All posts by Lisa Hase-Jackson

Open Submissions

Blog

South 85 Journal seeks submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction:

Send your work today!

• Poetry submissions should contain no more than 4 poems up to 8 total pages, one poem per page.

• Fiction submissions should be between 2000 and 5000 words. Please include the word count in an upper corner of the first page. For fiction that is under 850, please consider submitting your work to the Julia Peterkin Literary Award contest for flash fiction between June 1 and August 15.

• Creative Nonfiction submissions should be no longer than 6000 words. Please include the word count in your email.

Visit our Submittable page for full guidelines and to submit your work: South 85 Submittable

Submitters are encouraged to read past Issues of South 85 Journal before sending work. Here are selections from our last issue:

Fiction

Driving in This by Eric Rasmussen
Our Boys from Musandam by Jillian Schedneck
The Arcadia Diaries  by Derek Andersen

Nonfiction

Archaeology  by Melanie Smith
The First Stone  by Douglas Krohn

Poetry

Blessed Are the Middle Children by Andrew Analore
Rowboat in a Buttercup Field Accepts  by DL Pravda
Goodbye, Queenie, So Long  by Tony Reevy
Delivery  by Jesse Breite
The One About Eggs by Kathleen Wedl
Pandemic Baking  by Sara Eddy
That Age  by Ronald  J. Pelias
Seizure Poem by James Miller
When You Pick Up The World & Hand It To Your Daughter  by Sheree La Puma
Build to Suit  by Josh Crummer
The Scale  by Eric Odynocki
Oodles of Pudina by Aruna Gurumurthy

Businesses Need Poets and They Don’t Even Know It

Blog, , , , , ,

By: Zorina E. Frey

“Poetry and business writing are the Capulets and Montagues…”

Poetry is under appreciated by the business industry. It is not recognized as the staple of rhetoric its serves in our language. It’s overlooked as a hobby and not as the true literary artform it is.

Working as a copywriter, I can’t tell you how many interoffice pings I received from digital marketers and even C-level executives asking me to brainstorm some catch phrase for one of our clients. Being the poet I am, I didn’t hesitate to quickly ping back a list of options for them. It wasn’t until I joined a writing team for another company did I realize when writers aren’t strong poets, coming up with catchphrases doesn’t come naturally.

The Business of Writing Poetry

There is a disconnection between poetry and business writing. So many marketing agencies don’t realize they need a poet to be part of their writing team. Likewise, many poets may not realize their talents are needed outside of academia. Poetry’s carpe diems rhetoric breaks the rules of traditional business writing. On the other hand, business writing’s formal rules seem as though it quells poetry’s creative rhetoric.

Star-Crossed Rhetoric. If That Isn’t Poetry, I Don’t Know What Is.

Poetry and business writing are like two people who hate each other but are secretly in love and neither one of them wants to admit it. It’s as if these two writing artforms come from separate worlds but are essentially one in the same. Poetry and business writing are the Capulets and Montagues—star-crossed lovers destined to be together even though the world wants to keep them apart.

Are we good on the similes and metaphors?

These two literary forms can’t play nice together because of disapproving outside influences in their respected genre. Business writing has its traditional writing rules and poetry has a bohemian existence that thrives in academia. “Both academia and bohemians are perceived to live outside the economic and social systems…” (Gioia 107). However, every television commercial, radio podcast, company social media post, ecommerce product, and even electoral slogans signify a poetic voice.

There is a give and take on both sides. The poet must conform his or her work to traditional styles of writing and business writers need to make room in their rhetoric for the bohemian artform. The payoff—especially for the poet will result in a broader spectrum of professional writing options while businesses benefit from more insightful and rich content that can better appeal to a person’s senses.

Infomercial: Got Poetry?

When I worked as the lead copywriter for a digital marketing agency in Miami, our staff met twice a week for client updates and to discuss creative ideas. In a nutshell, the ideas involved searching for the right string of words to convey a client’s message that had to be clear, concise, and witty. What they were asking for is poetry.

When I worked as a content writer for a restaurant supply company, the team would spend up to 45 minutes agreeing on the right type of wording for an Instagram post. When it came to writing product descriptions for the company’s website and Amazon, the type of verbiage we were expected to produce had to complement the visually appealing product photo. This is also poetry.

When You Find That Writer, You’ll Know

Wouldn’t it then, make sense for employers to take a second look at their writing team, recognize the poets and give them the credit they deserve? Not every writer is a trained poet, and not every poet is a trained writer. There are writers whose skillset is strong with grammar. Another writer might be good at monologue and scriptwriting. Another writer may be strong at research, collecting facts, and reporting them. Then you have the poet who is pretty damn good at descriptive storytelling. For businesses that are lucky enough to have a writer who’s good at all these things, hold on to that writer. Hold on to that writer tight, and never let that person go.

