One Night Stanzas

13 Myna Birds
Editor: Juliet Cook
Established: 2008
Based in: Unknown
Website: http://13myna.blogspot.com
Submit via email: julietx@bust.com

Thirteen Myna Birds is a blogzine that believes in the transient, fleeting nature of art… or at least, that’s the way it seems. Submit a poem to them, and if they decide to publish it, it won’t be around for long — your poem appears, and then pretty soon, it is gone. It’s five minutes of fame in poetic form: it’s what marks this zine out from the rest.

So yes… if you’re looking to set your poem in stone, put it out there for all to see for all eternity, this is not the place for you. There are no archives — your poem is featured in a list along with 12 others, and as new poems are listed, you are bumped downwards until you fall off the end (at this point your name is “etherised” at the bottom of the front page). However, there is something quite cool about this concept, I think — if you visit the blog regularly, you always have something new to look at. Each time you re-visit, you see the existing poems in a new context, they evolve by association. And let’s face it, when you publish a poem anywhere, how many people are going to go back and read it over and over and over? Especially if it’s been there for years? The only thing you miss out on is a permalink to stick on your MySpace page.

So Thirteen Myna Birds does not follow standard publishing procedure… but that’s OK, because they’re pretty non-standard anyway. Adorned with an unflinching photo of blood-spattered doughnuts and a diagram detailing the best way to remove organs and bones, the scanty submission guidelines (scroll right down) request that all poems sent be equally unflinching, daring, quirky, and weird: “[we are] seeking the evocative, the connotative, the creepy, the odd, the paranormal, and the dark.”They’re not sticklers for form — if your piece is even vaguely poetry-like, they’ll take it: “poetic blurbs and blurts and brambles and darts such as dreamscapes and petite fictions” are all welcome. All they ask is this: make it weird.

Weird can be good. Some of the stuff that appears on the blog is really, really good. As well as myself, Thirteen Myna Birds has featured work from the likes of Morganne Couch and Cassandra Key. Right now they’re featuring a piece by Howard Good. Every time I visit, I find something I like. When you submit, editor Juliet will repond quickly and with as little fuss as possible… your poem gets posted quickly and you get told about it (just as well, you need to screencap before it slides away!). Even if you just want a weird and wonderful read, it’s worth visiting.

Know a zine, journal or other publication that deserves some recognition? Let me know in the comments box or by emailing claire@onenightstanzas.com!

(Photo by ※ Eἧchลn†rễsŞ ※)

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Tags: advice for young writers, featured magazines, publishing, resources for young writers, thirteen myna birds, young poets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.