As Wilderness Interface Zone approaches its third birthday, it’s growing up a little.  Formalist poet Jonathon Penny has consented to join WIZ’s literary ecotone in the role of contributing editor. Jonathon has a keen eye for the belles-lettres.  Beside being a wonderful poet possessing a unique voice, he took his MA in Renaissance literature at BYU and his PhD in 20th Century British literature from the University of Ottawa. He has taught at universities in the U.S. and Canada, and now lives with his family in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates where he is Assistant Professor of English at UAE University. He has published on Wyndham Lewis and apocalyptic literature and is currently at work on several books of poetry for precocious pipsqueaks under the penname “Professor Percival P. Pennywhistle.” Bits and pieces may be found here. In addition to verse published on WIZ, his poetry has appeared at Victorian Violet Press and in Gangway Magazine and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Several of his poems have also been published in the landmark, recently released poetry anthology, Fire in the Pasture, from Peculiar Pages Press.  Welcome, Jonathon!

Also joining WIZ as a contributing writer is Val K., a soon-to-be fifteen-year-old aspiring naturalist and fantasy writer.  She has participated in NaNoWriMo since she was twelve years old and has successfully completed three novels.  She also writes short stories, articles, and story serials.  She lives in a corner of southeastern Utah with her family, her carnivorous plants and her two cats. She has previously published in Moab Poets and Writers’ Desert Voices and also on WIZ.  Besides writing, her hobbies include drawing, biking, weaving, hiking, catching snakes, rescuing helpless creatures from her cats, and beadwork.  She is a voracious reader.  Welcome, Val K.!

Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.”  The Kindle edition “slipped into the Kindle Store’s top 100 Best Sellers in 20th Century American Poetry.”  Congratulations, Tyler and Th.!  For WIZ readers’ information, several WIZ contributors, including Sarah Dunster, Jon Ogden, WIZ’s new contributing editor Jonathon Penny, Steve Peck, Sarah Page, and myself have work included in its pages.  Ángel Chaparro Sainz, another frequent WIZ contributor, wrote the anthology’s afterword.  It’s a pleasure to see that so many WIZ folk threw kindling into Fire in the Pasture’s multi-colored flames.  A poem by Elizabeth Pinborough, another poet published in Fire in the Pasture, will appear on WIZ in February.

Karen Kelsay, a fine formalist poet and constant lyrical presence here at WIZ, has begun a publishing company, White Violet Press. You can reach the press’s accompanying blog with submission guidelines by clicking on the image to the left.  While most publications are by invitation only, WVP will look at unsolicited manuscripts year round. White Violet Press is now open for submissions, so WIZ writers–especially WIZ writers of a formalist persuasion–please go have a look and support Karen in her new creative venture.

In November 2011, my essay, “Plato’s Alcove,” was awarded finalist status and an honorable mention in Torrey House Press’s creative nonfiction competition.  The essay tells about my first trip to the desert.  An earlier version won 1st place in the 2003 Utah’s Original Writers Competition.  The version I sent to Torrey House is a more highly stylized, mixed-genre experiment. Want to read “Plato’s Alcove” at Torrey House’s website?  Go here.

Profound apologies for the lateness of this next announcement, but Fortunate Childe Publications published its autumn anthology, Vintage, in October 2011.  WIZ contributors Karen Kelsay and Carla Martin-Wood also have verse published therein (search on their names in the search bar to the left to read their poetry published on WIZ).  Also featured in Vintage: four of my poems, including “Deer in the City,” “Closing Time,” and two poems not on WIZ.  Leslie Ellison, publisher of Fortunate Childe, nominated my poem “Deer in the City,” which also appears at WIZ, for a Pushcart Prize.  This is my second Pushcart Prize nomination. Thank you, Fortunate Childe!  To find information about Vintage or purchase copies of this lovely seasonal anthology, click on the picture to the left.  I will soon be buying a few for myself. Several poets included in the anthology recorded readings of their work that you listen to here.