 

Works Cited

Gioia, Dana Gioia. Ways of Living. Can Poetry Matter? Graywolf Press, 1992

 

 

Zorina E. Frey

Zorina Frey is an MFA candidate at Converse College from Miami, Florida. She’s published in the forthcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul: I’m Speaking Now, Shondaland, Writing Class Radio, Filter, and Michiana Monologues. Zorina holds a BA in Journalism and a certificate in web design from Indiana University. She also has a literary publishing certificate from Emerson College.

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle | South 85 Journal

Interview with Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Blog, , , , ,

By: Andrew K. Clark

 Book: Even As We Breathe

University of Kentucky Press, 2020.

“Good literature is felt in the body.” 

AKC – South 85: Tell me about the decisions you made around including Cherokee folklore in the novel. I am thinking of Spearfinger and other lore you included.

Clapsaddle: I wanted anything I included to be pretty natural. I wanted it to be something characters would reference casually anyway. I didn’t want to teach folklore through the narrative, so just as I would think about dialogue, for instance, I would think about what aspects of Cherokee stories or culture would be relevant in that moment. I needed it to serve a purpose, that it added another layer to the narrative. And there may be some instances where these inclusions might not be obvious to all readers, just those who have experience with Cherokee culture. That’s fine with me too. There are different layers for different readers.

AKC – South 85: I have a question around point of view. Cowney is an adult looking back on his life rather than telling the story from a teenager’s point of view. Tell me about that choice.

Clapsaddle: One of the most significant considerations when I was drafting the novel was to pay close attention to voice, mostly because of my experience with previous manuscripts. I had to spend so much time revising voice that I wanted to make sure I was being mindful about the voice I was selecting. I had read and teach Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and that was almost a trigger for me to recognize that I liked the retrospective voice, almost providing advice to the next generation based on one’s experience. It allowed me to present a character who was obviously well educated later in life. That’s another thing I felt I had to be careful of, I didn’t want to present native characters who seemed ignorant or uneducated, even though he or she was still a teenager. To do so would have blended so easily into stereotype. I wanted to provide a Cherokee character who could be intellectually reflective. So, the retrospective voice allowed me to do both: show him young and learning but also provide a voice that is more representative of our culture and people.

AKC – South 85: One thing I’ve heard you talk about in other interviews is the Great Smokies Writing Program. Tell us about how that program and the larger writing community have affected your work.

Clapsaddle: As you’ve probably experienced yourself, we live in a very rural area so finding a writing community is more difficult than if we lived in a major city. So, I’ve been involved with the North Carolina Writers Network for a number of years. After my first manuscript didn’t look like it was headed for publication, despite winning some awards, I wanted something new. I felt I was ready to start a new novel but I love structure and so I took a writing workshop with Heather Newton at the Great Smokies Writing Program that UNCA (University of North Carolina at Asheville) coordinates. The name of the workshop was “Git ‘Er Done – Write Your Novel,” which sounded cheesy enough for me, but it was great because [the program] set out a structure. The assignments were to write a synopsis, to write a first chapter, a final chapter, and a climax chapter. And that was incredibly challenging for me to write a synopsis for a novel that didn’t yet exist. But that workshop gave me the structure I needed to be successful as well as some early feedback on my ideas. As a mother and full-time teacher, it allowed me to sit down in short segments of time and build the novel. That’s what I needed. Everybody writes differently but I really need to know where I’m going. That workshop taught me how to set that up for myself. I expanded my network to the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop that Hindman Settlement School hosts each year and that has been instrumental in building my network. I talk to someone every single day from Hindman. If it were not for that workshop, Even as We Breathe wouldn’t have been published. Fireside Industries is an imprint that came out of the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop and University of Kentucky Press. Silas House became my editor, partly through Hindman.

AKC – South 85: What can you tell us about your next book?

Clapsaddle: (Laughing) I’ll tell you what I know. It is set in contemporary Cherokee and my protagonist is female, probably late 30s. What I am doing is looking at traditional Cherokee origin stories, extracting the values and themes from them and applying them to this modern context and exploring Cherokee politics in a way. I want to get at the tension between traditional and contemporary Cherokee culture.

AKC – South 85: This is more of a writer’s question. You had a first manuscript that won awards but didn’t publish. Having gone through your experience with Even As We Breathe, do you have a sense for why that was the case, or is it still a mystery?

Clapsaddle: I know that manuscript needs work, if I were to return to it. I know there are things I could do differently. But it’s still a bit of a mystery to me. It was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether, excerpts were published, etc. The more I get to know about this business, it really is being at the right place at the right time. I can tell you that I’m most interested in moving on to the new project rather than looking back.

AKC – South 85: You have a rich non-writing life, as a mother, teacher, and an avid mountain biker. Tell me how your non-writing life informs your writing.

