Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Short List for Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume Two


Please forward to all interested persons and venues. 

Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume Two, is nearing completion. The editorial team consisting of M. Kei, editor-in-chief (USA), Sanford Goldstein (JP), Patricia Prime (NZ), Kala Ramesh (India), Alexis Rotella (USA), Angela Leuck (CAN), and Collin Barber (USA), read all tanka published in English during 2009, totaling approximately sixteen thousand poems in more than a hundred and forty venues. They selected about 300 of the best individual tanka, tanka sequences and tanka prose for inclusion the anthology. They congratulate the many fine poets in the rapidly growing field of contemporary tanka in English for their achievements.

A Thiagarajan
A. A. Marcoff
Adelaide B. Shaw
ai li
Alan Spring
Alex von Vaupel
Alexis Rotella
Amelia Fielden
an xiao
Ana-Maria DiVera
an'ya
André Surridge
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur
Andrew Riutta
Angela Leuck
Anna Holley
Anne E. Michael
Annette Mineo
Audrey Olberg
Aurora Antonovic
Aya Yuhki
Barbara Strang
Becky DeVito
Bell Gale Chevigny
Belinda Broughton
Beverley George
Bob Lucky
C. W. Hawes
C. William Hinderliter
Carol Raisfeld
Carole MacRury
Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti
Carolyn Thomas
Cathy Drinkwater Better
Chad Lee Robinson
Chen-ou Liu
Cherie Hunter Day
Claudia Coutu-Radmore
Colin Stewart Jones
Collin Barber
Cor van den Heuvel
Curtis Dunlap
Cynthia Rowe
Dave Bacharach
Dave Bachelor
David Bingham
David Lee Kirkland
David Rice
David Terelinck
Dawn Bruce
Deborah P. Kolodji
Dee Evetts
Denis M. Garrison,  
Don Miller
Dorothy McLaughlin
Elaine Riddell
Ferris Gilli
Francis Masat
Gautam Nadkarni
Geert Verbeke
George Swede
H. Gene Murtha
J. Andrew Lockhart
Jade Pandora
James Tipton
Jane Reichhold
Janet Lynn Davis
Jared Carter
Jean LeBlanc
Jeanne Emrich
Jeffrey Woodward
Jennifer Nelson Heinmiller
Jo McInerney
Joanne Morcom
John Martell
John Quinnett
Joyce Sandeen Johnson
June Moreau
Kala Ramesh
Karen Cesar
Kathy Kituai
Kathy Lippard Cobb
Kirsty Karkow
Kisaburo Konoshima
David Callner
Kris Lindbeck
Kristin Reynolds
Kozue Uzawa
Larry Kimmel
Laurence Stacey
Laurie W. Stoelting
Lenard D. Moore
LeRoy Gorman
Liam Wilkinson
Linda Galloway
Linda Jeannette Ward
Lois Harvey
Lorelei Jolie Polden
M. Kei
M. L. Harvey
Magdalena Dale
Margaret Chula
Maragaret Grace
Margarita Engle
Maria Steyn
Marilyn Hazelton
Marilyn Potter
Marian Morgan
Mark Rutter
Mary Mageau
Max Ryan
Megan Arkenberg
Melissa Dixon
Michael Ketchek
Michael McClintock
Miriam Sagan
Murial Ford
Natalia L. Rudychev
Owen Bullock
Pamela A. Babusci,
Pamela Cooper
Pamela Miller Ness
Patricia Prime
Patrick M. Pilarski
Paul O. Williams
Paul Smith
Peggy Heinrich
Philip Miller,
Philomene Kocher
R. K. Singh
Randy Brooks
Raquel D. Bailey
Reiko Nakagawa
William I. Elliott
robert d. wilson
Robert Kusch
Roberta Beary
Roger Jones
Ruth Holzer
Sanford Goldstein
Sean Greenlaw
stanley pelter
Susan Marie La Vallee
Terry Ann Carter
Tess Driver
Thelma Mariano
Tom Clausen
Vasile Moldovan
William Hart

While being short-listed does not guarantee inclusion in the final version of the anthology, the finalists will be drawn from the Short List

All poets have been notified of their short list status and provided with an opportunity to grant permission and make any necessary corrections. If a poet appearing on this list has not received their notification, they should check their spam filters and make certain they are set to allow communications from Take5Tanka@gmail.com and Keibooks-Announce@googlegroups.com. If they still cannot find their notification, they should contact the editor-in-chief atTake5Tanka@gmail.com with valid contact information so that their notifications can be resent. 

