One Night Stanzas

Form.Reborn
Editor: J S Graustein
Established: 2009
Based in: USA
Website: http://folded.wordpress.com/form-reborn
Submit via email: form.reborn@jsgraustein.com

I learned about Form.Reborn, a brand new online zine, from poet Christian Ward. At first I was unsure if it was right for me: Christian said they only accepted poems short enough to fit into a text message, and as those of you who have read any of my poetry will know, that’s not really something I do! However, I became much more interested when I discovered that Form.Reborn is so named because these short poems need to be re-works of accepted poetic forms.

Basically, the word-limit is a meagre 140 characters (yes, characters), which is fine for a haiku… but the editor of Form.Reborn is really looking for you to be creative. The F.R twitter feed recently stated: “we’re serious about wanting sonnets!” How can you condense the sonnet form down into 140 characters? That part is up to you!

Jessi (the aforementioned editor) is a very cool customer: incredibly friendly and running a seriously tight ship. Form.Reborn is a threefold project — if your work is accepted, first of all it is published as part of the Form.Reborn Twitter feed, and then on a more permanent site for all your friends and admirers to bookmark. And eventually, Jessi is hoping to collect up enough contributions to create a series of Form.Reborn anthologies, the first of which will be published in February 2010. Heaps of work, but there is a great wealth of fantastic pieces already in the F.R vault… and it’s only been up and running a short while!

There are a few specifications if you want to submit, as you can imagine… but don’t be put off! This stuff is very far removed from what I usually write, but putting together my submission proved to be a really interesting and rewarding exercise! Firstly, each piece needs to be 140 characters or under… short enough to fit into a text. Secondly, it must be in an accepted poetic form: haiku, tanka, sonnet, heroic couplet, blank verse… any form, as long as it has form! Thirdly, Jessi’s main goal is to produce snippets of enjoyable, accessible poetry. She says: “We want vibrant images and concise thought that readers will enjoy whether they’re in a doctor’s waiting room, in line at the grocery store, walking to class…” This formula makes for some unusual and amazing poems… give it a try!

About Form.Reborn: “Form.Reborn is an experimental poetry journal that seeks to boil the essence of form poems down so that they can fit in a mobile phone text message. Some forms can be tweaked easily to fit within the 140 character limit… Others, on the surface, seem to defy the bounds of possibility: villanelle, sonnet, sestina, etc. Can they be done with text-speak? Should they?”

Submission guidelines: “we want digestible poems written in present tense that mobile phone users will enjoy to the point of forwarding. Submissions should be sent in the body of an email to form.reborn@jsgraustein.com with “submission” in the subject line. Due to the unique formatting we need to use for posting on Twitter, please use your word processor’s wordcount tool to check character count. If your poem contains more than 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation), revise. Be sure to include the title of the poem, its form, your name & pen name, and a link to your bio in your email.”

Know a journal or zine that deserves attention? Drop me a line and tell me about it: claire@onenightstanzas.com!

(Photo by Houseoftext)