Clapsaddle: One of the reasons I returned to teaching was the energy in my high school, both for the students and being around colleagues who are always thinking and troubleshooting issues. With students it’s the good, bad, and the ugly of teaching, right? I just think it’s a more authentic experience of the human spectrum. The kids are coming from different places, backgrounds, and ideas, and I need to approach them all the same. It just makes me think differently. It keeps me from getting in my own bubble. It fires something creative in my brain although it can be exhausting. With mountain biking, we are fortunate to live in a great place for biking and hiking, and I think reading should be a physical process. Good literature is felt in the body. It’s important for me to have a physical experience when I’m thinking about what I’m writing. Mountain biking does that for me. Mountain biking is like storytelling. You make it to the pinnacle to see where you’ve been and then you try to find the most exciting resolution possible without killing yourself.

AKC – South 85: If readers have enjoyed Even As We Breathe can you point them toward any other Easter Band of Cherokee artists they should pay attention to?

Clapsaddle: There are some really talented visual artists in the ECBI. Bear Allison is a wonderful photographer that everyone should check out. There’s a jewelry maker, Alicia Wildcatt who I really love. There is a group supported by the Sequoya Fund called Authentically Cherokee that supports our artisans on their website you can see the work directly.

AKC – South 85: Tell us about your influences.

Clapsaddle: I love a lot of the classic southern writers I studied in school, even though I now know some of them are problematic. I love Faulkner, I really do. The first native author that inspired me is now considered very problematic, but I will always say Sherman Alexie’s writing influenced me. He helped me realize I could write about where I am from instead of trying to write about something I’m not familiar with. Then it was those great Appalachian writers like Ron Rash and Charles Frazier and of course I now have Silas House for a mentor. Currently, I really love Louise Erdrich. She’s kind of my literary hero. I also love to teach Toni Morrison to my AP Lit students.

AKC – South 85: Tell us about your writing rituals.

Clapsaddle: I do a lot of writing off the page as I said before whenever I get outside or go bike riding. I might think about a sentence for an entire ride. I like structure, so I try to sit down to write with an objective in mind. I sometimes go to my family’s cabin to get a change of scenery.  But I love my writing space at home. I have a lot of windows and I decorate it with things I collect: rocks and feathers, seashells, etc. I want to have natural elements nearby even when I’m inside. Sometimes I build music playlists with songs that fit the space I want to inhabit in a scene. When I’m focused on word choice and syntax, however, I usually have to turn the music off.

 

 

Andrew Clark

Andrew K. Clark’s work has appeared in UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, fall/lines, The Wrath Bearing Tree, and other journals. Main Street Rag Press published his first full-length collection of poetry, Jesus in the Trailer, in 2019. He is searching for a home for his first novel, The Day Thief. He is a native of Asheville, NC, and an MFA candidate at Converse College.

Zoom

Writers’ Conferences in the Age of Zoom

Blog, , , ,

By: Russell Carr

“The online conference surpassed my expectations.”

Writers need community. We read each other’s work, give feedback, and help each other grow. It’s also nice to know there’s someone else out there struggling alone at a desk, holding you in mind. Many people find such communities at writers’ conferences, so much so that there are hundreds throughout the country. I enjoy them because I usually receive the best feedback on my short stories and personal essays within conference workshops, and I also gain friendships with fellow writers. Even though I’m usually shy around people I don’t know, I always enjoy mingling with a crowd of writers. They get what I love to do. Conferences also give me the opportunity to hear lectures from leading writers and educators. By the end of a long weekend or week, I leave tired but motivated. At the beginning of 2020, I planned to attend at least two writers’ conferences during the upcoming year. But by late February, COVID-19 changed my plans. I’d like to share my experiences with a few conferences, without naming names, during this time of social distancing and cancelled gatherings, and offer some lessons learned that might help you decide whether to attend one in the age of Zoom.

In the before times, 2019, one of my friends attended a writers’ conference and loved it. She encouraged all of our mutual writer friends to apply for the conference in 2020. Most, if not all, of us who applied were accepted into it. We joked about a conference takeover, but our goals were really so see each other in person again and to learn from other writers.

Then the pandemic hit. The conference was to be in the May. In March, the organizers held out hope to still have it, but soon many states were shutting down. They cancelled the conference, with the plan to return in 2021. Of course, we were all disappointed, but understood. At that same time, schools that had shut down were scrambling to figure out how to continue. Zoom was just beginning to be used for classes. Understandably, the conference didn’t want to enter that experiment so soon after the pandemic struck. We all hoped to attend next year.

I’d also signed up for a summer writers’ conference separate from the one with my friends. I’d discovered it the prior summer. Then, it had been a nice adventure.  It was about an eight-hour drive from my home, so that meant ten days without the usual work and home responsibilities, which my wife supported (Thanks again, Liza!). Being there without any friends meant I made many new ones. There were the conference regulars, some of them having attended ten or more summers and joked that it was their adult summer camp. There were other first-timers like myself and those in between. And then there were the faculty and staff who were very friendly and approachable. What I liked about it was just how laid back everyone who attended or taught at it was. I ate with different people every day. I stayed in a dorm, single room, and within a few days, I was having scotch every evening with a new friend there. During the day, I attended great lectures and readings, discussed them with new friends, and received great feedback on my own writing in workshops. By the end of the ten days, I knew I would return for more in 2020.