Poems cannot be published without receiving the poet's explicit permission. Poets who do not respond, or who cannot be contacted by the editor-in-chief, will have their work omitted from the final version of Take Five, Volume Two.

Take Five, Volume Two, is scheduled to appear in print in April of 2010. It can be purchased from Lulu.com or other booksellers. 

Meanwhile, the editorial team for Take Five, Volume Three, is already at work. Further information about Tak5 Vol 3 will be forthcoming at a later date. 

Congratulations to all the fine poets!

~K~

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

New Picasa Album

Recently I purchased a digital camera and have uploaded images to a Picasa web album. You will find some publicity photos of me, as well as from my books, plus candid images from the tall ship whose crew I recently joined: the Kalmar Nyckel. The KN is going through winter maintenance right now, so is torn apart and not pretty, but I managed to get some good shots of various pieces of deck furniture and other features, including the great cabin. Sadly, none of the snow pictures I took during Snowmageddon turned out.

Life Imitates Fiction

During 2008-2009 I wrote a trilogy of novels for my own amusement called Pirates of the Narrow Seas. The first one, now named The Sallee Rovers, is in print already: http://www.lulu.com/content/8157511. A good review caused a small e-book publisher, Bristlecone Pine Press, to pick up all three. They'll be coming available on the Kindle and other e-book sellers later this spring.

At the time I wrote the novels, I was a member of the crew of a small, fore-and-aft rigged, historic wooden sailboat. The nautical parts of the novels were partly experience and extrapolation from my fore-and-aft experience, and partly research. As I have been proofreading and editing to get them ready for the e-book publication, I have noticed instances of life imitating fiction.

First, in the last of the three books, a new important ship appears: a frigate with a watersail, sprit topmast and sprit topsail, a lateen mizzen and shebeck yard, and a whipstaff to steer her. I went through Chapman's Mercatoria Navalis and picked out a small, handsome vessel with exquisite lines -- I wanted to reward my heroes with a fast and agile sailer. Her set up was rather old-fashioned, but that she offered all the features I wanted in a ship for my heroes, coupled with better documentation than some of the other vessels in the book.

Last December I joined the crew of a fully rigged ship. She's the only ship in the Western hemisphere who has watersail, sprit topmast and sprit topsail, a lateen mizzen and shebeck yard, and a whipstaff to steer her.  What are the odds of that?

In one of the novels (Book Three : Iron Men), an accident occurs when men lay aloft in icy weather, and one falls do to uncertain footing. Not just icy, but the horses wanted mousing. That is to say, one of the supports that keeps the footrope more or less level (as opposed to hanging in a big curve), was not secure. Between the ice and the sudden sag of the footrope, the man lost his grip and fell and was badly injured.

Last week, the sprit topsail was set up on sawhorses in the sail loft so we could practice laying on, making and dousing sail. Not to mention, tying sail gaskets upside. Needless to say, in that situation, the horses weren't moused, either. Two of us lay on, fortunately only about a foot above the floor, and the footrope danced violently. It was abundantly clear how, even without ice, a man might be pitched off the footrope.

There is another incident in which the ship suffers an accident when the novice helmsman turns the wrong way in response to direction, becomes confused, and attempts to correct his mistake, making the situation worse.

I will not say our first exercise with the sails went that badly, but the opportunity for confusion is ample among novices :) We were moored to the dock and merely raising and lowering the fore course, and it was the trainees first time doing so, so errors are to be expected. A ship is an intricate piece of machinery and the crew who work her are part of that machinery. They must learn their roles so well that they can move like living gears in the whole complex organism.

Google Themes

Two years ago my autistic son took some photographs. I have turned two of them into themes for Google. They're nice nature photographs, look for 'Goose Lagoon', taken in the lagoon near the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum at the foot of Lafayette Street in Havre de Grace, Maryland; and 'Fallen Willow,' taken near Concord Point Lighthouse at the same location. The willow is now gone; it was removed to make way for the new dock at that location.

~K~