CAROUSEL has started an ongoing, international chain of response poems.
WHAT IS THIS PROJECT ALL ABOUT?
Poems are often in conversation with other poems — from those that recreate or re-envision long-standing formal conventions, to those written “after” or “inspired by” poems that came before them. Here at CAROUSEL, we want to experiment with this tradition in a deliberate way, on a large scale, over time. We therefore bring you CHAIN, an ongoing, global series of response poems — each connected to the one that came before it but also different enough to stand on its own and lead somewhere new. It starts with one poem — one link in the chain — and it gets built, link by link, indefinitely. We want to make something massive, meaningful and maybe a little bit monstrous.
THE CHAIN SO FAR:
Every chain needs a first link … to get things started, CAROUSEL commissioned the fabulous Canadian writer Andy Verboom to create CHAIN 01, the first poetic link in this project. We chose Andy because of his long-standing interest in collaborative poetics, both as an author of chapbooks like Full Mondegreens with David Huebert, and as a publisher of the ekphrastic journal long con and the multi-authored-chapbook press Collusion Books.
Aug 2020 / ANDY VERBOOM (Halifax, NS / Canada) — Delusional Structures of the Inner Ear
Sep 2020 /ZACKARY MEDLIN (Salt Lake City, Utah / USA) — Tinnitus as a Form of Pareidolia
Oct 2020 /ROXANNA BENNETT (Whitby, ON / Canada) — Ménière’s Apophenia
Nov 2020 /KERRY RAWLINSON (Peachland, BC / Canada) — Lady Mondregreen
Dec 2020 /JEREMY COLANGELO (London, ON / Canada) — Foe Names
Jan 2021 /NATALIE WILKINSON (Montana / USA) — Trundlesung
Feb 2021 / GRAEME BEZANSON (France) — Virgin of the Rocks
(Mar 2021) CHRIS TOMPKINS (Dartmouth, NS / Canada) — Hibernate, Sweet Ghostess
INSPIRED … WANT TO SUBMIT?
If you want to be the next link in this poetic chain, visit our Submittable NOW and note these guidelines:
· submit 1 poem for consideration that responds to the most recent poem in the chain
· include your FULL NAME and EMAIL, and a short BIO
· preferred file format is .DOCX (we will also accept .DOC and .PDF)
· be sure to indicate which poem you are ‘responding to’ in the TITLE LINE of the submission
· we are interested in any and all forms of poetry including traditional, formal, experimental and concrete
EACH CHAIN LINK SUBMISSION WINDOW WILL BE OPEN FOR A PERIOD OF 3 WEEKS (from the date of announcement of new poem — on or around the 7th day of the month — to the end of month)
As this project grows, visit this page often to read all the poems in the chain-to-date — remember, this is a forward-moving project and you should only be responding to the latest poem in the chain (it’ll always be the one at the bottom of the list) — pay close attention to this page, our blog, our social media, or join our email list for updates.
This call will remain open indefinitely; when we choose and publish a new response poem, it will be announced, and added to the chain of poems above. At that time, the call will be updated, requesting a response to the next poem in the chain …