I just found out about this.

http://novaartfair.com/2006/readings.php

David Antin, tomorrow night at 7, yo.

Editor's Preferences

I took down the other post because I got allot of stupid emails. So I will rephrase here. I think that editors of journals or book presses and even websites have an obligation to tell people their biases aesthetically or gender or race.

I get this email earlier in the week which by the way was not blind copied so I get to see the hundreds of local literati that were getting it and it is an open call for a "chicago" issue of some magazine.

Then 10 minutes later I get an email where someone says but the editor is really interested in Women's writing but might take some men if they are appropriate.

huh?

I am not arguing against anthologies or issues based on gender or race. I am editing
Aufgabe's Brazil section in the fall and we have gender and racial diversity and equity. This is a great value to me as it should be to all poets and editors. What bothers me is to when editors misrepresent what they are doing as unbiased.

If you want to do an anthology or issue on Chicago women writers great. I would love to promote that kind of book. Just look at what Jen Hofer's Sin Puertas Visibles has done for Mexican women's writing. I think that SPV is one of the great anthologies of the past five years. But don't pretend to be open to everyone and have poets waste their time submitting to a call that has strong biases. Let people know beforehand.

When Bill and I launched Cracked Slab Books we told people up front we wanted Experimental Work. no mainstreamers need apply, and we still got all this narrative and neo formal crap but that was their problem since we were clear.

But lately allot of these anthologies have been made up of misrepresentations. Just look at that new anthologies edited by Cate Marvin, I think it is called Dangerious liaisons (LOL). It is packaged as the anthology of new poetry. really it is an anthology of the editor's friends and excludes so many interesting poets who are under 45 that it is almost crazy.

I guess what I am arguing for is critical distance. Admit your biases and your agenda, hell we all have them, but don't continually move the goal posts and expect people to take you seriously as an editor and if you want to publish your friends that is ok but admit what you are doing and stop pretending to be an editor.

For Your Informations

Hey all, Michael Robins just found out that his manuscript The Next Settlement won the Vassar Miller Prize and will be published by University of North Texas Press.
Congrats to him. Very glad to see his work getting the much-deserved recognition.

*

Ponying on his success, I will be reading at Woodland this Friday at 7 p.m. with Beth Bretl. Looking forward to seeing my Milwaukee bretheren.

Other-directed: tomorrow night: Joshua Clover (aka jane dark) at Danny's, with songwriter/poet Franklin Bruno.

Self-directed: at Kerri's recommendation, I read Juliana Spahr's new book, This Connection of Everyone With Lungs, and I just wrote up a review of it and posted it here.