Contributor Update: Get in the Flow with the 10th Anniversary Issue of “diode”

Greetings, true believers! We here at Superstition Review have an extra-special announcement: Our dear friends over at diode have released their 10th Anniversary Issue, replete with the profoundly excellent poetic stylings of more than a few past contributors to Superstition Review, including (but not limited to);

  • John Gallaher
  • Rae Gouirand
  • Carolyn Guinzio
  • Kathleen Hellen
  • Bob Hicok
  • Susan Rich
  • Lee Ann Roripaugh
  • Patricia Colleen Murphy

Do yourself the immense kindness of taking a lil’ poetry break with the 10th Anniversary issue of diode, and to the goodly gaggle over at diode, Superstition Review says congratulations! Here’s to a hundred more years of poetry.

Cheers to diode!
The logo for diode, currently celebrating 10 excellent years of existence.

Poetry Northwest’s Science Issue Explores Poetry & Science

The Science Issue
cover art by Amanda Knowles

Poetry Northwest announced publication of its Spring & Summer 2012 magazine. The Science Issue presents an intriguing exploration of the intersections of poetry and science through works by poet scientists from fields encompassing “astrophysics and quantum mechanics to geology, botany, ornithology, and marine biology” and other related works.

“I’ve always taken a deep interest in the sciences—biology, astronomy, and physics in particular,” says editor Kevin Craft. “And I’m fascinated by the representational overlap between poetry and science: how each serves as an image or model of realities difficult to perceive in any other terms. Also their common capacity to be profoundly misunderstood in the public arena, where nuance and complexity never fare well. With our spring issue, we have a chance to clarify the conversation on both accounts.”

Featured writers include Alison Hawthorne Deming, who read for Superstition Review in the Spring of 2011, Bob Hicok, whose poems were published in SR‘s Issue 2 in Fall of 2008, Linda Bierds, Timothy Donnelly, Amy Greacen, Richard Kenney, Katherine Larson, Sarah Lindsay, and others.

One of these featured writers is Katherine Larson, a molecular biologist, field ecologist and poet who earned a BS in ecology and evolutionary biology and a BA in creative writing from the University of Arizona and an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. Larson is the author of Radial Symmetry, a book of poems melding science and poetry. In “Science and Stanzas,” an article she authored for The Scientist magazine, Larson describes how this intersection of science and poetry works. “Whether dosing lung cancer cells or dissecting the branchial heart of a squid, working at the edge of knowledge requires equal measures of perception and imagination, science and art; a balance I hope can be found in the hybrid explorations of Radial Symmetry.”

For more information, see: http://www.poetrynw.org/

Forthcoming: Meg Pokrass

How short can a short story be? Meg Pokrass asks – and answers – that question in her fiction, which often takes the form of flash-fiction and micro-stories. Though her stories are short, they pack the same emotional punch that can be found in a lengthy piece of a prose. She delivers her characters and narrative in compact, meticulously chosen details. For example, in her short-short story “The Big Dipper,” about a young girl trying to navigate her adolescence by purchasing a four-foot-deep pool for her backyard, she conveys a great deal of personal information about her main character’s background in a single sentence. Referring to her mother, the narrator divulges that “Now that Dad has his own place and his bi-polar disorder, she had all kinds of new expressions.” Some of her shortest stories are only between 90 and 100 words long. In this compact form she writes of mother-daughter relationships, adolescence, sexuality, insecurity, and identity.

In her review of Meg Pokrass’s recent collection of short stories, Damn Sure Right, Tessa Mellas compares Pokrass’s flash fiction to the “richest morsels of chocolate. You can’t inhale them by the fistful.” This description does Pokrass’s stories justice; her fiction demands that you stop for a moment after reading, that you take in every single detail individually to get the full experience of her micro-narratives.

We asked Meg Pokrass to share her writing process, in particular what inspired the short story that will be appearing in Superstition Review Issue 8, which will launch in December. Click here to view the video that gives us a glance behind the scenes.

Visit her website at http://www.megpokrass.com