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So now it’s official: Spring is here, the birds have returned, the cherry trees are blooming around the tidal basin, and I’ve won the 2012 Potomac Review Prize for Poetry. My thanks to the editors and judges, and to all my friends for their ongoing support. Hurrah!
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Up today, three poems (Climbing San Jacinto, Ocotillo Wells, and Desert Wind) at Inlandia Journal, published in my distant homeland by the Inlandia Institute. Also in this issue, poems by Sheela Free, Kim Lohse, Marcia LeBeau and Matt Nadelson, prose by Kate Anger, Charlotte Davidson and Stephanie Barbé Hammer, images by Karen Greenbaum-Maya. Cati Porter edits.

 

 

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New today, in Ireland, two poems borne up by The Linnet’s Wings: Rutter’s Requiem, and La Belle. Also in this issue: poetry by Tamara Madison, fiction by the incomparable Susan Tepper, art by Rafael Zabaleta. Marie Fitzpatrick edits. It’s worth a read!

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Good news for Requiem: it’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and now it’s the feature of the week at One Poet’s Notes. Thanks to Edward Byrne and Jonathan Bull, for the feature and the nomination. Life is good!

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The new Valparaiso Fiction Review is up, and my short story Requiem has found a home there. Also in this issue, Meg Tuite, Andrea Dupree, Norman Waksler, Dallas Woodburn, and Clifford Garstang. Edward Byrne and Jonathan Bull edit. It’s worth a read!

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Kate says we shouldn’t pray *for* anything specific, that we should just welcome
Mary into our hearts, and whisper “Thy will be done.” It’s always a good idea to listen to Kate:

 

“Finalistas del XXXI Premio Mundial Fernando Rielo de poesía mística “

 

Doce poemarios procedentes del Norte, Centro y Sudamérica; y de Lorca-Murcia, Tomelloso-Ciudad Real, Toledo, Santa Cruz de Tenerife yCádiz en España han sido seleccionados como finalistas del XXXI Premio Mundial Fernando Rielo de Poesía Mística, de entre las 271 obras de 34 países de los cinco continentes presentadas en esta edición. El jurado ha destacado el alto nivel de calidad general de las obras que ha hecho difícil la selección de las finalistas. La obra ganadora del XXXI Premio Mundial Fernando Rielo de Poesía Mística dotado con 7.000 Euros, publicación de la obra y medalla conmemorativa, se proclamará el martes 13 de diciembre en un solemne acto que tendrá lugar en el Ateneo de Madrid, a las 19 h.

La relación de poemarios y autores finalistas es la siguiente, por orden alfabético:

Juan Ramón Barat, En la noche del hombre (Lorca-Murcia, España)

Marisol Carrasco Cerda, El Evangelio según Luciérnaga (El Bosque-Santiago, Chile)

Natividad Cepeda Serrano, Camino de amor (Tomelloso-Ciudad Real, España)

David Escobar Galindo, Hombre hacia Dios (San Salvador, El Salvador)

Luis Edgardo Escobar Gómez, Los viñedos del silencio (Pereira-Risaralda, Colombia)

William F. Lantry, Journey to the Interior (Washington, EE.UU.)

Mabel Lifschitz, Las voces del viento cálido (San Luis, Argentina)

Gerardo López Laguna, Entre el barro y el fuego (Toledo, España)

Yhamile Narváez Cárdenas, Corazón levantado hacia Ti (Quito, Ecuador)

Rosa Vanessa Otero, ¿A quién buscas? (San Juan, Puerto Rico)

Teresa de Jesús Rodríguez Lara, El gozo de tu luz (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, España)

Luis Valverde Maldonado, Cleofás (Cádiz, España)

El acto de proclamación de la obra galardonada con el XXXI Premio Mundial Fernando Rielo de Poesía Mística quiere ser también un homenaje a los distintos poetas galardonados a lo largo de estos treinta años transcurridos desde la primera edición, que tuvo lugar también en el Ateneo de Madrid, y a su creador, Fernando Rielo, quien creó este Premio para promover a aquellos poetas que unieran una profunda experiencia mística con una gran calidad literaria. Se leerán para ello poemas galardonados en distintas ediciones a cargo de sus autores y del actor Manuel Galiana. El acto concluirá con un concierto de arpa, Música para Navidad, de la catedrática y concertista Mª Rosa Calvo Manzano, con obras de F. J. Naderman, J. Dubez, A. Hasselmans y una obra escrita por Mª Rosa Calvo Manzano para este evento y que constituye un estreno mundial.

