ktravula – a travelogue!

Sentinel Annual Writing Competitions & Publication News

SENTINEL ANNUAL WRITING COMPETITIONS & PUBLICATIONS NEWS

 

1.  Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition 2012

2.  Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition 2012

3.  All the Invisibles by Mandy Pannett published

 

There are just 7 days left for you to enter the Sentinel Annual Poetry and Short Story Competitions closing on the 30th of November 2012.

 

SENTINEL ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012

Our maiden  annual short story competition judged by Tears in the Fence Editor,David Caddy will close on the 30th of November.

Make your own literary history; be the first person to win the Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition with an extraordinary story in English language, on any subject, in any style up to 2000 words long.

PRIZES

This competition offers prizes of £500 (1st), £250 (2nd), £125 (3rd) and 5 x £25 High Commendation Prizes.

PUBLICATION

All winning and commended stories will also receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

FEES

£5 per story (first 2 stories), £3.50 per story thereafter. Enter as many stories as you wish.

ENTER ONLINE & PAY SECURELY BY PAYPAL HERE:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/short-story.html

TO ENTER BY POST, PRINT OUT AN ENTRY FORM AND RULES HERE:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/sasc2012-entry-form.pdf

 

 

SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION 2012

Our 3rd annual poetry competition judged by Blood Brothers and Fixing Thingsauthor, Roger Elkin will close on the 30th of November.

Won in 2010 by Christian Ward and in 2011 by Bridport Prize winner, Terry Jones, Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition is a respectable prize keenly contested for every year by hundreds of poets from across the world. The competition is for poems in English language, on any subject, in any style up to 60 lines long (excluding title.)

PRIZES

This competition offers prizes of £500 (1st), £250 (2nd), £125 (3rd) and 5 x £25 High Commendation Prizes.

PUBLICATION

All winning and commended poems will also receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

FEES

£5 per poem (first 2 poems), £3.50 per poem thereafter. Enter as many poems as you wish.

ENTER ONLINE & PAY SECURELY BY PAYPAL HERE:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/poetry.html

TO ENTER BY POST, PRINT OUT AN ENTRY FORM AND RULES HERE:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/sapc2012-entry-form.pdf

 

 

ALL THE INVISIBLES

A new poetry collection by MANDY PANNETT

 

We are pleased to announce the publication of All the Invisibles by Mandy Pannett on the SPM Publications imprint.

 

Buy this book today first of all because it is one of the finest poetry collections published in the UK this year. Another reason to buy this book is that by getting yourself this modern intriguing work, you also support the work we do at Sentinel Poetry Movement. See the quality of our publication and perhaps discuss the possibility of your next book appearing on our imprint.

 

Learn more about All the Invisibles here:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/publications/alltheinvisibles/

Sentinel Annual Writing Competitions & Publication News was published on November 24th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the Literature, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Written Over Luxembourg

Dawn wafts in at a distance –

a crimson glow amidst the cloud

like mounds of angry smoke.

We float above a cumulus, with

old empires wasting beneath

the loaves of precipitations.

 

The child in me always

believed that angels lived here

up in the shining layers of the sky.

But now, black heft of crowded soot

hang there in shapes of gnomes

as our wing extends into a distance.

 

We remain a bump in the sky

trapped in man’s reckless bet

against wind and gravity.

In this cubicle, this window view

into a waking world

there is no silver lining, except us,

far above everyone else.

 

Defying the sky,

I am here as this daylight begins.

 

Written Over Luxembourg was published on August 12th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , under the Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Kitengela Nights

(Kenya, 2005)

 

Kitengela nights, a freedom flight.

Dry wisps of grass fly by, breaking

with the cold wind of a pregnant night

as harmattan singes the flesh and mind,

lungs dotted with dust and rust.

 

Nairobi evening. Lights, cold,

And love – ugali and roasted meat,

Nyama choma, in the walled hub

Of a distant home from home:

Then, warmth in the eastern country.

 

April winds break across my face

in the bust of a fast-moving beast.

We were four – and a few more,

Strangers in a foreign land, alone.

Only love moved, hosted, filled us.

 

Now, the mind journeys back

In soft bytes of soothing moods:

dark, homely evening, Kenyan tropics.

Rain and home in a distant place.

Kitengela, you live across from me.

Kitengela Nights was published on April 3rd, 2012, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Words with Jason

Jason Braun, a spoken word poet operates out of Edwardsville. He’s a friend and a Hemingway aficionado. I spoke with him a few days ago about his influences and his opinion on spoken word poetry. His spoken word mixtape is entitled  “Made This For You: The Mix Tape as Literature” given away yesterday at Jasonandthebeast.com. This mixtape was a product of the Association of Writers Programs & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Chicago. 