After the first conference I’d planned to attend with my friends was cancelled, I feared my summer plans were lost also. But even as the early struggles with transitioning to online meetings and school continued across the country, the summer conference organizers announced that they wanted to try an online version. Watching the troubles my son was having with online school, I was skeptical. But I decided it was worth trying, at least to get the workshop experience and lectures. I was nervous as the first day it approached. I didn’t like the idea of my experience depending upon my technology skills or the whims of my broadband.

The online conference surpassed my expectations, but it wasn’t the same as in person. The organizers did a great job getting the technology set up and sending out explanations about accessing each activity. My workshop was outstanding, among the best I’ve participated in. All of us did accidentally interrupt each other at times, but we were sensitive to that risk with Zoom and allowed for it. Occasionally, connections froze, but that didn’t stop the overall momentum that the workshop leader established and continued through hours of discussion. She told us that she’d led a workshop with Zoom through an MFA program’s summer residency a few weeks earlier, and her experience showed. The lectures were also great, and there was the added perk that I could turn off my camera. Then I could stand up, walk around, check my phone, but still listen and not distract anyone.

But there were some limits that no one could change. The conference tried to encourage participants and staff to hang out after hours in Zoom meeting rooms. People did, but, with the limits of online technology, only one person could speak at a time. If there was someone I wanted to talk with individually, I could reach out through private chat, or leave the group meeting room and call him or her directly. Also, I missed the meals with random participants and instructors. So, outside of workshop, it was difficult to make new friends. And because of limited ability to have individual conversations, I don’t know nearly as much about the people I did meet: their opinions they won’t share in a group, how they stand while they talk, what they like to drink or eat, or even their heights. All the body language. We connected, but didn’t.

As the pandemic continues, we all have to take what we can get when it comes to social interactions. Fortunately, everyone is learning more about using online opportunities and how to adapt them to our expectations and needs. I encourage you to continue to seek out connections through those writers’ conferences that are still happening, even if you don’t leave your desk to attend them. Online conferences also offer new opportunities. With so many of them moving to an online format, this can be an excellent time to attend ones that have been too far away, such as overseas or ones on the opposite coast of America from you. Their online versions are also cheaper, since they don’t have to include room and board.

Some things to look for, in my opinion, are how the organizers plan to conduct online workshops and lectures. Will the groups for workshops be smaller than their prior in person ones, for instance, so all participants can talk more easily in them? Do the organizers have experience with online programs, such as also participating in MFA programs? Lectures can still happen in large groups, but beware of ones that are described as large discussion groups, panels, or question and answer sessions. Those can prove very difficult to participate in. Will the times fit with your schedule, including a difference in time zones? The conference might start late or early to accommodate time zone differences. Will there be breaks between events? I found that I needed more time away from the computer screen than I needed between in-person sessions. If the conferences is still meeting in person, which I don’t recommend, how do they plan to implement safety precautions? How does that change room and board for the conference?

While we all wait as the vaccines are being distributed, I hope to meet you at an online conference!

 

Russell Carr

Russell Carr is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Maryland. He has a BA in Russian Literature from UNC at Chapel Hill, an MD from the University of Tennessee, and an MFA from Converse College. He recently retired from the United States Navy after twenty years of service. He was the review editor for South 85 Journal for two years, and currently serves as the journal’s fiction editor.

Terms of Endearment: Emotive Diction in Poetry

Blog, , ,

By Mel Sherrer

 

What makes a poem captivating? Creating concrete imagery using descriptive language can decidedly make a poem beautiful, but for poetry to be captivating it must do more than make the reader see through the eyes of the poet, it must also manipulate the reader to feel as the poet intends them to feel.  Essentially, the question is how can a poem be written to not only entertain, but to affect a reader? The answer lies in diction.

Word choice amplifies descriptive language by adding emotional connotation and context for the imagery presented in a poem.  For example, a writer can present the image of a rose to the reader in a poem, which is typically a pleasant image, evoking pleasant sensory experiences, like the sight or smell of roses. A writer can also make choices about the context built around an image using emotive diction. The poet could call it a putrid rose, a woeful rose, or a haunted rose, consequently altering the connotation of a widely recognized symbol.

One notable progression toward emotive diction in poetry happened during the Romantic period of literature, during which poets sought new ways to intrigue both scholars and laymen. Romantics rejected the use of lofty language in poetry, because it created too much distance between the poet and reader for the poems to be relatable and understandable. The solution was to attach human emotions to everyday images. An image or symbol may be singular to a specific place, society, or culture; however, emotions are universal. Crafting poems with careful word choice can bridge the gap between concrete images and emotional experiences.