If your Spanish isn’t good, there’s a machine translation here. Best of luck to all my colleagues around the world! It’s an honor to be named among you!

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What joy! Many thanks to kindly editors, on three continents, who have nominated my work, in both fiction and poetry, for four Pushcart prizes this month! Thanks to Tammy Ho Lai-Ming at Asian Cha, Annabelle Moseley at String Poet, Lacey N. Dunham at THIS Journal, and Darren Richard Carlaw at Stepaway Magazine!

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 The Poetry 2011 issue of the Atlanta Review arrived today, with my “International Publication Prize” winning poem, Strawberries. Also in this issue, Garrett Hongo, Kelly Cherry,  Sandra Meek, Alexandra Oliver, Jeanne Wagner, Jim Tilley, and many others. Congrats to all!

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I used to think the sweetest words in the English language involved love, or peace, or the imminent prospect of ecstatic joy. But I’ve changed my position. Having just received an email, I now understand this is the best phrase in the language: “Your book shipped today!”

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Up today, the latest issue of Rose & Thorn Journal, with my Rosarian flourishing inside. Also in this issue, Jessie Carty, Peycho Kanev, John C. Mannone, Sharanya Manivannan and many more. Cynthia L. Toups and Yu-Han Chao edit the poetry. Cover art by Lee Klein.

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This is fun: a website, based in New Zealand, but with editors literally all over the world, chose “Quatorze Juillet” for its “best new poems online” feature! Thanks to them, and to Lacey N Dunham, Bill Yarrow, Joani Reese, and Nicholas Y.B. Wong for including it in THIS zine. Life is good! All Hail Kate!

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Just arrived, the latest issue of the upscale Canadian journal, Descant. This number is devoted to work concerning Sicily, and has two poems describing my travels there:    Siracusa, and Villaggio Senza Nome. It’s a beautiful issue, filled with fine work, guest edited by Michelle Alfano and Venera Fazio.

It’s mostly a print journal, but clicking the cover image will take you to the table of contents…

 

 

 

 

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Art as architecture, poem as dwelling place: up today in Asia, a brief essay about constructing art. If you haven’t read Arthur Leung, he’s worth a moment of your time!

http://finecha.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/arthur-leung/
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An excellent interview. Eight poems. An artist’s statement. Even a short photo-essay on aesthetics. Thanks to Bill Yarrow, J.P. Reese, Nicholas Y.B. Wong, and Lacey N. Dunham for asking great interview questions. What a joy! Life is good!

http://www.thiszine.org/poetry/lantry-spotlight

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Up today, the latest issue of Horizon Review, with my poem Periplus (a periplus is a kind of map, drawn with words rather than graphics). Also in this issue: Ernest Hilbert, Linda Black, Carrie Etter, Caleb Klaces, Michelle McGrane, Ian Parks, Sheenagh Pugh, Todd Swift. Also: fiction, art, translations (of Ito, Mandelstam, a new take on Gawain). Katy Evans-Bush edits.
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Up today at the Tower Journal: five poems from my Book of Hours, a 24 poem cycle figuring a day in a monastery based on Teresa’s Interior Castle. Also in this issue: Ned Balbo, Martha Carlson-Bradley, Jack Foley, Dirk van Nouhuys, Jeffrey Lilly, and Russell L. Goings. Special section on Turkish Poetry. Mary Ann Sullivan edits. It’s worth a look!
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The latest issue of StepAway Magazine, a journal for flâneurs, is up, and it has my short story “Promenade.” Be sure to read James Robison’s excellent short, concerning the lovely Ludmila. Also in this issue, Jeffery Alfier, Lemn Sissay, David L. O’Neal, Joan McNerney and Michelle Ward-Kantor. Cover art by Paul Baines. Darren Richard Carlaw edits.

Interesting tidbit: many online journals shy away from publishing stats, but not this one. Issue 2 was up for three months, and got 115,000 hits. Who says people don’t read short fiction anymore?