Tell me about the source of your fascination with rap and poetry.

I started writing poetry in high school after reading Shakespeare. I was listening to the Wu Tang Clan at the same time. Eventually I realized that these two things were more similar than they were different. Then for a long time I was influenced by the Poetry Slam, the Beats and the Black Arts Movement. I was lucky to get to study with Eugene B. Redmond at siue and his jazz backed album was a big influence on me.

Later I started a band called Jupiter Jazz with Jerry Hill (DJ Uptown) and it was Hip Hop, Jazz, and Poetry. We had some big breaks and played some great shows including Riverfest in Little Rock, Arkansas with people like B.B. King and The Wallflowers. I then started the “Jason and The Beast” project to make sonnets into a Hip Hop album.

“Made This For You: The Mix Tape as Literature” is about pushing the boundaries of what music, poetry, can do and where they can do it.

“What direction do you see for spoken word poetry in today’s world, especially because of the influence of social media?”

I see it moving in at least two directions. On the one hand you have spoken word and slam as new place that publishing poets can come from. I don’t want to call them academic poets but they’re poets that want to publish books. Two of my favorite poets that started in Slam and have left it behind are Patricia Smith and Tyehimba Jess. On the other hand spoken word poetry is being put to good use in the global community by people like my friend Michael Rothenberg and his”100 Thousand Poets for Change.”

These two directions won’t diminish the great thing that Marc Kelly Smith started when he created the Poetry Slam. He’ll still be drawing a crowd at the Green Mill in Chicago.

Do you see spoken word poetry as complementing publishing or standing alone from it. Do spoken word poets have to publish poems or does it just suffice to participate in the trade as oral griots.

I like to make stuff. Books, CD’s, downloads, apps, backpacks that prepare people for the coming mayan apocalypse–I’ve got all of those things in the works. Really. And I like to put on shows, sing, rap, and teach. The griots and Homer might be closer to my heart. I think about this a lot.

Are there any other shows that you’ve participated in that you can highlight? Where and when?

I’ve co-directed a multi media show for Adrian Matejka’s National Poetry Series winning book, Mixology. Me and DJ Uptown played a short set there. It great to rap for my professors and former professors and help try to bring Matejka’s amazing book into 3D.

Beside the jasonandthebeast website, where else can we find you (online and elsewhere)?

If you’re in Chicago from Feb 29th-March 3rd you can find me and some of my collaborators at the AWP Book fair by going to the Sou’wester table G5. If you don’t have tickets to AWP you can probably find me during the evening at the main bar at the Hilton Chicago (720 South Michigan Ave) or hanging out at The Green Mill (4802 N. Broadway), where Marc Smith once put me on as a featured guest of his Poetry Slam.

In the St. Louis area:
On Tuesday, March 27 from 12:30 – 2pm in the Maple/Dogwood Rooms of the MUC, Jason Braun will be presenting at SIUE’s College of Arts and Sciences Colloquium during the creative writing panel on “Thinking about Space.”

On Thursday, March 29th at 7pm Jason Braun will be featured at the SIUE bookstore as part of the Graduate Writers Read Series.

On Saturday, March the 31st from 7pm Jason Braun will be featured by the St. Louis Writers Guild for a night of poetry and music, which will be at Kirkwood Train Station. Raven Wolf will be doing jazz back-ups. Other poets include Treasure Shields Redmond, Nicky Rainey, Erin Chapman, Gerry Mandel.

And on 88.1 KDHX Monday Nights from 9-10pm hosting “Literature for the Halibut.” You can listen from anywhere in the world at kdhx.org

You can find more about Jason’s mixtape here.

Words with Jason was published on February 29th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the Art, Observations category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

For Subsideen the Gnome

Shigidi – a cursed African gnome – lay spread in an acid rain

bedraggled to the teeth, to the last hair on its wiggling tail.

Across from the junction where it lay in the throes of pain

are the broken bones of toothless men, skulls, splintered shale.

Little kids pace around with hands across their nose, disgust –

the ugly bastard once ruled the night like a fierce, rabid skunk.

They kick him around now with the dung around its wooden bust,

and laugh in the rain to  mothers’ delight. Old men play drunk.

The year began a dream – country luck hanging on a bilious rock;

a finger in the eye of the poor, struggling village. A buyover man.

A silver spoon flashes here in the light. This time a non-shod shock

rips through an angry country, silence morphing into a flash-pan.

Red eyes cohere and all that remains are burnt remnants of tare

as rain clears out painful drains. Shigidi withers into its nightmare.

For Subsideen the Gnome was published on January 8th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.