A Line in Time 6-7-2011

Greetings, Y'all Poets, Bards, n Troubadours,

NO SUBMISSIONS MEANS NO ANTHOLOGY.  Take heed.  Read the directions and submit you poems for Skipping Stones Vol VII.  Those poems you don't submit won't be published.  Though there is no guarantee for any given poem, those you do submit have at least a decent chance of making it into the book.

FLASH!!!  URGENT ALERT!!!  There are only 24 days left to submit poems, photos, artwork to Skipping Stones for consideration for publication in Volume VII planned for release in November.  But we gotta absolutely MUST have your $5 submission fee and up to 5 poems NOT LATER THAN midnight June 30.  Digital copy in Word Perfect, MS Word, pdf, or WordPad formats; graphics in pdf or jpg formats. See details [what, when, how] on the website ChesBayPoets.org and click on the picture of Skipping Stones Vol VII.

!!* Also on the subject of submitting your work for publication, The Quotable, let us give thanks to Leslye PJ Reaves, Editor, for birthing this new journal/lit magazine that has recently opened in Norfolk.  The idea of the publication is to present quotable writers, of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art.  Each issues addresses a theme.  Now accepting submissions for the Fall issue (Vol III) from June 1 to August 1.  The theme:  “The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.” ~Marcus Aurelius.  It's available in both digital and hard copy. *!!

Friday evening the Prime-Time Poetry Show will entertain your need for verse in your ear and a venue for you to read as well at Bean There Cafe in downtown Norfolk.

The Venue at 35th Street in Norfolk hosts an evening of open mic entertainment from music to story-telling to poetry to drama every Monday evening and late-week and weekend entertainment most of the time. Check 'em out at www.venue-35.com

Next week weekend at the Venue look for Dirty Barbie starting Thursday June 16.

Tuesday next week look for Word-4-Word Poets (Newport News).  ChesBayPoets.org click on the link in the RH sidebar on the Home page. Challenge is to look at your bookshelf at home and pick one word from the title of each of ten books, then write a poem using them one per line.  [not part of the challenge, it might be interesting to list the ten books you selected from your bookshelf, though not necessarily within the poem].  Same day (Southside) Jack Callan MC at the HRW opem mic reading at the Mary D. Pretlow Library at 111 W. Ocean Ave in Norfolk [that's pretty much where Granby St runs into Shore Drive].

http://ChesBayPoets.org tells most all, albeit misses one or another from time to time. Most of the cited events and venues can be found on the website, often on a link on the Home page or at least from the link to Monthly/Weekly events on the front page as well as from elsewhere inside the website.

Here is a BIG Heads Up.  Check out this summer series of 3 FREE writers workshops about getting published, especially how to write a sound and effective query letter and how to find and impress an agent. The rest of the series appears equally inviting. The presenters are rock-solid, successful writers. I'm signed up and ready to go to the Yorktown Publick Library on Rt 17 on the way to the Coleman Bridge from Southside.  If you want to seriously sell your book to a publisher, don't miss it.  All it costs is TIME and the belief that you really can write something somebody else wants to read.  (The link is to the flyer found on the ChesBayPoets website Home page in the RH column of links.

Look ahead to the Hampton Roads Writers third annual Writers' Conference at the Double Tree Inn in Virginia Beach.

Hey Y'all, check this out.  I subscribe for free to Narrative Magazine online, and it is amazing.  For example, here is a fabulousg poem that is last month's winner:  LAST WEEK, Puzzler challenged you to describe a smell in a single, vivid sentence. The winning entry came from Twister Marquiss:

The errant ball cracked against the man’s nose, immediately unleashing in his sinuses the hot scent of iron and blood and the decaying odor of shame that recalled his childhood.

This week, Puzzler challenges you to a second sensory task, this time focusing on touch. Can you precisely describe the feel of an object?   Now don't that just rock your socks!

Congratulations to Bob Young of Virginia Beach on the publication of his new (and long overdue) book of poems If Not Now When published by Poetica Publishing Company.  Click on the title for a link to the publisher to order. Or you can wait for him to rock and roll through doing a reading.  Additional congratulations to Chesapeake poet Phyllis Johnson for her fourth book of poems, Poetic Dreamer.

Writing won't make you fat, nor get you drunk. But if we don't munch and drink while writing and sharing our stuff, then why do we do it? - write, I mean.

Hoo ahhhhhhhhh

8>)

          pete/the mindworm