Category: Calls for submissions

Posted in Calls for submissions, General Interest

Woman, Life, Freedom | Call for Poetry Submissions

Posted on by The BeZine Editors
Tehran, March 8, 1979 – Women demand a government based on gender equality
Source

Since September 2022, protests by the longstanding women’s movement in Iran have been violently repressed by Iran’s government and complicit police forces. Among many incidents, hundreds of girls in Iranian schools have been targets of chemical attacks. Increasing rates of executions have emboldened solidarity across entire families to continue the protests for gender equality and the social, political, and economic changes possible with expanded civil rights for women. Journalists and artists have been documenting the local events as they occur. Because the Persian women’s movement is an international network of people who live in communities and work for institutions around the world, events in Iran have effects everywhere. International solidarity is turning into responsive international action.

Tehran, March 8, 1979 – Women demand a government based on gender equality
Source

If poetry has a role in social change for social justice, then surely the next several months will be time for literary publishers, poetry event organizers, and readers, to undertake that role on an international scale. Poems must be made available and accessibly distributed for that to happen.

Bänoo Zan, an Iranian-Canadian poet living in exile, and Cy Strom, an award-winning editor from Toronto, have a call for poetry submissions for an anthology with the Toronto publisher Guernica Editions, to be titled Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. Submissions are currently open, and the deadline is March 15, 2024.

Demonstrators opposed to the Iranian regime hold a candlelight vigil to pay tribute to those who have died protesting the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who was killed in police custody after allegedly violating the country’s hijab rules, outside the White House on Saturday. (Bonnie Cash/Getty Images)
Source

Submittable page.

Along with the call for submissions, Guernica and others are reaching out for further funding to this project for social change.

Women Life Freedom GoFundMe page.

©2023 Terry Trowbridge
All rights reserved

Posted in Calls for submissions, Gun Violence, The BeZine

Stop Gun Deaths

Posted on by The BeZine Editors

Special Section for Summer 2023:
Stop Gun Deaths

“Guns are now the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. [aged 1–19].” Full stop. Think about that for a long moment.

As motor-vehicle caused deaths for children (ages 1–19) have declined steeply in the U.S. during the first part of the 21st C., gun deaths have risen. In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death for this age group, as the graph below from the New England Journal of Medicine shows.

Figure 1. Leading Causes of Death among Children and Adolescents in the United States, 1999 through 2020.
Children and adolescents are defined as persons 1 to 19 years of age.
Source: Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States
         N Engl J Med 2022; 386:1955-1956 (May 19, 2022; accessed: 27 April 2023)

According to the Pew Research Center, gun deaths for children under 18 increased 50% in number from 2019–2021. So, that gold line in the graph above keeps going up in the following year, as shown in the graph below.

Graph showing Gun deaths among U.S. kids increased 50% between 2019 and 2021. Data points given values are: 1999= 1,776; 2006= 1,593; 2013= 1,258; 2017= 1,814; 2019= 1,732; 2020= 2,281; 2021= 2,590. An angle shows that the difference between 2019 and 2021 +50%. Source: CDC
Source: Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years, Pew Research Center
         April 6 (accessed 27 April 2023)

These deaths include accidents, homicides, and suicides. What they have in common is one thing. Guns. It should be notable that in general, “Firearm homicide rates are highest among teens and young adults 15-34 years of age and among Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Hispanic or Latino populations” (CDC). While this is not the same age group, it is likely that these difference may continue below the age of 15.

Snopes confirms Barack Obama’s in the Tweet at the top of this page, with qualifiers about the age range (children under 1 are excluded because of unique causes of death. “The leading causes of death among infants (children less than 1 year old) were birth defects or preterm-birth issues” (Snopes). Also, motor vehicles accidents are slightly higher than guns as causes of death when looking at ages 1–17 (Snopes —this is because motor vehicle death rates are higher in that age group, according to Snopes).

