Eve of May Announcements
“Neural Octopus” by Bradley David
Hello.
Before an editorial announcement, a non humble brag because we should be proud of our work and also amplifying the indie publishers who are surviving and thriving.
Three of my poems will be published by Terrain.org in December, complete with my audio readings. My second appearance in Terrain, and do I ever love them for it. Have you explored their site? Wow, they are a tremendous repository for essential writing on place, climate, and justice.
Oh! And four pieces will be published in Exacting Clam. My third appearance there, and do I ever love them for it. They do weird well. They also used my mom’s surreal/speculative painting as their cover art for their Spring 2024 issue. It’s a family affair.
Announcement! jmww’s Blended & Beyond section opens for submissions on Tuesday April 30th. I am addicted to the suspense and curiosity of clicking on each submission. Four times a year I have that honor as the senior editor of Blended & Beyond. Ours is a small section, staffed only by me and EIC Jen Michalski. That means only a handful of accepted pieces, which we pair with images (unless image was part of the work itself). Hybrid and beyond-genre work by new and established writers. Won’t you consider submitting? Here’s the call…
Call for Submission, Blended & Beyond, Volume 6
Lately I've been falling asleep to a rather confident poetry textbook. It's all in the balance. You'll want to react with approximately 19% seething disagreement, 30% muffled guffaws, and 51% Garfield-eyed apathy. Then pour warm milk over it—the book and the ratio. Let it soak overnight. Dust with the crumbled wreckage of limited-edition Pop-Tarts. Taste that rainbow. Feel that word surge. Poetry is the drug of dissidence.
Quick, write it all down before daybreak makes a realist outta ya! Whatever you dredge from that goop of disagreement, guffaw, apathy, pulp, and Pop-Tarts is our theme for Volume 6.
We love when you trust your instincts. When rules don't sit right and you trust your heart-mind to crack open a wholly new genre. Or, go for the classics. Think of a textbook as bad hotel art and write an ekphrastic. View that ekphrastic as a bad hotel and create an erasure. Submit that new topography and sleep tight on the promise of cognitive tourism.
I guess what I'm saying is, write a poem on the back of a Pop-Tart and nail it to a hotel wall. Submit a photo of that rock & roll and we'll toss a TV out the window in your honor.
And remember: jmww features prominent and new writers alike, and Blended & Beyond is eager to celebrate the spirit of discovery and diversity. All are welcome and nothing is too strange. If it’s a mashup of more than one something, please send it. If it's only one thing, please let it marinate with the others. If it's AI—hard pass. That’s all.
With love, gratitude, and the utmost respect for your work,
Bradley David
Senior Editor, jmww, Blended & Beyond