WIZ will be running its popular Love of Nature Nature of Love event again in February.  To celebrate Valentine’s Day, all month long we’ll publish poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), video or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.  Or it could go the other way around: We’ll publish work about nature that also happens to give a nod to love.  We’re seeking submissions of original work or you can also send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.  So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to someone dear to your heart–even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paint–or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space dear to your heart–please consider sending it to WIZ.  See the submissions page in the navigation bar above for submissions guidelines.

Writers: The deadline for Torrey House Press’s creative non-fiction contest is coming faster than you might think: September 30th.  Entries can run pretty long, 2,000 to 10,000 words, and first place prize is $1,000.  An entry fee of $25 is required, but that’s a standard amount for this kind of competition.

Over at Our Mother’s Keeper, Jason Brown has a wonderful piece on the Sacred Grove that I think qualifies as recommended reading.  Jason’s  writing demonstrates depth of perception.  But more than that, he seems to have a sense for the dynamism and sensitivity of language’s teeming environment and engages well in it.  I appreciate the care his words show.

This story is just so cool I had to link to it.  I have a (very very) soft spot in my heart for chelonians.

A fascinating and thought-provoking story out of India with stunning photos of an enraged leopard waging war against a village.   I hope more information comes out about this incident.  I’m sure there’s more to the story than shows through in print.

Sorry it took so long for me to find you, OMK.  Best wishes for a sustainable presence in the Web.

Coming soon to a mailbox (or computer) near you: Dialogue’s environmental issue.  Several Wilderness Interface Zone contributors are included therein–congratulations, friends! Frequent WIZ contributor Steven Peck guest edited this issue.

Table of contents:

Page     Author     Title
Mary Toscano     Front Cover
Inside Cover, Title Page
v     Edwin Firmage, Jr.     Letters
1     Steven L. Peck     Why Nature Matters: A Special Issue of Dialogue on Mormonism and the Environment
6     George B. Handley     Faith and the Ethics of Climate Change
36     Craig D. Galli     Enoch’s Vision and Gaia: An LDS Perspective on Environmental Stewardship
57     Bryan V. Wallis     Flexibility in the Ecology of Ideas: Revelatory Religion and the Environment
67     Jason M. Brown     Whither Environmental Theology
87     Bart H. Welling     ”The Blood of Every Beast”: Mormonism and the Question of the Animal
118     Mary Toscano     A Perch, A Foothold, A Float
119     Patricia Gunter Karamesines     Why Joseph Went to the Woods: Rootstock for LDS Literary Nature Writers
134     Adam S. Miller     Recompense
143     Ron Madson     Grandpa’s Hat
148     Sarah Dunster     Gaius
150     Harlow Soderborg Clark     Easter Sermons
152     Jon Ogden     Seasonal Ritual
153     Jonathon Penny     Winterscape: Prairie
154     Karen Kelsay     Mother Willow
155     Sandra Skouson     Girl Without a Mother to Her Big Brother
156     Mary Toscano     The Tightrope Walker
157     Hugo Olaiz     The Birth of Tragedy
161     David G. Pace     American Trinity
177     Benjamin E. Park     Image and Reality in the Utah Zion
180     Polly Aird     Not Just Buchanan’s Blunder
190     Rob Fergus     Scry Me a River
196     Mary Toscano     Wherever He May Go
197     Peter L. McMurray     This Little Light of Ours: Ecologies of Revelation

Can’t wait to get my copy.   I’m very happy to see so many WIZards’ work appearing in the issue, including poems from WIZ’s 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff.

Only complaint: The cover girl or boy polar bear is cute, but I would have put hummingbirds up front.

Just sayin’.