Gun deaths are preventable. They are not caused by natural disasters or disease. They are caused by guns. Guns need to be safely stored in gun vaults in homes, away from children. We need gun control to keep military-style weapons off the streets and out of schools. Assault rifles are the “weapon of choice” for most mass shootings. Police need “red flag” laws that enable them go get court-orders to confiscate guns from people at risk of violence to themselves or others.

The fact that guns are THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR CHILDREN IN THE U.S. is a damning judgment on U.S. politics, policy, and society, a judgment about how much influence the NRA wields with lobbying and financing. There is nothing pro-life, pro-religion, or pro-rights about this awful fact. The rights of actual living children to live are being violated at a horrific rate. Guns cause the most deaths of American children. The. Most. Deaths.

Guns can be stopped.

Guns must be stopped.

Special section for
the June Issue of The BeZine

Send us your work for publication in a special section of the June / Summer issue of The BeZine on the theme of “Stopping Gun Violence.” We would like fiction, non-fiction (including relevant book reviews), poetry, art, music—all that you usually see in The BeZine. Show us, move us, teach us, suggest solutions. Help us move readers to Stop Gun Violence Now.

Follow the submission guidelines. Be sure to send your work as an email attachment; please attach a short bio; if you wish, you may attach a jpg headshot (portrait perspective, ie, higher than wide). Put “Stop Gun Deaths” in the subject line of the email. Details about submitting at the guidelines.

Send by the issue deadline of 15 May 2023.

References and Resources

CDC. Fast Facts: Firearm Violence Prevention.

CDC. Firearm Violence Prevention — Resources.

Goldstick, J.E.; Cunningham, R. M.; Carter, P. M. Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States. N Engl J Med 2022; 386:1955-1956 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2201761. May 19 2022.

Gramlich, John. Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years.
Pew Research Center. April 6, 2023.

Ibraham, N. Are Guns the Leading Cause of Death for Children in the US? Snopes.

©2023 Michael Dickel
All rights reserved

Stop Gun Deaths
Digital art re-purposing public-domain stock images
©2023 Michael Dickel
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The BeZine

Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be Peace, Be 

Submissions

Submission Guidelines
Posted in Calls for submissions, news/events, The BeZine

Call for Submissions, “The BeZine” – June 2020, Themed sustainAbility

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

THE BeZINE MISSION STATEMENT

Our goal is to foster proximity and understanding through a shared love of the arts and humanities and all things spirited and to make – however modest –  a contribution toward personal healing and deference for the diverse ways people try to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which illness, violence, despair, loneliness and death are as prevalent as hope, friendship, reason and birth.

Our focus is on sacred space (common ground) as it is expressed through the arts. Our work covers a range of topics: spirituality, life, death, personal experience, culture, current events, history, art, and photography and film . . . We feel that our art and our Internet-facilitated social connection offer a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters, and not as “other.”

Please read our complete Mission Statement HERE.

 THE BeZINE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

SustainABILITY

Call for submissions of feature articles, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, art and photography, music videos, and documentary videos on diverse environmental topics including but not limited to: degradation, protection, greenhouse gasses, weather/climate change, justice, and agriculture, famine and hunger. This call is open from April 1 through May 15. 

While The BeZine does not pay for content, neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.

Work that is not properly submitted will not be considered.

  • Prose, poetry, and links to videos: submit in the body of the email
  • Please: no odd, unusual, eccentric layouts
  • Photographs or artwork: submit as an attachment
  • DO NOT send PDFs or a document with both narrative and illustrations combined.
  • By submitting work to thezinesubmissions@gmail.com, you are confirming that you own and hold the rights to the work and that you grant us the right to publish on the blog or in the Zine if your submission is accepted. Submissions via Facebook or other social networking or in the comments section, will not be reviewed or accepted.
  • Please include a brief bio in the email. No photographs.

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY: We are looking for something special to be the header for The Table of Contents Page.

SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS are okay but please let us know immediately if availability changes.

Among the guidelines: our core team, our guest contributors, and our readership are international and diverse. No works that advocate hate or violence, promote misunderstanding, or that demean others are acceptable. Please read our Complete Submission Guidelines.

