artwork Contest for Fifth Chapbook

It's been said (quite a few times) that a picture is worth a thousand words. Even though Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I are poets, we think the original author may have underestimated, and we'd like you--if you're a painter or a photographer--to prove us wrong.

We are the coauthors of the Celebration Series of chapbooks of poetry.

They include Cherished Pulse (for anyone you love), She Wore Emerald Then (for mothers on your gift list), Imagining the Future (for Fathers), and Blooming Red, a Christmas chapbook. Chapbooks have been a tradition in the poetry world since Elizabethan times. The Celebration Series goes beyond the cliched sentiments in most greeting cards - and does it for about the same price.

All four of our chapbooks are illustrated by artists making each a triple effort.

Cherished Pulse and Blooming Red feature artwork from California artist Vicki Thomas. She Wore Emerald Then features photographs by May Lattanzio (see the cover in the Amazon buy-link at the left)  and Imagining the Future a photo by one of America's most celebrated composers of opera, music theatre and songs Ricky Ian Gordon (he's also my uncle).  We are planning a fifth chapbook lauding women's issues and feminist themes. We are looking for submissions to be used on its cover. Yes, it's a contest.

The winner's work will be featured on Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity to be published later in 2011. There is no pay but since I run The Compulsive Reader, and Howard-Johnson is the author of a multi award-winning series of books for writers including The Frugal Book Promoter, we can promise a wide distribution of the cover image, credit, and a biography of the cover artist in the book, and tons of marketing exposure.

See the other chapbooks' covers at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm.

Here is a poem from that chapbook to give you an idea of its contents:


Cetacean Dreaming

Last night I dreamt
I swam with dolphins
under the angry chaos above
boiling, bubbling wave crash
we moved slowly
sharing mammalian wisdom
in clicks and whistles.

My cetacean body slate blue
thick and fluid
moved easily through the pod
belying the great heft of me
swimming , like flying
the glide and slide as I forgot everything but smooth flow
velocity.

Sonar guided me forward
echolocation to a destiny
nothing like domination
consumerism and desire
the triple bang crack of light
that woke me
to my frail, flawed humanity.

If you have something you'd like us to see, please e-mail your creative work to me at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with SUBMISSION: DEEPER INTO THE POND in the subject line. We hope to have a decision by June 1, 2011 and we reserve the right to select no winner. If a winner is selected, we may also choose runners-up so those acknowledgments may be used by the winners for purposes of marketing. There is no fee for entering, and only the honor and publication of the artwork for being selected. Oh, yes. And two copies of the finished chapbook. We hope to hear from you.