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New today, my poem “Dawn” at Up The Staircase Quarterly. Also in this issue: work by Cheryl Snell, Jade Ramsey, M.p. Powers, Carolyn Srygley-Moore, and many more. Excellently edited by Stephanie Bryant Anderson and April Michelle Bratten. I’ve linked to the table of contents page because it’s so cool! Find me behind the red door! http://www.upthestaircase.org/mainpage.htm

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Today brought some really good news. My poem, “Rainbow Bridge,” today received a best of the net nomination, all the way from China!

More details here: http://asiancha.blogspot.com/2011/08/best-of-net-2011-nominations.html

Also nominated: Phill Provance, Rumjhum Biswas, Divya Rajan, Vineet Kaul, and Graeme Brasher. Congrats to all, and thanks to Tammy Ho Lai-Ming and Jeff Zroback, editors of Asian Cha.

 

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The China Issue of Asian Cha is out, and it reads like a who’s who of the contemporary art and poetry scene there. Contributors include Ai Weiwei, Arthur Leung, Duo Duo, Meng Lang, Ming Di, Shu Cai, Zang Di, Zhang Er, and many more, including me, with a poem about Zhang Xiaogang’s triptych “Forever Lasting Love.” Yibing Huang ably curates, Tony Barnstone does translations, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming edits.

Here’s the poem: Forever Lasting Love

The server seems to be getting swamped, so please be patient if it takes a little while to load:  Asian Cha

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Up today, my short story, Chincoteague, at Sea Stories. http://seastories.org/category/overfalls/

 

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Now Available from Finishing Line Press

 

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Today’s mail brought the Spring issue of Poetry Salzburg, which includes three of my poems: Exile, Constructing Beauty, and Gold.  Also in this issue: Kate Gale, John Barnie, Lucie Brock-Brido, Bai Hua, Donna Pucciana. Art by Paul Bond. Wolfgang Görtschacher edits.

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Today’s mail brings news that my poem Strawberries has won an International Publication Prize from the Atlanta Review.

I’m overjoyed with this one, as it’s a great journal, which has published Walcott, Heaney, Cope, Muldoon, Kumin, Alicia Stallings, Gail White, the list goes on and on. Dan Veach edits.

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Issue Five of the Spilling Ink Review is out, in far off Scotland, and it has my short story Saaki in its extensive fiction section. Also in this issue: Mark Wagstaff, Dan Powell, Darci Bysouth, Daniela I. Norris. Don’t miss the large helping of Flash Fiction there! Amy Burns edits.

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The 40th anniversary issue of the Old Red Kimono has arrived, with my ‘Past Solstice’ printed large inside. It’s a full size journal, 8 1/2 by 11, full color cover, very nicely done.  Alice Towe edits, Nancy Applegate and Jesse Bishop advise. Cover art by Jasmine Williams. A lovely edition for the anniversary.

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The new issue of the The James Dickey Review is out, with my small song “Tropes,” about turning winged vessels on a lathe. Also in this issue: George Moore, N. A’Yara Stein, Robert Kirschten, Ann Zoller, Philip Arnold, Jacob Rakovan, J. North Conway. Essays by R.T. Smith and Alison Mayhew.

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Fiction as a form of Mathematics: My remembrance of Stanley Elkin’s visit to Nice is up at The Big Other. Greg Gerke curates.

http://bigother.com/2011/05/02/guest-post-w-f-lantry-remembering-stanley-elkin/

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This just in: my Redwood Wave wins the Hackney National Literary Award for poetry! Hurrah! Time to Party!

http://www.hackneyliteraryawards.org/Winners.html

All Hail Kate! All Hail Kate!

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I’m giving a reading this coming Friday (my birthday, no less!) to help celebrate issue 25 of Kestrel. Also reading: Sherry Chandler, Sally Rosen Kindred, Lori Wilson, A. Kay Emmert. Donna Long and Elizabeth Savage have put together a great issue, and it’s a joy to be included!

If you’re in West Virginia friday evening, feel free to drop in. Otherwise, youtube will be your friend!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=151913831683

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I’m interviewed today by Susan Tepper about my story “Ardor, or, What I Wanted.” She’s both kind and gentle with me! Here’s what she said about the story: “Frankly, I want to go there and lie on that lace draped bed and have him spoon honey into my mouth.” And I said “We need to make love to our readers!”

It’s live, now, at Fictionaut!

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Back from a meeting with a publisher in Connecticut. Have a signed contract for my first full-length collection in hand! Fasten your seatbelts, everybody. Here we go!

