Contributions to Pussy Riot benefit anthology

"We Are All Pussy Riot," said original Riot Grrrl Kathleen Hanna on
behalf of the Russian all-female punk rock group who was sentenced to
two years in prison for hooliganism after performing an anti-Putin
song earlier this year.

We are all Pussy Riot. We have all been discriminated against, had
people attempt to silence us, to persecute (or even prosecute) us for
daring to be who we are.

To help support the legal fees and fight for freedom for Pussy Riot,
we (Darcey Steinke and Erin Lyndal Martin) are producing an e-anthology that will be available 
online on a pay-as-you-like basis with the proceeds going to Amnesty International
and earmarked for Pussy Riot's defense.

But first we need contributions of writing and visual art for the
anthology.  Your piece(s) do not need to be directly related to the
band. You can write or make art about the band, censorship, Riot
Grrrl, punk, the power of music, or anything else you deem relevant. All rights revert 
to the author/artist upon publication. There is no payment for contributors.
Please send your submissions as an attachment to punkprayer@gmail.com.

The deadline is August 27, 2012.

Please circulate this call for submissions to any listservs, friends,
or social networking sites to which you have access.

Let me read your slush!

Hi again!

I don't know how many editors read this, but I wanted to announce that I'm looking for a lit mag that could use another poetry reader/assistant poetry editor type thing. If you're familiar with my work, you'll know that I tend away from the narrative and more towards the experimental or lyric, but I'm open to what kind of subs I read. Please email me (erinlyndalmartin at gmail dot com) if you are interested in having me help out on your journal. Thanks!

Let's go down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will buy you a bottle of wine...

...not really, but I'm writing you from Madison's fine Mermaid Cafe. I am currently the only patron here, and I like that. I bought the bottomless coffee, but I'm still on my first cup. Drinking slowly as I flit between tasks.

My big news is that I have finished my third poetry manuscript, COLONY COLLAPSE, and have begun sending it off to contests and presses. I'm excited about this book, which I've been working on since the end of 2007, come to think of it. I kept thinking of things to add, but, in the words of Belle & Sebastian, "this song has got to end some time." If you have suggestions for places to send it, please do feel free to let me know.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying a quite mild Wisconsin winter. Short sleeves mild. Heck, sleeveless mild. And sunshine! The worst part of WI winters for me is usually the darkness, not the cold, but there is rampant sunshine, so that helps my spirits greatly.

Also, for any literary sorts who might read this, I'm very likely going to be making my AWP debut this year. (Not as a reader or anything; just going.) It's close enough that I feel like I should finally see what all the fuss is about if I can get the logistics to come together. Who else out there is going?

Happy Halloween! And poem commissions!

Hello, ghouls and boys!

It is fall here in Madison, or so say the lovely yellow-leaved trees and few bare branches outside my window. Halloween in Madison is traditionally a pretty big deal, so there are plenty of ways to celebrate. I am still deciding how I will do it up this weekend, but I'm sure I'll have fun. I like to celebrate both the sacred and secular meanings of Halloween/All Soul's Day. The pagan name for Halloween is Samhain (pronounced "sow-en"), and typically that is when the veil between this world and the next thins. One Day of the Dead tradition involves leaving a trail of marigold petals to your door so that your beloved departed can find you. I tried that one last year, only to realize when I got home that I'd bought the wrong kind of flower. So it goes. I bet most of those I've loved and lost would rather have a trail of whiskey anyway.

Though I'm not publishing right and left (a few links below) right now, I think this is the most active writing life I've ever had. I have so many projects, including my first screenplay, and I want to work on them all, all the time. However, starting at midnight Halloween/November 1, most of my projects will take back burners on a really giant stove. That's right, I'm doing Nanowrimo again this year, and you should too. I did it back in 2004 and 2005. Both years, I was able to finish despite grad school responsibilities, so I'm not worried about finishing this year now that I have more time to spend on it. I do hope that I'm able to pull this off better than the others I tried, though. I'm not going to give too much away about it, except to say that it's dark fantasy and Pan's Labyrinth has been a big inspiration.

A new writing project that I'm excited to offer is poems by commission! For a donation of any amount (well, at least a dollar!), I'll write you a one of a kind poem on the topic of your choosing. You can also pick the tone (funny, sad, etc.) or leave that to me. Hopefully if you're reading this, you've read enough of my work to know that the chances of getting a mushy love poem are slim and your chances of getting something weird are high. Please just drop me an email if you'd like to sponsor a poem: erinlyndalmartin at gmail dot com is my address. As I writer living on disability, you have no idea how much every dollar I get means to me, so your generosity is appreciated. I also love to write for people and hopefully improve their worlds a bit, so I like to hope this is a win-win situation. :)

Finally, here's a round-up of stuff:

-Still reading for the Buffy-inspired poetry anthology. Email me at the address I just gave above if you have a submission.

-My Kickstarter to publish Pneumolalia! is still active: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1955099502/pneumolalia-a-play-in-verse

-New interviews with Jolie Holland, Over the Rhine, and Times New Viking at Pop Matters: My contributor page

-Review of Peter RIchards' Helsinki in the new Sink Review: Sink Review

-Poem at Ghost Ocean Magazine

-And, as always, tons of great music interviews at Euterpe's Notebook.

Thanks for reading, and hope you get the good candy when you trick-or-treat.

Kickstarter for my verse play

Hello!

I'm excited to announce that I've begun a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish my verse play, Pneumolalia!

This play is a dramatization of a case of pneumonia I had. If you watch the Kickstarter video, you'll see that this play involves throwbacks to Weimar Germany, a fever that speaks in sonnets, and references to Nouvelle Vague cinema and snuff porn, among other shenanigans. I have some really exciting plans for the illustrations/cover art as well. Donate $12 or more and I will send you an autographed copy as soon as I get some made!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1955099502/pneumolalia-a-play-in-verse

Hospital Days

Hello everyone--

If you haven't seen me around much lately, it's because I've made the UW hospital my second home. At the beginning of July, I had an attack of pancreatitis which turned out to be caused by over 50 (!) gallstones, so out went my gallbladder. I had some phantom abdominal pain after that, so I went back for some more dilaudid. (I was happy to be on a painkiller that shares a name with a Mountain Goats song.)

Then, last week, I was en route to the hospital for my surgery follow-up when I stopped to move some garbage cans out of my driveway. There was a hole in the pavement, and I fell, spraining my ankle, which instantly swelled to the size of a tennis ball. Good thing I was already en route to the hospital.

I do have to say that if you have to use a hospital, UW Health is the way to go. They took care of me through and through, and there's wifi there, and I had great friends who brought me my laptop to take advantage of it and books so I could work on a book review I had due.

That review was of Josh Ritter's first novel, Bright's Passage, and it can be read here.

Speaking of my stay in hospitals, I wrote about it for The Rumpus' "Where I Write" column: here.

And, speaking of the Rumpus, yesterday my interview with Marissa Nadler (whose great show I recently saw) just went live: here

And on my own website, I have recently posted all kinds of good stuff, like an interview with Blake Sennett (The Elected, Rilo Kiley), Gold-Bears, and a two-part interview with Her Space Holiday.

Hope everybody out there in the ether is doing great. No surgeries or sprained ankles for y'all, ya hear?

Deadline for Buffy Anthology Extended

Hi all--

I haven't been getting as many submissions for the Buffy anthology as I'd hoped, so the August 1 deadline isn't going to be happening. I'll be accepting poems until further notice. Scroll down for more info about the Buffy poetry anthology and please email your poems to me at erinlyndalmartin at gmail dot com. Thanks! :)