Tuesday 12 June 2007

You'll have to move fast but...

LouAnn Muhm just sent me details of this call for submissions. If you’re like me, and have gradually accumulated a lot of bird poems, it might be up your street, although you’ll have to move fast because the deadline is Friday. I’m going to have a go, I think.
Even if it isn’t, though, they look like really beautifully produced chapbooks.

15 comments:

Andrew Shields said...

Thanks for the tip, Matt. I sent in five poems with/about birds.

Matt Merritt said...

Good stuff Andrew. I sent four today too.

Andrew Shields said...

What did you say your favorite bird was? I said it was the Swift.

Which it is, most days. Sometimes I am partial to the Oystercatcher, though.

And some time with a Red Kite or a Black Kite is always special.

Matt Merritt said...

I said Curlew, but like you it changes from day to day. Red Kites are definitely up there too, with Lapwings, Ravens and any wild geese. And I always have a soft spot for kestrels, because they're what first got me interested.
I love Swifts too - there's a pair nesting under the eaves of the house just along from me, so they're back and forth non-stop at the moment.

Tony Williams said...

Thanks Matt,
Think I got my submission in just about in time, given the time difference.

Hope you enjoy the Lowdham Festival - I wanted to go to the Staple launch (I'm in the new issue, I think) but have other commitments.
Tony

Andrew Shields said...

Curlews, Lapwings, Kestrels: beautiful birds with beautiful names.

Matt Merritt said...

Yes, I think a lot of the appeal that birds have for poets has to do with the names, both the standard ones and the dialect variations.

Colin Will said...

Thanks to a friend, I can give you a link to a site with the collective nouns for birds:


Rather disappointed that ravens, with whom I've often communed in the Scottish mountains, are treated disparagingly as "an unkindness of ravens". There ought to be a law!

Colin Will said...

Oops. the href vanished.
http://palomaraudubon.org/collective.html

Matt Merritt said...

Thanks Colin. I love collective nouns.
Agree with you about the ravens, though. They're just beginning to breed again round where I live, and they're great birds. They switch from menace to real playfulness with such ease.

Rob said...

I sent one poem. I realised, looking through my stuff, that most of my bird-poems featured dead birds!

I found two with live birds. One of them was about a dead man and it was already submitted elsewhere. The other was rubbish.

So I sent a poem, death-themed, containing the "suggestion" of birds.

I have no chance!

Andrew Shields said...

Now Rob's poem will get published and the rest of us will be shut out. :-)

Matt Merritt said...

Whatever happens, the editor is going to wonder why they've had a sudden deluge of last-minute submissions from Europe!

Your Teacher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
LouAnn Muhm said...

They'll never suspect it all traces back to Minnesota, somehow...

(sorry about the deleted comment--didn't mean to post from my "teacher" account)