In the previous months, we announced our nominated poems and short stories (selected by Professor Lee Upton and Ms. Susan Abraham) for Best of the Net. This time, we would like to present to you our selected works to be nominated for inclusion in the Best of the Web 2010 anthology that seeks to "promote and expand the reach and prestige of online literature."
Our esteemed judge - poet, editor, translator, and teacher Chad Sweeney
Chad Sweeney’s third book of poems, Parable of Hide and Seek, was recently published by Alice James Books. Poems from the book appeared in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior, Verse, New American Writing and Best American Poetry 2008, and the poem “The Methodist and His Method” was read by Garrison Keillor on the NPR radio show The Writer’s Almanac. Chad’s co-translations of the Selected Poems of Iranian poet H.E. Sayeh will appear next year from White Pine Press, and his fourth book of poems, a bilingual Spanish/English edition is forthcoming from Forklift Books, Wolf Milk: Lost Poems of Juan Sweeney. Chad teaches poetry and is a Ph.D. candidate at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he lives with his wife, poet Jennifer K. Sweeney, and their baby son, Liam.Nominated works
(This is in no particular order. Please click on the title to read the poem.)
1. Personal History by Ching-In Chen
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press). Daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a Kundiman, Macondo and Lambda Fellow. A community organizer, she has worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside and Boston. She can be found at www.chinginchen.comChad Sweeney's review: “Personal History” is at once casual and graceful, unwinding its images the way thought itself moves, when unhurried, toward recognition. The poem is honest, unsentimental, yet from its traceries of the ordinary artifacts of two lives, it develops a rich emotional texture, haunted by the mystery of ancestry, both intimate and distant, the unknown “other” from which our lives spring, the old cultures, the old bodies, whose very disappearances somehow issue into who we are.
2. Scratch by Sharanya Manivannan
Sharanya Manivannan's first book of poems, Witchcraft, was published in 2008 to critical acclaim, and was described by Singapore Literature Prize winner Ng Yi-Sheng as being “sensuous and spiritual, delicate and dangerous and as full as the moon reflected in a knife” in The Straits Times. Sharanya’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Drunken Boat, Softblow, White Whale Review, Kritya, Clementine, Istanbul Literary Review, Danse Macabre, A Café In Space and Pratilipi. A personal column, The Venus Flytrap, appears biweekly in The New Indian Express. She was the recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009. She is working on a novel and a second book of poetry, and more of her work can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.Chad Sweeney's review: “Scratch” drops us into the intrigues of an international relationship. Its lines are artfully shaky, hurried, a little disoriented, like a taxi ride home at dawn in a foreign country. The speaker’s subliminal anxiety asks if the self may survive exile for the sake of love, if the monsoon remains in the blood when the woman has left her home, and if the sacrifice (of rabbit blood, its gift of fertility) has been received with equal elan. The poem explores how two lovers may negotiate without the inherited codes of courtship, and offers no easy answers, even as blood becomes a kind of shared currency—and language.
3. First Person Indefinite by Sonam Kachru
Sonam Kachru is a Kashmiri and was last seen working towards a PhD at the University of Chicago as an international student. This poem is from a collection he has tentatively titled: The Unbearable Likeness of Unbecoming Splendor. Kachru is at present completing a book-length project, Make Humans Again: Voices From Kashmir, an illustrated book of contemporary poetry translated into English from Kashmiri. Initial work from this project has been accepted for publication in Another Chicago Magazine, Greater Kashmir, and Words Without Borders.Chad Sweeney's review: “First Person Indefinite” is either a murder mystery or a parable of figuration, which are probably one and the same after all. Its images teeter dangerously between the real and the figurative, precise as a knife edge and yet as ambiguous as a shape in shallow water—which may be a branch, a water bird, or the ghost of someone’s childhood. The poem is drenched in love and menace, and its ambiguity, its “resistance to closure,” would be a weakness, if it weren’t so pleasurable to dwell in its cold, watery spaces.
Chad Sweeney's shortlist included:
1. "Tales of Winter & Exile" by Michael Caylo-Baradi
2. "The Irishman in my backyard" by Trisha Bora
3. "Talk" by Cathy Linh Che
4. "Walking home with groceries" by Iris Law
5. "KUMPI (THE WORK OF THE ORACLE)" by Sharanya Manivannan
6. "before the word" by Janice Pariat
We would like to thank Mr. Chad Sweeney who had to find time in his busy schedule (being a poet, editor, translator, and teacher) to review our featured works. We recommend that you check out his books, Parable of Hide and Seek, Arranging the Blaze, and An Architecture, which are available at Amazon and elsewhere. Some of his latest works can be found on the Serving House Journal.
By the end of November, we will announce our nominations for Pushcart. Another award-winning writer will help us in selecting works. Congratulations to all the nominated writers.
Note:
Submissions to Asia Writes are open year round and works are eligible for nomination to the three anthologies (Best of the Net, Best of the Web, Pushcart Prize). If you would like to contribute, please read our submission guidelines. Previously featured writers are most welcome to submit new works.