Submissions

Theme for Issue 11

War, War, and Rumours of War

I know more than Apollo ,
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping,
The moone embrace her shepherd
And the queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horne the star of morne,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.

All is conflict, opposition, polemics, ethnic cleansing, land theft, rapine, resource-grabbing, contention, revolution, struggle, strife. Murder in the badlands, terror in the Homeland, gang wars on the High Street, skirmishes in the hedgerows. Smite the Evildoers; bring on Armageddon, End of Days. Nation wars against nation, brother striketh brother, sister against sister, lover against lover twists the knife; poet warring with poet, mind struggling against matter. The opposition of the stars, El attacks Allah, Lucifer rises in revolt, Light against Darkness, blood on the streets in the town of Chicago, blood on the rise, it’s following me. Class against class; spouse versus spouse; Regina v. Wilde; the stoat assassinates the hare. I war against my better self; I am a citadel that must be stormed. Batter my heart, Three-Person’d God. War and Pieces. I don’t want no peace—I want equal rights and justice. Give me Victory or give me Death. Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of Desire. War of the Worlds; war in the East; war in the West; war amongst the rebels; madness, madness, war.

War, Bredren and Sistren, War; and Rumours of War.


Submissions for The Shit Creek Review #11, January-ish 2010 issue must be received by 31st October, 2009. PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT WORK AFTER THIS DATE until we announce what the theme for SCR #12 will be. This announcement will occur within issue #11, due online some time in January or thereabouts, 2010.

Possible submission routes (please read all the guidelines before submitting):

  • Online submission via our Shit Creek Magic Online Submission Form—an easy way to submit if you’re just sending a poem or two without much, or complex, formatting. (You will receive an automated response showing your text as received.)
  • Plain-text mail, if your text contains no significant formatting.
  • Formatted (HTML) mail with your text in the body of the message. If necessary, you can copy into the message from a Word or other document.
  • Mail with an attached Word or RTF file. We recommend the attachment route for longer prose work or any work with complex formatting (indents, step breaks, lots of italics, and so on). Preferably, don’t send a Word file unless your virus-checker will scan it; save out as RTF and send that instead.

Again, Shit Creek Paddlers: we know it’s not as much fun as partying: but please read all the guidelines before submitting. Other things being equal we are more likely to accept work that is easier for us to prepare for publication.

Artists can send image submissions to the Art Editor Don Zirilli (details below).

Text Submissions:

Rose Kelleher, Angela France, Nigel Holt:

Visual arts Submissions:

Pat Jones:

General Submission Guidelines

  1. The Shit Creek Review will publish bi-annually in February-ish and July-ish, and seeks to present high-quality original work in the fields of poetry and art.
  2. Submission deadline dates and themes for the next issue will be specified in each current issue.
  3. In poetry, we are biased towards formalism, but by no means dismissive of vers libre. We are looking for original work which deals with a wide variety of issues and imagery, including that which might test or challenge boundaries, or disturb sensibilities. But it must be well executed. Please do not send us work which has not been extensively drafted, crafted and polished.
  4. Previous publication is not a problem as long as the previous publisher does not hold copyright. You must inform us of any previous publication when you submit. Posting to blogs or online workshops is not in our opinion publishing, so any such poems or other pieces are clearly eligible. We reserve the right to archive your work as part of this site, and with your specific consent to publish it in a print anthology later; but all other rights remain with the author.
  5. The person who submits work must be the original author.
  6. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please inform us immediately if the submission is accepted elsewhere.
  7. Poets should submit 1 – 5 poems. Contributions should be sent in the body of an email, or as .doc or .rtf file attachments if necessary to preserve formatting: text contributions, whether poetry or prose, should be single-spaced.
  8. If you sent your submission in a .doc or .rtf file attachment, please name the file according to the following formula:

    Surname Title of The Poem.doc (or .rtf)

    Example:Yeats The Second Coming.doc

    or, if more than one poem:

    Surname Poems

    Example:Yeats Poems.doc

    This procedure is not mandatory but will make the editors’ work a litttle easier.

  9. Please include your surname and the word “Submission” in the subject line of your email, thus:
    Yeats Submission
  10. Do not send us sound files unless requested to do so. If your work is selected for SCR we may invite you to contribute mp3 files of yourself reading it, but in that eventuality we will contact you.
  11. Visual arts contributions should be as .jpeg files and may be sent as attachments. Image submissions should be original work or cite relevant permissions from copyright owners.
  12. All contributors should include brief third person biographical details of up to five lines.
  13. We will attempt to acknowledge receipt of all submissions within four weeks of arrival, but cannot promise to do so.
  14. Payment for publication in The Shit Creek Review is not possible in this life, but contributors will be rewarded in the next. On the other hand the editors are very receptive to offers (redeemable in this life) of cash bribes, vouchers, favours, and so forth.



Contributors