Anthology

Call for Work:

For an anthology of contemporary poetry on girlhood aimed at high school and college level readers, co-editors Arielle Greenberg and Becca Klaver seek submissions of poems on or relevant to any aspect of the experience of girlhood, from childhood to young adulthood, by poets WITH AT LEAST ONE PUBLISHED OR FORTHCOMING POETRY COLLECTION FROM A NATIONALLY-DISTRIBUTED PRESS (chapbooks and self-published books don't count).

We aim to create an anthology that addresses the need young women have for challenging, intelligent, complicated literature about their lives. We believe that great poems for girls don't necessarily have to be directly about the experience of adolescence: therefore, we are just as interested in poems that evoke vivid experiences of girlhood as we are in exceptional poems on any topic that teenage girls would find meaningful and compelling. We are less interested in poems with speakers who are distanced from (through nostalgic reminiscence, for example) the experiences of adolescence. Poems that are not subject-driven or narrative but seem to evoke the complex lives of adolescents--or otherwise might be of particular interest to a teenage girl reader--are also welcome. As you look through your work, the best question to ask yourself is, "Would this piece have appealed to me as a teenager?"

In addition to submissions of your own work, we would be interested in hearing suggestions of individual poems that you feel should be included in such an anthology.

As we have a very limited permissions budget, we prefer submissions of poems that are either unpublished or to which the poet retains the rights. Previously published poems will be considered.

Send no more than three poems no later than October 1, 2007 via a SINGLE Word attachment to becca [at] switchbackbooks [dot] com or via snail mail in care of Becca Klaver, Assistant Programs Director, English Department, Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605-1996. In your cover letter, indicate if the poems you are submitting have been published and whether or not you hold the rights, and mention the title(s) of your book(s). Please include an email address in snail-mail submissions. We expect to notify poets via email by Summer 2008. Switchback Books plans to publish the anthology in 2009.