What kind of a theme is NO THEME 11? We see it as a decadent proposition, a call to experiment, to play. Mostly, we want to know how you are. After all, it’s been so long. We want to hear your voice. We want to crowd in close. We want to turn the volume up.
We want … to have a party!
We want the poem that is your karaoke song. We want your poem to go viral. We want poems that look like fly-fishing baits: fuchsia, bitsy, feathered. Poems crammed full of every last piece of junk from your psyche and spray-painted silver like a street mime. We encourage you to feel a little sick about it. We want sweat and glitter; we didn’t think we wanted that, but times have changed, haven’t they, and now we do. We want to appreciate you and all your drama. There’s room for wallflowers, if that’s your vibe. We like vibes. We like tough, we like huge. We like knockoffs and originals, side by side. We like sexy, oh oh, we like that.
We want poetry that is effusive and overwrought and hyperbolic and melancholic and sentimental and dark and cheesy and twisted, that pushes itself so far past the realm of good taste that it glides gleefully into ugliness. Poems that boil and bubble over in excess. We are looking for too much of a good thing. We are looking for the poetry Liberace would have written. Poems hewn from marble. Poems called Romeo and Juliet.
We invite work that takes poetry past its logical limits. That pushes the envelope until it becomes a nappy filled with gold shit. We invite poems that are essays, essays that are comics, comics that are digital works of art, drawings of sound, recordings of drawings. We invite poems that are medieval manuscripts, birdsongs, legal diatribes, gardening guides, showtunes. We invite stylistic play, joyous experimentation, collaboration, hybridity. We want to feel a great rush of energy, very much. After sleeping far too long, we want to be woken up.
Submission to Cordite 105: NO THEME 11 closes 11.59pm Melbourne time Sunday, 13 February 2022.
Please note:
- The guest editor(s) has sovereign selection choice for all poems submitted.
- Masthead editors will also contribute to the issue.
- We will only read submissions sent during our official submission periods.
- 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.
- We are not able to offer feedback on individual poems.
- Submissions will only be accepted via Submittable …
