BLESSINGS BLESSINGS!

Have some poems among some stunning company in two new e-releases: Otoliths and the Showcase of 100 Filipina Poets as part of the First Annual Festival of Women's Poetry which just went live to run through all of November. Moi Otoliths poems HERE and WomFest flamenco poems HERE.

Stellar poet Luisa Igloria edited the Filipina Poets Showcase and it's worth reading her Introduction. I have to say I was amused by this excerpt:

But there is so much more to the idea and reality of being Filipina -- whether she is indeed a mail order bride who has found her way to a rural community in Kansas; or a domestic worker in Dubai or Hong Kong helping her compatriots organize to learn more about their rights as migrant workers; or the nanny somewhere in Europe, who has temporarily put aside her teaching career and her degree in physics; or the former Wall Street banker who has decided to make wine and write poetry; the poets who are mothers and the mothers who are poets, and who use writing to forge new definitions of family in defiance of distance; or the poets who have come to writing from "outside the academy" ...

Boldface Mine. Moi, ever wine-sipping and ever here to serve Toi, is often good as an outlier when defining a range, di ba? But seriously, that Introduction also serves up some useful links as regards Filipina Women's Poetry (which reminds me to, uh, remind y'all in the Philippines, I do have some representation at the referenced The Ateneo Library of Women's Writings in case you all want to go check out Moi Box first instigated by Feminist scholar/editor Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz -- I should be updating said box with some recent books in the near future).

And I gotta say -- scrolling through the Festival, I love seeing how beautiful these Pinay Poets are, as beautiful as their poems...Maganda Kayo Talaga! IF YOU WANNA KNOW ONE WHO WE BEAUTIFUL ONES ARE, GO HERE! (Obviously, this topic is close to Moi Heart.)

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Thanks as well to Mark Young, editor of Otoliths; here's his announcement of the new issue:

Issue eleven, the southern autumn, 2008 issue of Otoliths, has just gone live. As usual, the contents are wide-ranging. There are text & visual poems, photographs, paintings, & a variety of prose pieces. There's even an essay on otoliths.

The contributors to this issue are Anny Ballardini, Michael Aanji Crowley, Sheila E. Murphy, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, Eileen R. Tabios, Marcia Arrieta, dan raphael, Philip Byron Oakes, Michael S. Begnal, Halvard Johnson, Peter Ciccariello, Naomi Buck Palagi, Aaron Crippen, Raymond Farr, John Martone, Jeff Harrison, Andrew Topel, Felino Soriano, Reed Altemus, Iain Britton, Bill Drennan, Charles Freeland, J. D. Nelson, Mary Ellen Derwis, Joe Balaz & Mary Ellen Derwis, Alexander Jorgensen, Craig Rebele, Gregory Braquet, Marilyn R. Rosenberg, Michele Leggott, Martin Edmond, Angela Genusa, Bobbi Lurie, Charles Mahafee, Spencer Selby, Thomas Fink, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, Cara Benson, harry k stammer, Samit Roy, Geof Huth, Stephen Nelson, Jaie Miller, Paul Siegell, Dorothee Lang, Stephen C. Middleton, Vernon  Frazer, Tom Beckett, John Moore Williams, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, Manas Bhattacharya, David-Baptiste Chirot, sean burn, Scott Helmes & John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett & various collaborators, John M. Bennett, Doug White, Steve Wing, Julian Jason Haladyn, Zev Jonas, & Robert Gauldie.

The two print parts of Otoliths ten should be available within the next week from The Otoliths Storefront, & the first eight parts—issues 1-4, parts one & two of each—are now also available from there as low-cost downloads.
Mark Young