It’s been a privilege and delight for Wilderness Interface Zone to host a spectacular flourish of spring poetry during this year’s Spring Poetry Runoff.  In the kick-off post, I called for a show of green language, of creative élan and prospect-opening words.  I asked for poetry that contained the recombinant stuff of fertile, world-making expression that gets into others’ consciousness and gives rise to new thoughts or that perhaps resurrects a memory.  This year’s Spring Poetry Runoff Contest entries did all that and more.  Among the poets’ overall accomplishments is the intertwining of song and dance that erupted on WIZ in response to the call for spring verse—a sight that not only was worth seeing but also that was my deep pleasure to join.  It was a good crowd to work with and reminds me of a recent experience watching violet-green swallows mixing it up over beaver ponds. Not only do the birds snatch up insects, each bird for itself, but obviously, they’re flying together and enjoying it, tumbling above and below each other, every bird forming its flight off its comrades’, wheeling, barrel rolling, one bird drawing up short of collision to let another flyer pass under then swooping out of its hover into a long, twinkling glide that weaves right back into a living fabric of free-flight.

I found choosing a winner agonizing.  I feel I can’t award enough people enough prizes.  Sean Watson’s cheering section—vast as the sea and, apparently, nearly as relentless—delivered his poem “Provo” to Winner’s Circle for the Most Popular Poem Award.  Well done, Sean—you played the game with a strong hand.  Congratulations!

Now for the Admin Award.  The high level of skill and pastoral prowess that many of the poems displayed impressed me deeply and will affect me for a long time to come.  There were so many head-turners that I have cognitive whiplash.  But I did choose, and here’s the outcome:

1st Place: A tie between Judith Curtis for “Conversion” and Jonathon Penny for “Sprung Rhythm (A Pagan Hymn).”

Honorable Mention: David Passey, for his poem “March Morning, New York City.”

These are more prizes than I counted on awarding, but I couldn’t decide whether I liked Judith’s “Conversion” better or Jonathon’s “Sprung Rhythm (A Pagan Hymn),” so I didn’t decide.  And David’s poem wouldn’t let go of me.  So I stretched as far as I could.

Judith’s “Conversion” accurately and effectually recalls the experience many of us have had (including me) of “converting” to a place—taking root in a new home—as well as portrays compellingly that piquant condition of mind that comprises conversion, when head and heart release their hold on the expected and familiar and open to the unimagined, reconfiguring, and seemingly repugnant unknown.  I find her image of surrender at the end of the poem especially moving, invoking, as it does, classical-brand surrender of and to love.  Love’s surrender is passionate business, and Judith does a stunning job of recreating in words the depths of that passion.  Congratulations, Judith, and thanks for bringing us this poem.

I liked both of Jonathon’s poems, “Thorns and Thistles and Briars (An Easter Poem)” and “Sprung Rhythm (A Pagan Hymn)” very much.  I chose “Sprung Rhythm” to share 1st Place with Judith’s poem because every time I read “Sprung Rhythm,” I find it great fun.  Jonathon mixes the formalistic control of the sonnet delightfully with the occasional letting-down-of-the-schematic hair to give the reading mind a wild and satisfying ride.  The poem is as tightly packed with images and energies of spring as a Jack-in-theBox is locked down inside its container on its compressed coils.  At the poem’s end, instead of Jack’s springing out in startling fashion, we get the release of a softened and lyrical couplet that ties the poem off neatly.  “Sprung Rhythm’s” musical composition is especially intriguing.  All lines in each quatrain rhyme or near-rhyme, with all three quatrains carrying the long “i” sound through ‘til the couplet, when the poet introduces a new rhyme scheme, almost sigh-like in effect.  Very classical, requiring of skill and an ear tuned to the musical possibilities of the English language.  Impressive, Jonathon—I look forward to seeing where you go from here.

David Passey’s “March Morning, New York City” is a finely tuned, imagistic poem displaying a different side of the city—charming, elegant, marked with gems of natural beauty, where turns of light really are just as native as they are in the open vistas of the West.  That’s one of the aspects of this poem that I really like: It opens my mind, allowing me to place rites of spring familiar to me from where I live in rural Utah—“sparrows / flickering and dancing so quick”—within the unfamiliar cityscape of New York City.  The poem’s music is quite good, too: “… a scaffolding of glad candles,” “Today a bustling bright parade.”  The poem’s last stanza turns my mind a different direction every time I read it.  Thanks so much, David, for adding “March Morning, New York City” to the Spring Poetry Runoff.

