As/Is







4.20.2004


This is not a poem, this is / A PRESS RELEASE

THE
HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY:
A SUBMISSIONS CALL

Meritage Press is pleased to announce a Submissions Call for THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, co-edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young. Deadline: December 31, 2004. Send submissions (cutnpasted in body of e-mail) to MeritagePress@aol.com
Please submit no more than ten (10) hay(na)ku. If you have any commentary about the form itself, please feel free to share that as well as we'd like to incorporate other poets' thoughts in an Afterword essay.

***

"Cameron was a counter. He vomited nineteen times to San Francisco. He liked to count everything."
--from The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan, as quoted in June 10, 2003 WinePoetics Blogpost at http://winepoetics.blogspot.com

The "hay(na)ku" is a Filipino and diasporic poetic form conceptualized by Eileen Tabios, as inspired by the character "Cameron" in Richard Brautigan's novel The Hawkline Monster and Jack Kerouac's thoughts on the "American haiku." More information on the hay(na)ku's background is available in the June 2003 posts at Tabios' former blog "WinePoetics" at http://winepoetics.blogspot.com, as well as at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Center at http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/young/tabios.ptml. As illustrated by Oliver de Paz's hay(na)ku below, the hay(na)ku is a tercet where the first line consists of one word, the second line of two words, and the third line of three words:

Dogs
tongues loll.
Emphatic earth sponges.
--Oliver de la Paz

For this anthology project, variations on the hay(na)ku are also acceptable, e.g. hay(na)ku sequences where the poem consists of more than one tercet; reverse hay(na)ku where the lines unfold as three words, two words and one word; and any other such variations as the poet may propose. Hay(na)ku in non-English languages are also acceptable, as long as they are submitted with English translations.

For examples of hay(na)ku, feel free to check out the Hay(na)ku Blog at http://eileentabios.blogspot.com

THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY will be published either in book form or as an e-book. If the latter, authors will receive contributors' copies. Expected release date will be in 2005.

BIOS OF EDITORS:
Jean Vengua lives in Santa Cruz California. She is co-editor with Elizabeth Pisares of Tulitos Press. Her poetry has been published in various print and online journals and anthologies, including Proliferation, We (print and audio CD), Babaylan, Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Moria, Sidereality, Interlope and X-Stream. As Jean N. V. Gier, her introduction "Variations on a Circle in Blue," appears in Eileen Tabios's book of short stories, Behind the Blue Canvas; other essays appear in Jouvert (N.C.S.U.), Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Cultural Criticism (U.C. Berkeley), and Geopolitics of the Visual: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures. "Flux & Abilidad: Notes on a Filipino American Poetics," is forthcoming in PinoyPoetics, edited by Nick Carbo. She maintains the blog "Okir" at http://okir.blogspot.com.

Mark Young is a New Zealander who has lived in Australia for a number of years. He was published widely in both countries during the 1960s & the first half of the '70s, but then drifted away from writing for almost 25 years. A request to include some of his poems in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 (http://www2.auckland.ac.nz/aup/books/big_smoke2.html) was the prompt that got him back writing again. In the last few years his poems have appeared in both print & electronic journals from Alba to xStream & many places in between. His books include New Zealand Art 1950-1967 (1968), Blues for New Lovers (1969) & The right foot of the giant (1999). He has two weblogs, Pelican Dreaming (http://pelicandreaming.blogspot.com) which is his main one, & Series Magritte (http://seriesmagritte.blogspot.com) which is an on-going series of poems inspired by the great Surrealist painter. There is also an author's page at the New Zealand electronic poetry centre (http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/young).