So how does one go about making a poem both relatable and captivating? The construction of awe, or captivation, evolves from constructing relatable emotional circumstances. As a human race, we may not have concrete experiences in common, but it can be assumed that we have the range of human emotions in common, which is a fount of relatable content.

A great example lies in Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” in which the image of a cloud is paired with the emotional context of loneliness. Imagery that includes clouds may typically represent symbols such as, sky, lightness, freedom, and tranquility, but with the addition of the adjective “lonely” a cloud becomes a vehicle for more complex emotional representations, in this way a poet can reinvent meaning for images and symbols which have become trite or cliché.

Emotive diction is a safe tactic for the poet to indulge in abstractions in ways that do not risk convoluting the meaning of a poem for the reader. Word choice, rather than imagery, might also be safe a method for poets to experiment with rhetoric, without inadvertently writing a piece that is lofty, or pretentious. Poets can play with phrases like, a miserable sunrise, or a gleeful dumpster, and rely on the emotional connotations of the words misery and glee to ensure the poem is still comprehensible on some level, to the reader.

Every word counts! The extra effort put towards connotation and context is the fundamental difference between a poem which is meant to be spectacle, as with a painting, and a poem which is meant to be experienced. A beautiful poem can transport a reader to a destination, but a captivating poem can make them celebrate, mourn, laugh, weep, or scream upon arrival.

 

Suggested writing exercise:

Try writing a poem that uses emotive diction to make a concrete image emotionally provocative.

 

Sources:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 186-187.

Staying Motivated to Write

Blog, , , ,

By: Keagan Herring

Probably one of the hardest things as a writer is staying motivated to write. It’s not that you don’t want to write. Your mind is filled with all these creative and awesome ideas but sometimes the process of getting your thoughts down on paper exactly how you see them in your head takes time and serious effort. You sit there for 10 minutes… 15 minutes… suddenly it’s an hour later and you have one fragment of a sentence and anxiety that you just spent the last hour doing nothing. You put your pen down and think, “I’ll just go do some other things and it will clear my head to write.” But then clearing your head turns into a week and that fragment settles into the pile of papers on your desk, never to be seen or heard from again.

You promise yourself you’ll sit down and write something again soon… when you have an opportunity. But then opportunity never presents itself. Work gets in the way, children become a huge distraction, and obstacle after obstacle presents itself. It’s not that you are procrastinating; it’s just life that gets in the way. So, when do you find the time or motivation to do what you dream of doing?

First, before you think about when to make time, you should assess how important writing is to you. What is it that you do to relax or de-stress after a long day at work, or a busy day with your kids? Perhaps you treat yourself to a glass of wine and your favorite tv show. Or maybe you grab dinner from your favorite restaurant. Or you may even treat yourself to a massage. Whatever it is that you do, you do it because you feel you deserve a break. Sometimes these activities that you treat yourself with take an hour or more. So why not spend just 15 minutes jotting down some of those awesome ideas you have constantly rolling around in your head. Putting ideas to paper, if even just notes, can sometimes lead to enormously great ideas. There is nothing worse than thinking about jotting down a great idea, not getting around to it, and then losing it from your mind completely.

One of the best ways to stay motivated is to find yourself a group of like-minded writers who get together maybe once a week and do short prompt writing. If you don’t know of anyone who is currently doing that, then set a group up yourself and invite a few people whom you think would benefit from this activity. But instead of meeting in person, because let’s face it, who has time for that, plan to do it on Zoom or some other platform you are comfortable with. Set up a time that works best for you. If your friends or associates are as interested in this as you are, they will show for the meeting. Pick one or two-word prompts and do 15 minutes of writing for that prompt. Some groups who meet do several prompts which can make the meeting run 30 minutes to an hour. It is your group so it is entirely up to you. Some groups share what they’ve written, some don’t. Again, that is up to you. The main purpose of this exercise is to get your creative juices flowing. The prompt may have nothing to do with anything you are considering for your poems, short stories, novels, etc… But sometimes these prompts can lead to unexpected outcomes. For instance, you may have a prompt of the words “beautiful” and “hag” in which you write a comical but sad short piece about an old lady with a dry sense of humor. Then suddenly, it hits you! She would make a great secondary character in that story you started six months ago! Or perhaps none of your prompt writing leads to anything significant… until one day, it becomes your collection of short stories for your first published collection. Without prompt writing, you would have had nothing to pull from to even consider publishing.

