Open call for submissions!

Please welcome our third and final guest editor, Jane Burn. Jane’s accomplishments are too numerous to list here in full! She’s a poet with multiple magazine credits. She’s also an illustrator, crafter, maker, house-renovator. She’s associate editor at Culture Matters Press, currently finishing up edits on an anthology with co-editor Fran Lock. She’s the founder of Fat Damsel online magazine, was awarded the Silver Wyvern in the Poetry On The Lake international competition, has won the PENfro, Wirral and Bailieborough poetry festival competitions and been placed, commended or listed in MANY more. She has pamphlets, collections and collaborations with Middlesbrough’s own Bob Beagrie. She is published by Talking Pen, BLER Press, Indigo Dreams, Wyrd Harvest, Culture Matters, and Knives Forks & Spoons, with more coming soon from Indigo Dreams and Smokestack. She is a powerhouse  and this is her call out to you –

This year, my family went though an ordeal when our teenage son was involved in a dreadful accident which resulted in surgery and months of recovery that we are still involved with. I have had a lot of time to reflect on and consider how this experience has affected us all so far and this is going to form the backbone of my call-out. I am looking for poems that might help ourselves and others when we deal with trauma that affects either ourselves or those we love, poems that concern these following elements:

• The sudden shock. The absolute whirlwind of bad news– that phone call, that letter, that knock on the door that pulls the floor out from under you, that sends your head and heart into a spin. I am looking for poems that examine this immediate, fractured and dark place.
• The coping. Are you coping? How did you cope? What were/are the realities of living with the aftermath of trauma? What has it required of you to survive? How did you get through the bleakness of the first days/weeks/months? What did you have to do/what did it do to you? What were the dark moments? Where did light come from?
• The long term. Could you look forward? What helped you look forward? Are there positives/negatives in the future? Was there something/someone that helped make this time less painful? What are you left with? How did it affect you or someone that you care about? Is everything changed forever?

Send a maximum of three pieces of writing to celebratingchange2017@gmail.com by 31st January 2020, for the attention of Jane Burn.

Please include a short biog and a photo of yourself for our socials.

Previously published work is accepted with appropriate accreditation.

Poets may be based anywhere, not just Teesside.