The BeZine is featured by
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Jamie Dedes
Founding and Co-managing Editor

Michael Dickel
Co-managing Editor

Posted in Calls for submissions, Event/s, The BeZine

“The BeZine” Call for Submissions, International Poetry Month

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

To mark International Poetry Month April 2020, we at The BeZine blog invite submissions of poems on the current pandemic. To paraphrase R. Buckminster, think globally but write locally. Write from your context about your experience during this Time of Coronavirus, but at the same time, reflecting to larger global contexts. Write about glimmers from within the crisis that illuminate ourselves, our world, and the world(s) possibly coming to us afterwards. This event is co-hosted by Womawords Literary Press.

We especially look for poetry that projects changes (positive or negative) that may evolve from this crisis:

• worldwide coordination/collaboration
• resources of one sort or another—old, new, emerging; shared or fought-over
• the impact the pandemic might have on:
° women and the role they play in assuring good health and hygiene
° the poor and low-wage or middle class workers
° water and the environment
° war and conflict, and
° addressing the climate issues that contribute significantly to this and looming pandemics.

What about the communities—perhaps yours—that have no running water and are also therefor ravaged by typhoid, cholera, and dysentry?

Guidelines HERE.

Email Word files to  thezinesubmissions@gmail.com (Please not this is our new email address)

Womawords Literary Press HERE.

In the spirit of love (respect) and community,
Michael Dickel, Co-Manging Editor, The BeZine
Mbizo Chirasha, Curator of Womawords Literary Press, Co-Host of The BeZine International Poetry Month
Jamie Dedes, Founding Editor and Co-Mnaging Editor, The BeZine

Posted in 100TPC, Bardo News, Calls for submissions, Event/s, Facebook Discussion Page, General Interest, news/events, Poets/Writers, The Bardo Group Beguines, The BeZine

Announcing our three new Zine team members and other news …

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

The Bardo Group Beguines, publisher of The BeZine, is pleased to welcome Mbizo Chirasha, Anjum Wasim Dar, and Kella Hanna-Wayne to our team.

MBIZO CHIRASHA (Mbizo, The Black Poet) is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.

ANJUM WASIM DAR (Poetic Oceans) was born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. Her family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the Partition of India and she was educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi where she passed the Matriculation Examination in 1964. Anjum ji was a Graduate with Distinction in English in 1968 from the Punjab University, which ended the four years of College with many academic prizes and the All Round Best Student Cup, but she found she had to make extra efforts for the Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies from the Punjab University of Pakistan since she was at the time also a back-to-college mom with three school-age children.

Her work required further studies, hence a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE, a proficiency certificate, from Cambridge University UK (LSE – Local Syndicate Examination – British Council) were added to  her professional qualifications.

KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (Yopp) is a disabled, chronically/mentally ill freelance writer who is the editor, publisher, and main writer for Yopp, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights education, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression; and for GlutenFreeNom.Com, a resource for learning the basics of gluten-free cooking and baking. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, Multiamory, Architrave Press and is forthcoming in a chapter of the book Twice Exceptional (2e) Beyond Learning Disabilities: Gifted Persons with Physical Disabilities. For fun, Kella organizes and DJ’s an argentine tango dancing event, bakes gluten-free masterpieces, sings loudly along with pop music, and makes cat noises. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Medium, and Instagram.

The BeZine thebezine.com
bardogroup@gmail.com
This is a digital publication founded by The Bardo Group Beguines, a virtual arts collective.

The Zine is published regularly each quarter and each Zine is themed:

March – Waging Peace;
June -Environmental Sustainability/Environmental Justice;
September – Social Justice; and
December – Life of the Spirit.
The BeZine communications and submissions go to bardogroup@gmail.com

The call for Zine submissions generally opens for 4-to-6 weeks before publication and closes on the 10th of the month in which the Zine is to be published. The Call for Submissions to the March 15 issue – themed Waging Peace – is currently open and will close on March 10. Submissions for the Zine blog may be sent at any time.