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Up today, Mendocino, a poem, at The Stray Branch.

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Issue 2 of Sliver of Stone is out, with Allison Joseph, Susan Orlean, and my poem, Kudzu. Also in this issue, Dan Wakefield, Mark Vonnegut, and Matthew Sharpe. The whole issue is worth a look. But start here:

http://www.sliverofstone.com/W.F.html

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Up today, my short story, Desire, at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Also in this issue, John Riley’s Jimmy Crack. Don’t miss our Southern Legitimacy Statements.

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Kate just brought in the latest issue of Kestrel, with my “Spinning Wheel” and “All Souls, At Dawn” inside. Also in this issue, Sherry Chandler and a number of other good people, some of whom I hope to meet at the launch reading next month in WV. Time for some white lightning!

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Today, a big surprise: SIX poems accepted into a very nice journal. I was thinking *maybe* they’d take one or two. Best part: the editor’s acceptance note: “Yes, yes, a thousand times: YES!” She’s my new favorite editor!

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Today brings news of the inclusion of my poem “One must have resonance” in Maintenant5, along with an invitation to read at Cornelia St. Cafe in New York City on March 18. Yep, that’s me, well-known Dadaist poet!

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Over at Via Negativa, Dave Bonta asked for audio of poems for his Woodrat Podcast. He received them from all over the world, India, Australia, the U.K., the U.S.

Since “L’Hirondelle” fit his theme of Platonic Love, Kate and I each did a reading, and sent both files. Dave did an interesting thing: he spliced the files together, so that Kate and I read alternating sections of the poem. The entire podcast is here. If you just want the four minutes of “L’Hirondelle” (first published in Damazine), please click below

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Back from a reading at The Poet’s House, in New York City. The reading celebrated the launch of the Voices Israel anthology, and was well attended. Over on Fictionaut, J.P. Reese asked “So, tell those of us encaved in the hinterlands–how was it, Bill?” Since you’d have to log in there to see my answer, I’m posting my response here:

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Up today at Whale Sound, Nic Sebastion’s reading of Nightbird. The original is still at Soundzine.

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There’s a new story up, at BLIP: Lacrymosa.

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Carte Blanche has Hommage à Bonnefoy up for reading.

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And here’s the latest news from Asia: Cha really does a wonderful job of keeping up with contributors.

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Kate is finally getting the recognition she deserves! Nic Sebastion, of Very Like a Whale fame, heard her story and interviewed her!

You can find the whole story here: http://verylikeawhale.wordpress.com/

To paraphrase what Nabokov said, of Lolita: ‘Kate is famous, not I. I am an obscure, a doubly obscure poet with an unpronounceable name…’

All Hail Kate!

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Monday, October 11, 2010

North American Contact:

Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Author Agent
Washington, DC
wflantry@gmail.com

Middle East Contact:

Eva Ariela Lindberg
Chairman
Lindberg Peace Foundation
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: 00 972 54 4860597
evadeva@earthlink.net
www.lindbergpeacefoundation.org

WASHINGTON, DC POET WINS

INTERNATIONAL POETRY FOR PEACE PRIZE IN ISRAEL

(Jerusalem, Israel) – W.F. Lantry of Washington, DC won the 2010 International Poetry for Peace Prize sponsored by the Lindberg Peace Foundation in Israel for his poem “Kiste.” The first place award was announced on October 11, 2010 in Jerusalem at the Poetry for Peace Prize Music and Poetry Event held in Talbiye, Jerusalem. The event included poets reading winning and honorable mention work, as well as a discussion led by the poetry competition judges. Lantry read his prize winning poem via video.

The International Poetry for Peace competition seeks poems that most appropriately strengthen the call for peace and loving kindness in a challenging world. The prize winning work was selected from among entries responding to the theme of peace: internal, between people, between nations, world peace, how peace may be achieved, or obstacles to peace. First Prize includes a $500 award and publication in an anthology of the winning poems by runners-up and honorable mentions. Judges for this year’s competition were Mike Scheidemann, Jeffrey M. Green, and Hayim Abramson, Ph.D.

The Foundation hopes through artistic and aesthetic endeavors to spread the message of hope for a better world. True peace and loving kindness in our current turbulent world seem unobtainable, yet poets are the ones who make the unachievable possible.

