Thursday 17 March 2011

[phantom kangaroo]

I've had my first poetry acceptance/publication this week - something I'm pretty excited about.  It's in an online magazine called Phantom Kangaroo which I've been reading for a little while now.  Initially the name grabbed me, but when I looked at the manifesto I knew it was the sort of publication that was right up my street:


Phantom Kangaroo is published on the 13th of each month, and features 13 poems by 13 poets.
We accept poems in any form, of any subject, or of any length, but favor is given to poetry in the shape of ghost sightings, horoscopes, obituaries (preferably yours), fortune cookie fortunes, tales of UFO abductions, and home-made love spells (preferably ones that work). 

It's run by poet Claudia Lamar - you can check out her work here:
http://claudialamar.com/

Anyway, here's a bit of background context about my poem 'A Ghost About Town'.  Last summer John (I work with him, he's an English teacher too at my college) kind of got me into this induced, heightened state of poetry writing.  He'd give me some material (a quote, newspaper article or myth) and I'd produce a poem, and quite often he'd also produce one and we'd compare.  This one came about from a quote from Robert Benchley, the American humorist, about ghosts.  It got me thinking about America and Europe and our differing ideas about/sense of history.  Also at the forefront of my mind were ideas from New Historicist Stephen Greenblatt (Hamlet in Purgatory) - hence my slight manipulation of a Shakespeare quote in there.  So all these ideas slopped around my head for a while and this was the result.
Here's the link, but please do check out the rest of the issue.
http://www.phantomkangaroo.com/issue-no-5/a-ghost-about-town.html

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