Our 2020 100TPC logo designed by team member Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon’s Dreams)

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In September we also do 100,000 Poets (and others ) for Change. This is a global event (see 100TPC.org) and at The BeZine we do a virtual event in which everyone may participate from anywhere in the world. A virtual event also facilitates and encourages participation by the homebound. Contributing Editor, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play – Words, Images, & More) hosts. 100TPC is held on the fourth Saturday in September.  We hold the event open for 24 hours, sometimes longer.

Occasionally, we have a theme for the month on the Zine blog. February 2020 is illness and disability. This may include mental illness. This event is co-hosted by YOPP!, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights eduction, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression, which was founded and is managed by Kella Hanna-Wayne, one of our new Zine team members.

We are not yet firm on doing April as poetry month but that will probably happen. It is likely that in August 2020 – like August 2019 – the blog will focus on Climate Action.

The Bezine also offers two Facebook Discussion Groups:

The BeZine 100TPC IS NOT a place to share poetry or announce publication. Through this group we’re especially interested in filling an information gap by collecting links to pieces on practical initiatives – ideas for taking action – from anywhere in the world, “best practices” so to speak that foster peace, sustainability and social justice, especially those that might be easily picked up and implemented elsewhere. This has been an uphill battle but the dream that people will regularly start using it for that thrives.

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The BeZine Arts and Humanities Page (not just for poetry) is a place to share all your arts activities and accomplishments, not just poetry, in the hope of inspiring one another and encouraging collaborations among the arts and within our community. Through this group you are invited to announce publications, showings, events et al. You are encouraged to share your videos: music, poetry readings, photography, art, film and so forth.

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The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort and we are unable to pay contributors but neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.

On behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines and
In the spirit of love (respect) and community,
Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor

Posted in Bardo News, Calls for submissions, The BeZine

“The BeZine” Call for Submissions, March 2020 issue, Themed Waging Peace; February blog post will be devoted to Illness and Disability

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

MISSION STATEMENT:  To foster proximity and understanding through our shared love of the arts and humanities and all things spirited and to make – however modest –  a contribution toward personal healing and deference for the diverse ways people try to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which illness, violence, despair, loneliness and death are as prevalent as hope, friendship, reason and birth.

Our focus is on sacred space (common ground) as it is expressed through the arts. Our work covers a range of topics: spirituality, life, death, personal experience, culture, current events, history, art, and photography and film. We cover these topics in the form of reviews, essays, poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, music, art, and photography. We share work that is representative of universal human values however differently they might be expressed in our varied religions and cultures. We feel that our art and our Internet-facilitated social connection offer a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters, and not as “other.”

“THE BeZINE” CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS thebezine.com is open for submissions to the upcoming March issue, deadline March 10, themed Waging Peace. This Zine is an entirely volunteer effort, a mission. We are unable to pay contributors but neither do we charge for submissions or subscriptions. We publish poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, feature articles, art, photography, and music videos and will consider anything that lends itself to online posting. There are no demographic restrictions. We do not publish work that promotes hatred or advocates for violence. All such will be immediately rejected. We’d like to see work that doesn’t just point to problems but that suggests solutions. We are also interested in initiatives happening in your community — no matter where in the world — that might be easily picked up by other communities. Please forward your submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com No odd formatting. Submit poems and narratives in the body of your email along with a BRIEF bio. Art and photography may be submissed as attachements. Work submitted via Facebook or message will not be considered for publication. We encourage you to submit work in your first language, but it must be accompanied by translation into English.

We are devoting the BLOG POSTS THROUGHOUT FEBRUARY to work addressing illness and disability. Submissions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, feature articles, art, photography, and music videos and anything that lends itself to online posting. There are no demographic restrictions. Please forward your submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com. No odd formatting. Submit poems and narrative in the body of your email along with a BRIEF bio. Art and photography may be submitted as attachements. Work submitted via Facebook or message will not be considered for publication. We encourage you to submit work in your first language, but it must be accompanied by translation into English.

Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor