LANTERN REVIEW Issue 6 open to submissions!

The reading period for LANTERN REVIEW Issue 6 is now open!

Whereas their previous issue was themed, Issue 6 will be a general (i.e. not-themed) issue. If you refrained from submitting last year because of the theme, they hope you'll consider sending some work this time! Please note: all past contributors, except for those who are currently on staff or whose work appeared in Issue 5, are eligible to submit for Issue 6. They will be accepting submissions for Issue 6 through August 1st.

Please note that, with the exception of visual art and community voices proposals, you must use their online form to submit your work.

To begin, please read carefully through their guidelines, which can be found at: http://www.lanternreview.com/submissionsguidelines.html

At the bottom of that page, you will find a button that takes you to their submissions form.

Lantern Review aims to provide a virtual space in which to showcase Asian American poetry and to engage with issues relevant to its production and dissemination.

In their mission statement, they "seek to publish expertly crafted poetry in a variety of forms and aesthetics, including traditional and experimental pieces, hybrid and multimedia projects, and new translations. We welcome submissions from anglophone writers of all ethnic backgrounds whose work has a vested interest in issues relevant to the Asian diaspora in North America, as well as work created collaboratively in a community context."

I was interviewed for the Lantern Review earlier this January by Wendy Chin-Tanner and my poem Pen|Sword appeared in their fourth issue. I strongly encourage you to consider submitting work to them!

Tending the Speculative: Poems from the Asian American Adoptee Diaspora

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs' portfolio, "Tending the Speculative: Poems from the Asian American Adoptee Diaspora," for Line Break went live this week at http://aaww.org/tending-the-speculative/ Already, the portfolio has received enthusiastic plugs from Asian American Literary Review and the Smithsonian, but please help spread the word.

I'm among the poets included, along with Kev Minh Allen, Lee Herrick, Lisa Marie Rollins, Katie Hae Leo, and many other fine voices. I enjoyed reading through the other submissions and viewing  the artists' pieces that accompanied each of the poems.

My particular poem is displayed with Dana Weiser's Orphan Babies (Gold and Silver), 2009-2010. The babies are made from whiteware clay, Swarovski crystals, paint and lacquer. Born in Taejon, South Korea, Weiser was adopted by Jewish-American parents. Her recent artwork included an exhibition called “Who are you?!?” showcased at the Burnet Gallery in Minneapolis. For this portfolio, I sent in "Songkran Niyomsane’s Forensic Medicine Museum, 2003," inspired by true events. It will also appear in my newest book, DEMONSTRA when it come out later this year from Innsmouth Free Press.

Documents leading to the completion of "Tending the Speculative" will be deposited with the Library of Congress, which is currently working to develop its collection on adoptee experience.

I've particularly enjoyed seeing the way Kev Minh Allen's work has really grown over the years. I have happily featured some of Allen's work before in my duties as the Creative Works Editor for the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, and as guest editor for Eye to the Telescope, where I also selected some of the work of Lisa Marie Rollins as well. I hope it's not too long before we see full-length collections from either of them.

I performed with Lee Herrick during the release of our first books in January, 2008 at the Loft Literary Center, and he recently released a new book, Gardening Secrets of the Dead.  He's been on a convoluted journey, but never lost a sense of music on that road.  I usually frame the discussion of our work by as a case of my turning to speculative literature as a core technique of expressing the transcultural adoptee experience, while  Lee Herrick uses music, particularly rock and roll. I often also joke that he's been to Laos, but I still have to make it to Korea.

Outside of his poetry, I deeply admire Lee Herrick's work with the USEAA program at Fresno City College helping many Lao, Hmong and other Southeast Asian refugee youth to succeed. If you were going to start getting into his poetry, I'd probably first recommend his poem "Dancing Near a Body of Water" or "Ghosts."

Katie Hae Leo has always been one of the poets I like to watch, with great accomplishments additionally in taiko drumming, theater, and prose. If you get a chance to catch her in action, I highly recommend it. At her best when she's given free creative rein, she's absolutely breathtaking.

I think the good majority of the poems Jennifer Kwon Dobbs gathered for "Tending the Speculative" also reinforce my assertions in Locus Magazine that it is important to examine how Asian Americans are engaging with speculative literature. Especially through poetry. Ghosts are the predominating trope in this selection, but it would be interesting to see how transcultural adoptees work with other speculative symbols.

For example, I believe a survey on the matter will find demons are a prominent metaphor we employ, of course, followed occasionally by vampires, werewolves or other skinwalkers. Of course, we can also find transcultural adoptees occasionally using poems to subvert Rosemary's Baby/Damien antichrist imagery. But can the transcultural adoptee experience also be captured using other speculative literature tropes?

Can we express our journey through the idiom of robots and automatons, like the modern Pinnochio of Steven Spielberg's A.I.? Or the tragic horrors of The Island of Dr. Moreau or Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus?  Obviously, I believe it can.

Much of my work has been to to find an escape hatch whereby we can express our journey without resorting to the current narrative cliches, rife with colonial baggage, in contemporary non-genre literature. Might we liken many transcultural adoptees experiences to the experience of Clive Barker's Nightbreed, where each misunderstood monster must come into their own awakening to discover community? When our alternative is a tale like The Red Thread, I believe such an option MUST be considered.

One quote from the preface of this portfolio that's lingering with many is:

"Although readers may be tempted to file this collection under “adoptee writing,” they might instead take notice of how these aesthetically diverse poems enact an urgent poetics emerging from displacement by war, militarism, poverty, social stigma against single mothers, neoliberal outsourcing of social welfare, and cultural and linguistic loss. In the not-so-distant past, to write from these conditions of orphaning would have been tantamount to expressing ingratitude, but today, to do so is to lay claim to history and to summon artistic and communal relatives for a poet’s task."

