This is the Official Call for Submissions for Gnarled Oak‘s sixth issue as well as for an experiment of sorts—an “oldies” issue that will come either before or after the next regular issue, which will start in January and be an unthemed issue.

For the next regular issue (probably Issue 6), the standard spiel:

Gnarled Oak accepts poetry, prose, artwork, and videos. As a general guideline, I tend to favor shorter works, which for our purposes means poems of less than 20 lines, prose less than 1000 words, and videos less than 7 minutes long. Regarding form and style, I’m open to almost anything. Check out previous issues to get a sense of things.

I’ll be reading for Issue 6 through January 3, 2016 and plan on starting the issue the week of January 11.

For the oldies issue:

This is an experiment of sorts inspired by the weekly vintage verse feature at Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY (a fine journal, you really should check out) and my son’s love of show-and-tell. I’m interested in putting together a short issue (10-15 pieces) comprised of pre-twentieth century poetry. I’m hoping people will submit a poem they love, like, or that should simply just be shared along with a short (~200 words max.) statement about or response to the poem. Creative responses intrigue me. As do visual and even video responses.

Regarding the poems, I’m more interested in “deep tracks” than the “hits,” so the likes of Poe, Dickinson, and Shakespeare are fine and will be considered, but I’d like to try to avoid the high school English textbook standards (I already know them being a standard high school English teacher).

It is important from a copyright standpoint that all submissions be of poems in the public domain and out of copyright, so they must be pre-twentieth century. As always shorter works are preferred. Translations will be considered but the translation itself must be either in the public domain or the submitters own work.

Submissions for the oldies issue should contain one poem and the submitter’s statement/response. I will keep submissions open for this issue until I have 10-15 pieces at which time I will announce a publication schedule for it.

And, as always…

Please visit the Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I look forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.