About the Poem

Lantry says about this poem:

A kiste was a small box, a kind of chest, which was at the center of the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. The secret of its contents was so well guarded that even today, no-one knows exactly what was inside. There is, of course, much speculation. An ear of corn, silently reaped? We’ll never be certain; it’s one of those lost secrets. We do know, though, what they said during the ritual: “Before mystai could enter the Telesterion, they would recite, ‘I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the kiste, and have put it back in the kalathos.’” And so in the poem, we go wandering, searching for a place of peace, bearing the secret with us, but hardly understanding it. We just have the intuition that if only we could fully grasp it, or understand the voices in the darkness, we could find that place of peace, that promised land the unmarked path may lead to, but even our own words, our cherished objects, our interwoven forms, confuse us.

Kiste

Towards the sea or mountains, almost blest
we carried everything we could
but did not dare to name
and with our hands, conveyed the mysteries
the stark reflections of a place
we could not comprehend

we thought objects could push us to transcend
our images, an ear of corn
if contemplated well
could be a lamp to guide us on this trace
or just a blossom, held in sight
a moment could reverse

our years of wandering, let us converse
in tongues we know, voices of flame
in darkness understood
as light illuminating what the mind
conceived without the expertise
of interwoven forms

as if the mountain winds or wave dressed storms
surpassed our words, as if the thorn
gave meaning as it fell
along this unmarked path where intertwined
roses and broken canes relight
this road towards the west.

About the Poet: W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, currently works in Washington, DC. In 2010 his work garnered the University of Montana CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry selected by Major Jackson, the University of Warwick commended his entry to the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in the U.K, and the UMB William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences named him a runner-up for the Ellen LaForge Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award, and the only English language finalist for the prestigious Fernando Rielo International Award in Mystical Poetry in Spain for 2009. Within the past year his work has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, Prairie Fire Magazine (Canada), protestpoems.org: Writing for Human Rights, Poets for Living Waters, New Verse News (Indonesia), Damazine (Syria), Kritya Journal of Poetry (India), The French Literary Review (France), Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (China), Ellipsis, Unsplendid, Verse Wisconsin, Now Culture, Literal Latté, Texas Poetry Calendar and Permafrost, and is forthcoming in Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria) and the Walnut Literary Review (Singapore). Lantry received his Licence and Maîtrise from the Université de Nice (France), M.A. in English from Boston University, and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He is a Contributing Editor to Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose.

 

About the Foundation: The Lindberg Peace Foundation, an Israeli non-profit organization, was established in 1976 by the family of Miriam Felicia Lindberg to honor the memory of the young poet who died at the age of eighteen. The aim of the Foundation is to encourage creativity, writing and artistic expression with a special focus on supporting the Peace process in the Middle East region. The Foundation encourages contemporary Poetry through the biannual International Poetry for Peace Prize. The only award of its kind in Israel, it seeks to support Peace & Poetry in the spirit of Miriam Lindberg, sponsoring excellence in Art.

About the Judges:

Mike Scheidemann was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and raised in Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). He read French and English Literature at Capetown University before devoting himself to poetry and socialism on Kibbutz Yizre’el in northern Israel. He is currently President of ‘Voices’ The Israel English Poetry Association and was senior coordinator of the XIII World Congress of Poets in Haifa in 1992, sponsored by UNESCO. He also coordinated the Congress of Conflict Resolution through Culture and Literature in 1999. He has published four anthologies of poetry and co-edited two editions of Peace through Poetry.

Jeffrey Green grew up in Greenwich Village, New York, and received a BA in French from Princeton, and MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. He has been living in Israel since 1973 where he has worked as a free-lance translator of several important Hebrew authors, including Gnessin, Mendele, Agnon, and Appelfeld. He was the ghostwriter of the Holocaust Memoir A Daughter’s Gift of Love by Trudi Birger, which has been published in more than a dozen languages. Additionally he has published hundreds of book reviews, articles, short stories, and poems. He is the author of two books in Hebrew, as well as Thinking Through Translation (University of Georgia Press), and his own memoir, Largest Island in the Sea: From Jerusalem to Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples (Vox Humana Books).

Hayim Abramson, a doctor of Sociology with an MA in Jewish Education, frequently lectures at the Israel Center in Jerusalem. He teaches Spanish, Jewish Studies and Jewish History. He writes poetry in both English and Spanish.