Call for Submissions: 41 April Fool’s Day Erasure Poetry

Silver Birch Press is seeking April Fool’s Day Erasure Poetry based on page 41 from a book of the poet’s choice — interpret “April Fool’s Day” as you will (humor, trickery, thoughts on the day, but nothing x-rated or raw). Find out more about erasure poetry at wavepoetry.com and geist.com. I like this prompt because at some point we’ve all felt like fools, have been fooled, or have fooled someone else — so the resulting poems will be either humorous or emotional (my favorite types of poetry).

As a prompt, here are definitions of “fool”:

Noun: A person who acts unwisely; a silly person.

Verb: Trick or deceive.

Adjective: Foolish or silly.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

In honor of April Fool’s Day (4/1), Silver Birch Press is accepting submissions of erasure poems based on page 41 from a book of your choice. For examples of erasure poetry, see this link.

1. Select a book and turn to page 41 (in honor of April Fool’s Day, 4/1).

2. Photocopy the page, then mark out, white out, circle, or in some other way (see examples), eliminate some of the words. The remaining words constitute your April Fool’s Day Erasure Poem. (You may submit up to three poems, each created from page 41 of a different book — or even the same book, if you are so inclined.) Make sure the page number (41) appears in the poem (meaning, don’t cross out the page number). Also make sure that all the deleted words are completely obscured. 

3. Give your poem a title.

4. Scan (or take a photo of) your marked-up copy and create a PDF or JPG file. (We prefer files of at least 1MB, but will accept lower-resolution files.)

5. Create a separate typed version in MSWord or in an email.

6. Send an email with your erasure poetry to silver@silverbirchpress.com along with your name, mailing address, one-paragraph bio, and the Title, publisher, and publication date of the book.

DEADLINE:  March 15, 2014

We will feature submissions on the Silver Birch Press blog — and in a printed collection entitled Silver Birch Press By the Numbers Erasure Poetry Anthology, which we’ll release in the fall of 2014.