Issue 3: Call for Submissions

by on Feb 23, 2015

This is the Official Call for Submissions for Issue 3 of Gnarled Oak, which will start in April and be an unthemed issue.

Gnarled Oak accepts poetry, prose, videos and artwork. I don’t like to impose rules on what is and isn’t acceptable (other than the no hate speech, no pornography one), but 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 3 through March 20 and plan on starting the Issue on April 6. Please visit the Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.

Issue 2: The Velocity of Night—Summary, Contents & Editor’s Note

by on Feb 22, 2015

gnarled_oak_cover2Summary

Issue 2: The Velocity of Night (Jan-Feb 2015) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.

Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)

Contents

Tales of the Forest — Michele S. Cornelius

Big Red Hands — Howie Good

nail art — Angelee Deodhar

The Convert — Marie Craven

my shadow — Chen-ou Liu

hibiscus and jasmine — Marianne Paul

Bend Back and Sigh — Pamela Sayers

A Walk on the Tame Side — Vivienne Blake

Leave-taking — Dave Bonta

she’s here — Angie Werren

Day’s End — Shloka Shankar

Burn Job — Lawrence Elliott

No One’s Home — Michele S. Cornelius

a thread of scarlet — N. S.

night jasmine — Laura Williams

motionless — Shloka Shankar

A Poem by Cardboard Suitcase — S.Eta Grubešić

Spiders — Carolyn Guinzio

Rise Above — Michele S. Cornelius

silver birch — Caroline Skanne

all your broken promises — Olivier Schopfer

Some Notes toward an Ode to Yarn — Sherry Chandler

Love Tortures Me Like the CIA — Howie Good

riding pillion — Debbie Strange

Winter’s Music — Margo Roby

Wintry Seascape — Massimo Soranzio

grackles — Angie Werren

Yellow — Sherry Chandler

Editor’s Note

It seemed a funny thing to have a “winter issue” when some of Gnarled Oak’s contributors and readers are in the midst of summer. Weird too, since here in Austin, winter isn’t so much a season as a collection of random days interspersed between December and February. So this is now Issue 2: The Velocity of Night, the title from Debbie Strange’s “riding pillion” with Michele S. Cornelius’s “No One’s Home” on the cover.

What is the velocity of night anyway? How fast the sky darkens is determined by season and latitude. But there’s more there. Fast or slow, it can come with joy or sorrow, anticipation or apprehension, and it seems all that can be found in this issue. Though unthemed, themes emerged: homes in transition, leaving and returning; love with its beginnings and endings; and, of course, the way winter shifts to spring (and back again as it’s doing here today).

I’m happy with the way this issue came together, the diversity of the work—poetry, prose, videos, artwork—and voices from all around the world made this especially fun. I can get lost staring at a map, and it’s exciting to me to be able to present work from so many writers and artists representing so many corners of this little blue world.

And so, sincerest thanks to all who allowed me the honor and privilege of publishing their work, all who submitted work to Gnarled Oak, and everyone who read and helped to share the wonderful writing and artwork found in this issue.

With gratitude and thanks,

James Brush, editor
February 2015

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Gnarled Oak — Issue 2: The Velocity of Night: Read online | Read the PDF

Issue 2: Call for Submissions

by on Dec 15, 2014

This is the Official Call for Submissions for Issue 2 of Gnarled Oak, which will be starting in January.

Now that Issue 1 is complete, I can finally say, “Check out our back issue to see what we like.” And I do hope you check out Issue 1: Starting Small if you haven’t already. Please remember, though, that Issue 1 was focused on micropoetry while Issue 2 is wide open. I will consider micro works but I’m also interested in longer stuff as well.

I’m reading for Issue 2 through January 9, 2015. Please visit our Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.

Issue 1: Starting Small—Summary, Contents & Editor’s Note

by on Dec 9, 2014

gnarled_oak_coverSummary

“Starting Small” (Nov-Dec 2014) is the inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak featuring micropoetry, microprose, short videos, and micropoetry-related artwork.

Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)

Contents

fleeing sparrows — Angie Werren

gnarled oak — Patricia Geyer

The Names Change Every Time I Tell the Story — Aubrie Cox

crows perched on wire — Erica Goss

Belief in Unicorns — Marie Craven

Perfume — Mark Windham

ventilator machine — Archana Kapoor Nagpal

faultless hand sewn quilts — Vivienne Blake

luscious peach — Julie Bloss Kelsey

Six (Twenty Seconds of Haiku) — Angie Werren

Newton’s First Law of Motion — Aubrey Cox

eventide…  — Shloka Shankar

on the belly — Marianne Paul

a wild sky — Debbie Strange

paddling sea kayaks — Robyn Cairns

morning fog — Angie Werren

Four Haiku — Kris Lindbeck

The Moving Walkway — Carolyn Guinzio

Editor’s Note

There is very little to say here at the end of this inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak other than “thank you.”

Thank you to everyone who submitted work and took a chance on this fledgling publication.

Thank you to everyone who read this issue, who shared it, liked it, commented, retweeted, favorited, pinned, reposted, and all those other ways of sharing the things we discover in the digital world.

It has been my honor and privilege to publish the pieces contained in this issue, from work by writers and artists I already knew and admired to others whose work was new to me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, all. I hope you’re looking forward to Issue Two as much as I am.

–James Brush, Editor

Call for Submissions: Starting Small

by on Oct 1, 2014

I plan to publish Gnarled Oak four times per year, the first issue slated for November 2014. In the spirit of honoring this site’s past as a micropoetry blog and because editing a journal is a new adventure for me, we’re going to start small with a micro-poetry, prose, video, art, whatever issue. I’m accepting submissions on a rolling basis, so I’m also reading for the Winter 2015 issue. Issue specific guidelines are below, and general submission information is on the submissions page.

Please consider submitting, and do help spread the word.

Submissions for Fall 2014 close at midnight October 31, 2014. Submissions for Winter 2015 close at midnight on December 31, 2014.

Thank you.

Fall 2014: Micro Issue

For the Fall 2014 issue, we’re starting small. Please adhere to the General Submission Guidelines below, but for this issue, we would like to see micropoetry, microfiction, videopoems based on micropoetry, and artwork that works with this micro/starting small theme. We’re going to follow the Twitter model, and ask that all submitted writing be tweetable. That doesn’t mean you need to be on Twitter, it just means we’re setting a 140-character limit for each submitted piece.

Regarding micropoetry… anything goes. You can submit haiku, senryu, tanka, gogyohka, small stones, lunes, haibun (for which we will accept work that goes a bit over the 140-character limit), or anything else that works. We’re not strict formalists here; just make sure the words work.

Regarding artwork… we like haiga and haiga-like things, but we’re also open to images and artwork that fit with the overall small/micro theme of the issue.

Winter 2015

This is an un-themed issue. As always, we’re looking for your best poetry, short prose, artwork, and videos. See the general submission guidelines below for more details.

Starting Something New

by on Sep 30, 2014

Welcome to Gnarled Oak. I used to keep my micropoems here, and if you’re reading this because you subscribed between 2009 and 2012, thank you. I hope you’ll stick around for this site’s new incarnation as a literary journal.

The idea developed as I was putting together a new poetry collection, and while proofing the acknowledgments page, I realized that most of the journals that had published some of the poems in that collection had shut down: qarrtsiluni, ouroboros review, Bolts of Silk, The Houston Literary Review, and a handful of stones. Literary journals are often transient things, but some of these were true favorites, and a handful of stones was where I got my first acceptance for a poem.

Now, I don’t know if the world needs another online literary journal, but I’m pretty sure it won’t hurt anything to add a little literature, art, and beauty to the web, and anyway I had this site and URL doing nothing, so I figured it might be fun and worthwhile to see what might grow here at this old Gnarled Oak. And if I can do this even half as well as the editors of the above-mentioned journals did, I will be very happy indeed.

I hope you’ll join me, consider contributing, and help spread the word.

(Oh, and don’t forget to follow, like, or subscribe.)

Thank you.