Submit to Cordite 88: TRANSQUEER
TRANSQUEER is a call for you to say something that maybe you haven’t been able to say before. It asks you to find poetry in / between lines, binaries and stultifying categorisations; from the life of flesh, from inside the bleating, many-chambered heart of gender and sexuality. It follows from Joy Ladin’s request that we ‘explore trans identities not as positions to defend but as modes of becoming and thus ways of being human’ (Trans Studies Quarterly, 2016: 640).

Poetry has always shown us where the gaps / gasps lie, where the line does (not) end, how the margin teaches the centre what it is to be always-becoming, always coming-to (writing, the self, the other, each other…). We ask you ‘[to] believe that the world is QUEER, or that oneself is, or both, [and that this] is a window of doubt through which all creative possibility comes into being’ (Mark Doty, The Art of Description: World into Word).

We want transgressive poems, transonic poems, transmontane poems. Transmissible, transitory, transhumanist poems. Poems that transpire. Poems that transact. Poems that transpose. Poems that translate what Mark Doty refers to as ‘that which is not business as usual, not solid identities founded on firm grounds.’ We want poems as transducers, transmuters, transponders. We want to be transported, we want to be transfixed, we want to be queered by your poems. We want poems that queer(y).

We think of gorgeous-sounding words: transalpine, transistor, transmigrate, transfusion, transatlantic, transaminate, transcultural, transmogrify, transcutaneous.

We think of a few lines from Sylvia Plath, ‘Balloons’ – ‘Yellow cathead, blue fish— / Such queer moons we live with / Instead of dead furniture!’ – and of their elegant translucence.

We think of two lines from Tori Amos, ‘Blood Roses’ – ‘You think I’m a queer / I think you’re a queer’ – and of their gaspy / gappy transmission.

Come into being. Send us your gasps, your yells, your manifestos, your moments in the mirror – say something. Send us your work, and ask us to believe it, weeping. The time for TRANSQUEER poetry is here.
POSTED 02/08/18
CLOSING
05/08/18
Walker Wednesdays
Walker Books, the leading children’s books publisher in Australia and New Zealand, is now accepting YA and middle-grade submissions from all published and unpublished writers on the first Wednesday of each month (AEST).

We are looking for YA/MG manuscripts with strong writing, engaging characters and well-developed world-building. We are open to YA/MG of all genres, but are particularly interested in submissions with diverse characters and/or written by diverse authors.

Submission Guidelines
Please email a 1-page cover letter and the first 50 pages of your manuscript as a Word document to WalkerWednesdays@walkerbooks.com.au
POSTED 05/12/16
CLOSING
01/02/17