Another great way to stay motivated is to not try to sit down with the mindset of writing a novel. Start yourself with reasonable goals and work up to the harder ones. Most accomplished, published book-writers suggest writing anywhere from 1000 to 2000 words a day. For some of us, that is a very daunting goal. Just like anything you try to perfect, you must build up to it. For example, if you were asked to run a five-mile race but had never exercised a day in your life, you wouldn’t run right out and try to run five miles. The smarter thing to do is to test your limit the first time you try, go as far as you feel comfortable and leave it at that. Then, on day two, you go to that comfort level and just a little further; day three, a little further. Trying to run five miles when you haven’t ever run before will leave you breathless, exhausted, and disappointed when you come nowhere close to your goal. This leads to disheartened views about your capabilities and eventually you will quit trying. Writing is very much like running a race. Sometimes you have deadlines or people expecting things from you. That is why it is important for you to start off comfortably and work your way towards those exciting goals. Sitting down and writing 100 words seems both hard and easy… but as you start writing, you suddenly realize that 100 words becomes 156 before you know it. “Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow, I will try 200 words.” And 200 turns into 317. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so scary and before you know it, you’re writing that 1000-2000 words a day! It truly is all about conditioning your brain in much the same way you would condition your body for a race.

A final idea, though none of these are all the ideas currently out there, is to keep a memo pad with you to jot down ideas or blurbs that suddenly pop into your head. Perhaps you were standing in line at the grocery store and the mother in front of you has two teenaged boys with her who are highly disrespectful to her, the cashier, and dressed like little hoodlums, which prompts you to ponder how a mother could let her children act or dress like that. But then it becomes a heart-wrenching story about a woman who is actually the aunt (their mother recently killed in a drive-by shooting) and though not having the financial capability nor the experience to take on two teenaged boys, does so because otherwise, her nephews would end up in foster care, or possibly in jail at some point. Suddenly, you are imagining this whole story line that could be the next Lifetime movie! But you didn’t have a memo pad with you, or an index card, or something of the sort, to jot down this exciting idea. By the way, for those of you who prefer to digitalize everything, there are all kinds of apps you can install to quickly record your ground-breaking ideas versus writing them down.

If none of these ideas work for you, then perhaps you are not a writer after all… I’m just kidding. Who am I to tell you what you are not? It is up to you to find that sweet spot that works for you. Reach out to the people who know you best, the professors, writers, and friends who write, and ask what they find to be motivating for them. There are so many opportunities for success. And by success, I don’t necessarily mean being published or making millions… Your success is measured by what you want to do with your writing and how you go about achieving it.

Stay motivated and you will do great things!

December Issue Available Now

Blog

2020 Julia Peterkin Literary Awards

Poetry

Winner:

Humankind Needs Larger Birds  by Justin Jannise

Finalists:

Even the Trees Went Under  by Anne Leigh Parrish
440,249 Aconitum maximum Wolfsbane 06-16-20 0814 PDT   by Caroline Goodwin
[dissection]  by Nora Cox

Flash Fiction

Winner:

The Holy Waters   by Krista Beucler
Finalists:
Hemingway’s Typewriter   by Dutch Simmons
Homeless  by Robert Shelton

Regular Features

Fiction:

Will’s Power  by Sam Gridley

Nonfiction:

Maximum Compound Inmate Mothers  by Stephanie Dickinson
The Cadet  by Valerie Smith

Poetry:

the ghost of all things  by David van den Berg
Revenant  by Kevin Griffin
Like Apples  by Susana Lang

Book Reviews

Fiction:

Known by Heart: Collected Stories by Ellen Prentiss Campbell
Review by Jody Hobbs Hesler
Even as we Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
Review by Andrew Clark

Nonfiction:

My Body is a Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta
Review by Amber Wood

Poetry:

Not Human Enough for the Census by Erik Fuhrer
Review by Isabelle Kenyon

Genre Writing in the Classroom

Blog, , , , , ,

By: Christine Schott

When I was an undergraduate, my fiction workshop professor banned genre writing in our class: no fantasy, no sci-fi, no romance, no detective stories.  Years later, when I started teaching my own creative writing classes, and I was faced with the same decision as my former professor: do I force my undergraduates to write only literary realism, or do I open the floodgates to whatever they want to bring in?

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of explanations for why genre writing is often banned in fiction workshops, and they are legitimate concerns expressed by people who care very much about their art.  Most of these concerns, discussed below, have to do with the legitimate desire to teach the principles of good writing and avoid the habits of bad writing: the problem with these objections is that they tend to assume you can’t have good writing that’s also genre.  In fact, I have come to the conclusion that banning genre writing is directly counterproductive to my aims as a teacher and as a writer.

The reason my own professor gave for banning genre writing was that she herself was not a reader of genre fiction, and so she couldn’t give us feedback that was consistent with the genre’s conventions.  That was a fair point: she couldn’t give us good feedback about world-building conventions in a sci-fi piece because she didn’t read sci-fi.  But one of the most powerful aspects of the writing workshop is that the professor is not the only voice in the room.  That means the students can be equally valuable in critique as their teachers, particularly because each comes in with their own area of interest and, indeed, expertise.  I have never had a student come to class with a piece in a genre so obscure not a single other student in the room is familiar with it.  When I don’t know much about stories based on video games, I can almost guarantee that at least a couple other students know more than enough to steer our discussion.  And those other students, then, are the intended audience for the story; the fact that I’m not part of that audience doesn’t mean the genre is without value.

