Call for Submissions: Physical Culture, on Feminism & Fitness

From the editors of the next DELIRIOUS HEM feature, a call for submissions: 

This is an open call for submissions for an online and print anthology about women and fitness/exercise co-edited by me (Elizabeth Hall) and the lovely Amanda Montei. The online portion of the project will appear at Delirious Hem late this summer followed by a print anthology with a tentative 2015 release.

The goal of the anthology is to chart a modern physical culture from a broad range of perspectives. We are especially interested in exploring the intersections between feminism and fitness. We feel the topic is ripe for interpretation and re-interpretation. In that sense, we are not only interested in texts that explore our current physical culture, but ones that also reformulate and re-conceive it.

We are as interested in pieces about yoga and dance as we are urban bike culture and guerrilla street fitness, or any way a woman might choose or refuse to “work,” live in, or care for, her body. We hope to see texts that tease us, poke and prod, and interrogate the very meaning of “fitness” and/or complicate accepted narratives and norms of exercise and female empowerment. We welcome all forms—poems, short stories, nonfiction, scholarly texts, works of historiography, collaborations, interviews, whatever.

Send up to 5 poems or up to 5,000 words and a short bio to delirioushem1 [at] gmail [d0t] com by July 25th, 2014. 

414 ('Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch)

'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch,
That nearer, every Day,
Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel
Until the Agony

Toyed coolly with the final inch
Of your delirious Hem—
And you dropt, lost,
When something broke—
And let you from a Dream—

As if a Goblin with a Gauge—
Kept measuring the Hours—
Until you felt your Second
Weigh, helpless, in his Paws—

And not a Sinew—stirred—could help,
And sense was setting numb—
When God—remembered—and the Fiend
Let go, then, Overcome—

As if your Sentence stood—pronounced—
And you were frozen led
From Dungeon's luxury of Doubt
To Gibbets, and the Dead—

And when the Film had stitched your eyes
A Creature gasped "Reprieve"!
Which Anguish was the utterest—then—
To perish, or to live? 

Emily Dickinson

We're working on some new ideas for features. Check back soon.

DAY 26 * KAREN WEISER * ANNE WALDMAN

KAREN WEISER has several books and chapbooks, most recently To Light Out, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010. Her next book is forthcoming from the same press in 2015. She is an Assistant Professor of English at New Jersey City University. Karen reads her poem, Secret Bound.



Karen Weiser reads from Gossamurmur by ANNE WALDMAN. Waldman is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat poets. (from Wiki)

DAY 25: Marisa Crawford and Seth Landman

Marisa Crawford reads her own poem. She is the author of the poetry collection The Haunted House (Switchback, 2010) and the chapbook 8th Grade Hippie Chic (Immaculate Disciples, 2013). Find her work online at marisacrawford.net.

Maris Crawford reads Seth Landman. Landman lives in Massachusetts, and is a member of the Agnes Fox Press collective. His book, Sign You Were Mistaken, was published by Factory Hollow Press in 2013. 

DAY 24: W.G. Sebald and Erin Virgil

W.G. Sebald was a German writer and academic and the author of three books of poetry: For Years Now with Tess Jaray (2001), After Nature (1988), and Unrecounted (2004)  Erin Virgil reads W.G. Sebald's poem "Timetable." 








Erin Virgil reads her poem, Hermitage. Erin Virgil is a poet and essayist living in northern Colorado.  She has an MFA from Naropa University and her work has been published by Wolverine Farm, Fast Forward, Colorado Life Magazine, Indigo Ink.  She has books forthcoming from Monkey Puzzle Press and from Dancing Girl Press.  She keeps up a literary sort of blog at emvlovely.wordpress.com.

DAY 23 * Wisawla Szymborska * Arielle Guy *

Arielle Guy reads Wisława Szymborska.
Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, which has since become part of Kórnik, she later resided in Kraków until the end of her life. 

ARIELLE GUY reads her own poem here. She really wants to have a dog. She would have two huskies named Mulder and Scully. Her work has never been published on other planets and she holds out hope. Her work has appeared on earth in Eleven Eleven, EOAGH, 6x6, kadar koli, CARVE, delirious hem and other magazines. Her first full-length collection, Three Geogaophies: A Milkmaid’s Grimoire, was published by Dusie Press in 2011, as well as a chapbook, Gothenburg, from ypolita press, and other Dusie chapbooks. She has a book forthcoming from Lark Books, Dreamographers of the Eastern Seaboard, part-memoir, part-essay, about mindfulness, writing, heritage, and being at peace. She lives in Brooklyn for the time being, maybe forever.