We are celebrating 25 years of publishing throughout 2021. Milestones include the 100th issue of Cordite Poetry Review, Cordite Books’s 40th print title and the free anthology 40 Poets, soon supplanting 20 Poets.

For 25 years we have kept Cordite Poetry Review free, credible, lively, diverse and ethical: paying authors and doing all we can to pay producers, commissioning and guest editors – careers equally as critical to make our publications happen – against daunting realities. It is a relentless endeavour, but necessary.

We’ve always been known, and will remain, simply as Cordite. The world knows who we are and what we contribute to literature.

Please consider making a DGR tax-free donation.

–Kent MacCarter

A game is an environment navigated by apparent rules and structured by invisible rules. All of these (and the game) can be broken if you know where to look.

A game is only ever a suggestion. To play is to choose to follow the rules as they are set out, or to break them. Language is a game for two or more players.

The language of play is powerful and not always positive. Playfulness can be a weapon: a refusal to engage, or worse, a coy abrogation of responsibility. We are interested in the way playfulness can be used to conceal power dynamics, or distort reality. Hours in front of a screen pass in an instant; two parallel colours become a horizon. A conspiracy theory is promulgated by apparent arguments, and structured by an invisible indifference to the facts.

We welcome experimental, interactive and multimodal submissions, from interactive literature, bots and small games to Oulipian and other constraint-based poetry, comics, fan fiction, folk games, performance and sound art. Submissions must not be password protected, and should not rely on accessing other sites for engagement.

For this issue we want to celebrate interaction, curiosity, surprise and play. We want work that unlocks something for you; we want you to look at the fork, and see the whole bird.

Submission to Cordite 102: GAME closes 11.59pm Melbourne time Sunday, 9 May 2021.

Please note:

1. The guest editor(s) has sovereign selection choice for all poems submitted.
2. Masthead editors will also contribute to the issue.
3. We will only read submissions sent during our official submission periods.
4. Cordite maintains a hybrid submissions policy. This means that the guest editor(s) may invite five (5) Australian and five (5) overseas authors directly to submit to the issue. In addition, the guest-editor(s) will anonymously select an additional 40 works from Australian authors and use their discretion to select further overseas works. For each issue, the guest editor does not know the identities of the online contributors (via Submittable) until after the final selections have been made.
5. Simultaneous submissions or previously published material will not be considered. This includes works published in print and web journals but does not apply to material first published on personal blogs.
6. Please place up to three (3) poems in one (1) Word, RTF or PDF document (unless specifically noted otherwise for special issues), with no identifying details in the document itself.
7. We are not able to offer feedback on individual poems.
8. Submissions will only be accepted via Submittable …