Sean, Judith, and Jonathon will each receive her or his choice of Mark Bennion’s Psalm and Selah: A Poetic Journey Through the Book of Mormon (Bentley Enterprises 2009) or Kimberly Johnson’s A Metaphorical God (Persea, 2008) or Philip White’s The Clearing (Texas Tech University Press 2007).  David will receive a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

Many other poems in the Runoff deserve high praise and acknowledgement.  I hope in the future to be able to offer a collection of Runoff poems to all participants.  Thanks so much, everyone—readers and writers, both.  This was an especially enjoyable and inspiring Spring Runoff, and I’m deeply grateful for everyone’s participation.  Good fun, all, and such beautiful language all around.  What a great vernal bash.

In the meantime, our normally scheduled postings will continue.

Publications

I’ve received publication announcements for two of Wilderness Interface Zone’s frequent contributors.

First, Karen Kelsay’s new book of poetry, Dove on a Church Bench, was released in April.  You can find it on Amazon by clicking here.  Congratulations, Karen, and best wishes for success with your book of verse.

Here’s a sample poem from Dove on a Church Bench:

Violet

by Karen Kelsay

Husband, I want to ripen into
a woman like your mother,
one who wiggles an arm
into the nook of a son’s elbow,
feet twisting obscure angles
across frosty streets, refusing a cane.
Whose only hope from tipping
over in the lane with a dizzy spell,
is not a bottle of pills, but a bag
of boiled sweets.
A stiff-upper-lip kind of lady,
who jeers at heart attacks
and broken hips, and raises hell
when trapped in a ward with old people.
One who still makes tea each
morning over the burner, even though
she catches her sleeves on fire.
A woman with no riches, but a few
baubles of costume jewelry
and collection of miniature brass
animals, given her one Mother’s Day,
that glint in the sun like a row
of diamonds.

Second, Steven L. Peck’s novel The Scholar of Moab has been accepted for publication at Torrey House Press.  Torrey House Press’ website describes The Scholar of Moab as “a dark-comedy perambulating murder, affairs, and cowboy mysteries in the shadow of the La Sal Mountains.”  I get sand in my teeth just reading the description.  Scholar of Moab’s tentative release date is October 2011.  To see more about Steve’s novel and about Torrey House Press, click here (scroll down).  Look for an excerpt from Scholar of Moab to appear at WIZ in the near future.

Creative projects

Sean Watson produced a mini-film titled Birth based on his poem “Provo” published as an entry in this year’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest here at WIZ.  Sean describes the film as  “…piece designed to be written by the viewer’s experiences.”  To see Sean’s film Birth, click here.

Contests and publishing opportunities

Torrey House Press extended its deadline for its creative nonfiction contest from May 31 to September 30.  For this contest, Torrey House is looking for writers “with a passion for the environment, issues, people, history, and cultures of the Colorado Plateau and the West.”  Explore their site for more information on the creative nonfiction contest as well as for other contests and publishing opportunities they offer by clicking here.

And … I received a call for submission from Moab Poets and Writers soliciting work for their first annual literary journal Desert Voices, “a literary voice for our desert home and those who feel a connection to it.”  This new journal seeks original writing on “any subject matter, all genres, poetry and prose,” though my experience with this group suggests they’re especially interested in work about the Colorado Plateau.  Desert Voices seeks short pieces, poems not exceeding 40 lines and prose pieces up to 1200 words.  For more information, visit their website here. Deadline: July 11.

Few things would thrill me more than to learn that Wilderness Interface Zone readers and writers found homes for their writing at either of these places.

Also, any contributor or follower of WIZ having announcements they’d like aired here, please send your blurb to pk.wizadmin@gmail.com.

Also, Wm Morris, who helped me start Wilderness Interface Zone, has interviewed frequent contributor to WIZ Ángel Chaparro Sainz over at WIZ’s sister site the Mormon Arts and Culture blog A Motley Vision.  Ángel recently completed a dissertation titled, “Contemporary Mormon Literature: Phyllis Barber’s Writing,” for which he received summa cum laude marks from University of the Basque Country (Universidad del País Vasco – Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.  Congratulations, Ángel, for finishing the dissertation, for its garnering high marks, and for the intriguing interview.   Seeing WIZ friends pop up in other places in print, on paper for in an electronic medium, is always delightful and cheering.  Well done, Ángel!