I would certainly ask you to take those ideas into consideration while contemplating these selections.

I extend a big thanks to Jennifer Kwon Dobbs for organizing this. She is the author of Paper Pavilion, recipient of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award, and Song of a Mirror, finalist for the Tupelo Snowbound Chapbook Award. I hope you'll take the time to read some of her poetry. Her "Libretto" has some wonderful lines in it, for example.

I first met Jennifer Kwon Dobbs briefly during the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Chicago, which seems like a lifetime ago. Currently, she is assistant professor of English at St. Olaf College, where she kicks butt with the race and ethnic studies program, teaching creative writing and Asian American studies. I applaud her for her continued journey as a writer and as a community figure.

The Margins, the flagship editorial platform of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, is "a bold new online magazine dedicated to inventing the Asian American creative culture of tomorrow." Guiding their philosophy is the idea that "In an age when Asian Americans are relegated to sidekicks, whether in sitcoms or the corridors of power, we believe it’s time to bring Asian Americans into the conversations that matter. We’re thinking about Asian American identity in a way totally different from anyone else for a pan-racial, trans-cultural, truly world-spanning audience."

[Poem] The Robo Sutra to appear in Expanded Horizons

Expanded Horizons has just accepted my poem "The Robo Sutra" for the July edition.

The mission of Expanded Horizons is "to increase diversity in the field of speculative fiction, both in the authors who contribute and in the perspectives presented. We feature speculative fiction stories and artwork, as well as essays about speculative fiction and fandom from diverse points of view."

In their mission statement, they explain further:

"Speculative fiction is an uncomfortable art – it is a tool by which we artists push readers and viewers outside of their comfort zones into the truly alien, and in so doing, help them to face themselves and grow as human beings. Excellent speculative fiction depends upon excellent “perspective shifting” skills- the same “mental muscles” we use when we learn to live, work and play with people from different racial, ethnic, cultural and sub-cultural backgrounds. In forming Expanded Horizons, we aim to push the field of speculative fiction out of its own “comfort zone” toward increased inclusion of, and comfort with, diverse perspectives, backgrounds and points of view.

It is comparatively easy to ask “what if?” about an alien culture that is labeled “fictional” than it is to learn to see through the eyes of those people who are different from us in our own neighborhoods and communities. In the real world, we have to take risks- and we can’t close the book if we don’t like what we see. But the speculative fiction community enjoys a challenge, embraces the “alien” with child-like curiosity. What if the readers and writers of speculative fiction applied their “perspective shifting” skills not just to the story on the page, but also to their own communities? What if speculative fiction itself aimed to push readers, writers and editors alike toward appreciating actual diversity with the same enthusiasm as we approach fictional diversity?

What if?"

"The Robo Sutra" breaks ground I believe as the first poem to discuss Laotown and our efforts to create Laobots who improve automation at the world's largest padaek factory without violating the 3 laws of robotics. Which is harder than you'd think with padaek. But I hope you enjoy it when it comes out!

Reminder: Elgin Awards Voting closes July 15th!

With the creation of the Elgin Awards, named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the Science Fiction Poetry Association will at last present annually an award for books published in the preceding year. There will be two categories, Chapbook and Book.

To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. E-books are eligible, but self-published books are not. Single-author and collaborative books are eligible; anthologies are not. Books containing fiction as well as poetry are not eligible. Books must be in English, but translations are eligible. In the case of translations that also contain the poems in the original language, those pages will not count toward the total page count. Nominated books must be made available to the Chair upon request to remain eligible.

Only members can nominate books. They may not nominate their own books, but they may nominate multiple books, and the books need not be by members in order to be nominated or to win. A list of nominated books will be posted on the SFPA website: title, author, poetry page count, and press name and address (URL or postal) will be required to nominate. If available, a link to a page where the book can be purchased or downloaded should be provided. Authors or publishers may also provide an e-mail address for SFPA members to request a .pdf of the book to facilitate reading for voting consideration.

The nominees for this year are:

Chapbooks
The Edible Zoo • David Kopaska-Merkel

The House of Forever: Selected Poems • Samantha Henderson (Raven Electrick Ink)

The Moon & Other Inventions • Kristina Marie Darling (BlazeVOX)

Out of the Black Forest • F. J. Bergmann (Centennial Press)

Songs of Steelyard Sue • J. S. Watts (Lapwing Publications)

Sonata Vampirica • Samuel Peralta (Windrift Books)

Full-length Books
Come Late to the Love of Birds • Sandra Kasturi (Tightrope Books)

Crouching Yak, Hidden Emu • David Clink ( The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box)

The Gorelets Omnibus: Collected Poems 2001-2011 • Michael Arnzen (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

Grim Series • Kristine Ong Muslim (Popcorn Press)

How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes • CSE Cooney (Papaveria Press)

The Last Selchie Child • Jane Yolen (A Midsummer Night's Press)

Lovers & Killers • Mary Turzillo (Dark Regions Press)

The Monstrance • Bryan D. Dietrich (Needfire Poetry)

Notes From the Shadow City • Bruce Boston & Gary William Crawford (Dark Regions Press)

Paranormal/Romance: Poems Romancing The Paranormal • Denise Dumars (Sam’s Dot)

Phantom Navigation • Robert Frazier (Dark Regions Press)

The Receptionist • Lesley Wheeler (Aqueduct Press)

White Shift • G. O. Clark (Sam's Dot Publishing)