The other main reason I’ve heard for banning genre writing is that it is poor in quality, as though subject matter determines how well one can write.  A good example of this bias is  Janet Burroway’s description of fantasy in her chapter “Form, Plot, and Structure” in Writing Fiction.  I love everything else about Burroway’s textbook, but when I teach that chapter, I make my students read Ursula Le Guin’s defense of genre writing alongside it (https://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/06/18/le-guin-s-hypothesis/).  Her argument breaking down the literary fiction/genre divide is a simple one: “Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it. […] Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, [and] realism.”  That is, genres do exist, but literary realism is one of them.

If we accept Le Guin’s premise, we don’t have to dispense with the distinction between good and bad writing, but we have to acknowledge that they are not the exclusive purview of one genre or another.  Because in the end, isn’t good writing recognizable as good writing in any genre?  Doesn’t a good speculative fiction author show instead of tell, use significant detail, create internal conflict, and avoid clichés?  Maybe we’re describing a colony on Mars instead of a neighborhood in Charleston, but good description is good description regardless of the subject.

I think we can teach genre writing the same way we teach any kind of writing: we get our students to read books similar to what they’re working on that are well-written and innovative.  When we want students to write good literary realist fiction, we don’t give them O. Henry anymore: we give them the best of Raymond Carver or Dennis Johnson.  When we want students to write good fantasy, we don’t give them Christopher Paolini or Stephenie Meyer; we give them the best of Diana Wynne Jones or Susanna Clarke.  It may mean we have to spend some time reading a book or two in a genre we don’t usually read, but the result is our students having models to emulate.

Fiction teachers object that there is a lot of terrible writing in genre and that their students only absorb and reproduce the tropes of their chosen genre—because, let’s face it: our students come to us having read a lot more Stephenie Meyer than Diana Wynne Jones.  I don’t deny it.  I only deny the implication that if we make them write literary realism, they will somehow magically become capable of avoiding tropes and clichés.  Isn’t the disenchanted middle-class husband a cliché at this point too?  And yet we’re still writing literary realist novels about him.  I for one would rather read a clichéd story about a dragon than one about a disenchanted middle-class husband.

It’s true that my students writing their first fantasy novel or their first detective story will produce terrible stuff, full of bad writing and tropes I’ve seen a hundred times before.  But they would do the exact same thing if I made them write literary realism, only they wouldn’t have any fun doing it.  They’re beginning writers: they haven’t yet gained the skills or the range of experience that professionals have.  And if I make them write stories about disenchanted middle-class husbands, the risk is that they will lose interest in writing and never gain either one.

My goal as a teacher is not to produce the next Nobel laureate: my goal is to produce writers who have fallen in love with telling stories and who want to improve their skills—not because I tell them that’s what they should aspire to but because they want to become the best storytellers they can.  And if that means my students bring in-progress zombie novels to class, well, I’m going to try to help them write the most dazzlingly lyrical, most profoundly meaningful zombie novel that can possibly be written.

Christine Schott teaches literature and creative writing at Erskine College.  Her work has appeared in Dappled Things and Casino and is forthcoming in the Gettysburg Review.  She holds a PhD in medieval literature from the University of Virginia and an MFA in creative writing from Converse College.

Billy Collins and the Pandemic Haiku

Blog, , , , ,

By: B.A. France

I was talking with a friend recently, when she told me that she couldn’t. Couldn’t what, I asked? I rolled into searching for the problem and looking for solutions, living my own cliché, when she stopped me. Anything. I can’t do anything right now, she said. The stay-at-home orders, the constant crawl of news and binging notifications on our smartphones, the steady specter of death, the protests, the fires, the storms, all adds up. I just feel like I can’t do anything creative, she said. I think for many of us, more often than not, she’s right. We can’t. Whatever it is. Not right now.

There was something about the way she phrased it that made me think of Billy Collins. I know, that’s quite a leap from pandemic to poet laureate without even a Kevin Bacon in between. But, there’s a discussion with Marie Howe toward the end of his recent MasterClass on reading and writing poetry when he mentions writing haiku. Collins writes the deceptively simple, but mysteriously complex poems most of us learned about in our early school years. He even published a book of them with Modern Haiku Press a few years ago. He tells Marie and his students that he often treats haiku like a musician playing scales. For him there’s something about the simplicity combined with the strictness of form that is appealing. He tells his viewers that “the haiku doesn’t care about your feelings.”  It’s just a moment.

In this time when many of us feel like nothing creative can happen, the simplicity of the haiku and its grounding in the moment might liberate us from the real oppression of COVID19. I’m not talking about political oppression or cultural, but instead the unrelenting and quiet pressure on our souls. Maybe the haiku is exactly the poetry we need right now. Not just some of the poetry we need to be reading, which surely it is, but also the poetry we should be writing.