To read the interview, go here.

Light’s rise sparks bright blooms:
birdsong, fields of it, vining–
spring’s first green flourish.

These mornings, I step outside my back door to hear the hush of winter thrown off by a clamor of birdsong–the crackle of starlings, jazzy riffs of purple house finches, a lonely two-syllable call from a flycatcher,  screeches and churrings of magpies, ravens’ gravelly croaks, a woodpecker drumming a juniper tree, jangling songs of meadowlarks outshouting everyone.  Quite stunning, this send-off of the season of low, cold light.  And I can’t help but detect in the intertwining of different avian dialects the bloom of flowery beauty and signature fragrances of meaning.

The language of the birds, or the green language, is the mythical, magical language of wisdom and divine insight thought to pass between birds and those humans with ears to hear the music of the cosmos with which birdsong is thought to be impregnated.  Some traditions equate la langue verte with the adamic or perfect language.  Many folks might consider any relation between birdsong and human utterances and comprehension illusory.  But if you listen closely, you will hear chirps in the language of many species ranging from rodents (prairie dogs’ alarm calls sound bird-ish, and the noisy grasshopper mouse chirrups constantly) to cats (chirps and trills) to amphibians (our Woodhouse toads pip at us) to insects to puppies to people–especially babies.  My nearly 19-year-old disabled daughter, who can understand more words than she can say, chirps, hoots, and trills in response to questions and other words of address.  After nearly two decades of studying her bird-like, tonal language, I think I can rightly claim that I’ve gained from it deep, magical insight–including into the quiddity of human expression.  Because of my experience with her and what I think I hear in the language of birds and other animals and insects, I’ve begun to wonder if, rather than acting as the basic phoneme of  a foreign language spoken by creatures with which we think ourselves to have little in common, the chirp might just lie at the root of human expression.

Whatever else it’s said to be, the mythical language of the birds is highly poetic, layered with multiple strata of meaning, playful, punful, sliding, gliding, beguiling to the ear when performed aloud, and, when conveyed in written interchange, deeply engaging of the mind’s inner ear.

For WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff and Celebration, let’s see if we can outshine the birds in their spring ceremonies.  Human language can be just as green and gorgeous, just as textured and as alluring as the language of the birds.  And when it comes to the opening of new prospects and possibilities, human language can have no rival.  Even the language of the birds lags behind the best effects of the best human language: opening-the-possibilities acts of authentic creation.  Poetry, with its multifaceted, many-leveled effects and metaphoric prowess–its strength for getting across–can create, so to speak, more world.  As John D. Niles says in Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Narrative, “It is through such symbolic mental activities [as storytelling and poetry] that people have gained the ability to create themselves as human beings and thereby transform the world of nature into shapes not known before.”

So this Spring Poetry Runoff, let’s go green in our language.  I don’t mean Green, as in supportive of social or political movements touting environmental protection.  In some cases, that language is the least green of all.  I mean let’s go green, as in producing living, doing, being language that acts to open possibilities by virtue of its creative élan.  I mean let’s give out words that don’t just describe experience, they create experience, providing raw materials that others can recombine for their own narrative needs, thus altering, here and there, world and worlds.   Referencing John Miles Foley, Niles  calls this cosmoplastic, or “world-building” energy of human language, “wordpower.”

During this year’s Spring Poetry Runoff Contest and Celebration, we’ll not only be running the poetry contest with prizes in the Most Popular Vote Award and Admin Award categories but also an open-invitation haiku chain (a developing tradition on WIZ), a non-competing category for those poets wishing to participate in the Spring Poetry Runoff just for fun, the Runoff Rerun (re-publishing of one of last year’s poems), and other activities.

Hope you join in.  It’s spring.  Let’s sing it up.

To review submission deadlines, rules, voting procedures, and prizes, go here.

________________________________________________________________________

Photo of singing western meadowlark by Alan Vernon.