Chroma

Chroma: A Queer Literary and Arts Journal is based in London and is published twice a year. Ben Fergusson is the editor. Saradha Soobrayen is the poetry editor and Andras Gerevich, Sophie Mayer, Mike Upton and Pascal O’Loughlin are the commissioning editors. Like many arts organizations in the UK, Chroma receives support from Arts Council England.

Noted gay literature pioneer, Richard Labonte, calls Chroma, “the premier print magazine for gay and lesbian prose writers, poets and artists.” Submissions are accepted from all people who identify as queer, regardless of their sexual orientation. Issues are themed and the scheduled themes are provided more than two years in advance. The next available submission deadline is August 1, 2010. The theme for that issue (#12) is Youth. The February 1, 2011 submission deadline is for Issue 13 the theme of which is “Faith.”

Chroma’s recent 2009 International Queer Writing Competition winners were announced on their website with prizes awarded to three poets and three short story writers. Additional contest submissions were acknowledged as “poetry shortlist” and “short story shortlist.”

Issue 7, the theme of which was “There” featured the work of LGBT writers and artists from around the world. Some represented writers received their first English translation with that issue.

The magazine appears to represent a full range of queer and LGBT sub groups rather than focusing on gay men or lesbians as is the case with some niche publications in the LGBT community.

There are very specific submission parameters provided by the editors. Submissions must be identified as either a prose, poetry or art submission in the subject line. Work must be submitted in Word (.doc) format or .rtf. No other formats are accepted. Prose writers may submit only one story at at time which may not have been published previously. 5,000 words is the maximum length. Poetry submissions may be no more than three poems at a time and poems should not exceed sixty lines per poem.

The notification time is within three months. The editors acknowledge that they wish they were able to provide more personal responses to submissions but, at present, they are not staffed to do so. If writers have not gotten a response before the issue for which they submitted work is published, they are no being considered for that issue. In some cases, a writer or artist’s work may not be able to be used in a current issue but the quality of the submission catches the eye of the editors. In those cases, the writer will be asked to submit additional examples of their work for possible inclusion in a future issue.

DB

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Deepstep Come Shining

POR: Rubén Varona

“Lead me, guide me to the light of your paper. Keep me in your
arc of acuity. And when the ream is spent. Write a poem on
my back. I’ll never wash it off.”


Como si se tratase de la película de una cámara fotográfica, cada uno de los poemas que componen Deepstep Come Shining, de la autora norteamericana Carolyn D. Wright, o C.D. Wright; ofrecen al lector una imagen, una sensación, una visión de las carreteras sureñas y rurales de Georgia, en los Estados Unidos. Cada poema o mejor, cada fotografía, construye un universo en sí mismo, autónomo, pero a la vez interdependiente, pues se perfecciona con la lectura secuencial de la obra; es decir, con el revelado de la película y la puesta en un álbum de cada una de las imágenes, para ser apreciadas en su conjunto.
En las imágines que encierran los versos, la sensación de movimiento, contrastado con algunas dosis de quietud, son una lectura muy aguda de la vida, de alguien que se hizo al lado del camino; que se detuvo para observar al detalle, con la lupa del demiurgo, del creador, para de esta manera seguir avanzando, haciendo partícipe al lector de sus visiones.
Los poemas de C.D. Wright contenidos en este libro, son el resultado de una continua experimentación tanto en forma como en contenido y lenguaje. La anterior es una de las razones por las cuales ella es considerada por la crítica como una artista irreverente, que encierra en su lenguaje poético la misma demencia de la vida que se siente al conducir a altas velocidades, atravesando diferentes parajes; pero también haciendo un stop, una parada para hacer propio aquel lugar, para que no le pertenezca a nadie más, diferente de ella.
El “boneman”, así como el “snakeman”, son alusiones recurrentes en el libro, son los demonios de la autora que hacen parte del imaginario recreado en su poesía, como si a través de ellos Wright se desdoblase para purificar su espíritu salvaje, vital e irreverente:
"In my book, poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so."
El ritmo de su poesía se marca por la secuencia de ideas, por el universo de imágenes y símbolos utilizados insistentemente; por la repetición de objetos, personajes y lugares. Toda su poesía pertenece a un tiempo determinado; a un momento donde florecen sus visiones e ideas del mundo; donde la poeta llena su vida de sentido, y su viaje se catapulta de un plano físico a uno metafísico, de búsqueda constante de sentido en un mundo en construcción.
No queda más que disfrutar del lenguaje, de la lirica C.D. Wright, de su imaginario, que apropiamos al sentarnos como pasajeros y disfrutar de las caricias del viento.

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Boston Review

Boston Review is probably best known for its current fiction editor, Junot Diaz who received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008. BR was founded in 1975 and is an independent, nonprofit institution. It aims to expand political debate combining politics and poetry down the page. It has a national readership, and currently seeks writers in both poetry and fiction. Submissions are accepted through the online submissions system, or by mail: Boston Review, 35 Medford St. Suite 302, Somerville, MA 02143. A self-addressed stamped envelope must accompany all snail-mailed submissions. Faxed or emailed submissions will not be accepted. Payment varies. Response time is generally 2-4 months.

POETRY:  
BR reads poetry submissions between September 15 and May 15 each year. Use the online submissions system.

FICTION:
  BR reads fiction submissions between September 15 and May 15 each year.

From Junot Díaz, fiction editor: “I’m looking for fiction that resembles the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: ‘She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.’ Or as Takashi Murakami puts it: ‘We want to see the newest things. That is because we want to see the future, even if only momentarily. It is the moment in which, even if we don’t completely understand what we have glimpsed, we are nonetheless touched by it. This is what we have come to call art.’ I’m looking for fiction in which a heart struggles against itself, in which the messy unmanageable complexity of the world is revealed. Sentences that are so sharp they cut the eye.” Keep submissions under 4,000 words and use the online submissions system.

BR also runs an annual short story contest. The 2009 contest is closed; the next deadline will be in Fall 2010.

-- Lisa Reyes

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