—

In addition to Japanese masters like Basho and Issa, Collins is only one of many western poets who have adopted the haiku or its cousin the senryu. Jack Kerouac and the Beats (rather famously, and where Collins first picked up the form), ee cummings, Seamus Heaney, and many others have mixed writing haiku with other forms of poetic expression. You don’t have to consider yourself a haikuist (Or is it haijin? That’s a whole other discussion.) to write haiku.

Collins mentions in his Paris Review interview Art of Poetry No. 83 that one of the key elements of poetry is gratitude.  He singles out haiku in particular, saying: “Almost every haiku says the same thing: it’s amazing to be alive here.” And while in our present, pandemic times we may not quite feel that way, as the blue light of our phones and laptops saps our attention away, gratitude is something we still need. Haiku’s focus on the world around us gives us a chance for that gratitude to return, for us to ignore our feelings about the pandemic and our dread or worry. Because, as Billy said, the haiku doesn’t care how you feel. Focused on a moment, finding a juxtaposition right in front of you, the time composing a haiku brings observation, art, and gratitude all together. Collins reminds us that poetry and poets are supposed to make us better attuned to “feel grateful just for being alive.”

It is this idea of “the moment” that draws me deeper into haiku during this, our shared moment. In his introduction to Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, Collins describes finding a “haiku moment” nearly anywhere or at any time. For him, it was during walks with his dog along the shore of a nearby lake. But what he describes as the “world of sense impressions that envelops our every waking hour” is the kernel of grit that can result in a haiku pearl, if we are able to inhabit that moment. I know that sounds like the “mindfulness” stuff that today’s meditation gurus seem to be hocking endlessly, but I promise I’m not selling anything.  It shouldn’t surprise us, since Basho studied Zen deeply and the haiku springs from the same historical and spiritual roots as “mindfulness.” Collins admits that there are “many people who don’t get haiku,” and that’s ok. There is a lot of poetry that “many people” don’t get, and that doesn’t tend to stop us from writing. He reminds readers that the little poems are “powerful little assertions of the poet’s very existence.” And that sounds like an assertion we should all be making right now.

—

We all learned the haiku as children and the 5-7-5 structure has undoubtedly stuck with most of us.  And yes, there is plenty of discussion about form among practitioners. Most modern English-language haikuists don’t ascribe to strict syllable count. Some would insist that I point out the differences between haiku (focused on nature) and senryu (focused on human behavior, often sarcastic). Some would want me to discuss the unique poetic turn of juxtaposition, the kireji or “cutting word” and use of punctuation, or the need for a “season word.” All of these are elements that well versed haiku readers appreciate.

In my way of thinking, for the “pandemic haiku” none of this really matters. As often as we find those details of good form in a haiku, we are just as often struck by verses that do not follow the traditions or which play with them a bit. What matters is being in the moment. What matters is stretching our observational muscles. What matters is finding a moment, just a single moment, to be grateful for. What matters is finding our creativity again.  And during this time, working simply with seventeen syllables or less, maybe we will find that we can.

social distancing

     waking quietly alone

wind in treetops

B.A. France is a poet and writer living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed whose poetry has appeared in Akitsu Quarterly and cattails.

South 85 Journal Seeking Submissions!

Blog

South 85 Journal is currently accepting submissions of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry until April 15, 2021 and would love to see your work. Take a look at our past issues for a sense of what we like.

• Manuscripts should be sent as an attachment through our Submittable page.
• Fiction submissions should be between 2000 and 5000 words. Please include the word count in an upper corner of the first page.
• Non-fiction submissions should be no longer than 6000 words. Please include the word count in your email.
• Poetry submissions should contain no more than 4 poems up to 8 total pages, one poem per page.
• Please send only one submission per category (Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction) during each reading period.  You are welcome to submit to multiple categories.
• We will publish flash fiction, short stories, and novel excerpts, provided they can stand on their own. We do not publish genre fiction or children’s stories.We encourage you to read archives of South 85 Journal and acquaint yourself with the material we publish before submitting your work.
• Type should be no smaller than 12-pt. font. Please use standard fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica or Goudy, and refrain from script or “flowery” lettering.
• Submissions should be saved in Word or Rich Text format.
• Number pages consecutively, double space, and use margins of at least one inch.
• Place your name, email address, and word count in an upper corner of the first page.
• We accept simultaneous submissions. If it is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw your work via Submittable.
• Please include a professional bio of 50 words or fewer written in the third person with your cover letter.

South 85 Journal does not publish work which has been previously published, either in print or online. Our reply time is typically six to eight weeks.

We acquire exclusive first-time Internet rights only. All other rights revert to the author at publication, but we offer formal, written reassignments upon request. Works are also archived online. We are unable to pay for submissions. We ask that whenever an author reprints the work that first appeared in our pages, South 85 Journal be given acknowledgment for the specific work(s) involved.