One Thousand Trees for One Hundred Books: The Future Library Project
Somewhere in Norway, trees are being uprooted and cleared out, only to make room for one thousand new trees. In one hundred years, those trees will be the source of paper for one hundred new books.
Katie Paterson has launched this art project, Future Library, with its mission being “to conceive and produce a work in the hopes of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future." Overall, the details of the project remain somewhat vague, although this seems intentional. One author per year, for the next one hundred years, will contribute to the project. And while the authors and their works' titles will be on display at the Oslo Public Library in Norway, all manuscripts will be locked away in a secret room (or something like that), until the year 2114. The Future Library will include works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with no length minimums or maximums.
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Book Report - THE DOCK: September 2014
Enjoy our prose-poem of the month, a lovely piece by Jenna Le.
HFR: "Book Report" clearly takes an interesting form -- in a way, mimicking the form of a book report or journal entries; and in the broader sense, a prose poem form. What was your thought process in creating this unique form? Did the title come before or after the final result?
JL: I was inspired to write “Book Report" after reading Ocean Vuong’s poem “Aubade With Burning City” in the February 2014 issue of Poetry. Because Vuong’s poem is written in long lines, I initially envisioned “Book Report” as a poem with long lines, even though I usually write poems with short lines.
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What My Father-in-Law Says - THE DOCK: August 2014
Happy August! Enjoy this poem from our author of the month, the talented David Ebenbach.
HFR: What responsibility do you feel in presenting these flawed but very empathetic characters in the form of a poem?
DE: I'm glad you asked about responsibility. I think we writers could talk more about the issue of responsibility in our work---responsibility to our readers, to our loved ones, to our characters. In all those cases I think we need to approach the people with empathy and a readiness for compassion, an expectation that people become more complicated the more we know them, and an awareness that our writing can affect people for better or for worse.
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Contest Winners ANNOUNCED [500 for 500: Flash-Prose Contest]
We received over 200 submissions to the 500 for 500: Flash-Prose Contest this spring. We were overwhelmed by the level of quality and creativity in these small stories, prose-poems, and "others." Thank you so much to everyone who shared their work.
Unfortunately, we could only choose three.
Our judge Catherine Zobal Dent commented on the abundance of talent in the submissions. In the end, she chose these three winners... >drumroll<
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The Saint of 3F - THE DOCK: July 2014
HFR is pleased to introduce Mark Dostert and his essay, "The Saint of 3F." This is the first installment of The Dock. Look for new online content next month.
HFR: Who has had the greatest influence on your writing?
MD: I was finishing the first draft of Up in Here: Jailing Kids on Chicago’s Other Side about the time that Anthony Swofford published Jarhead, his marine sniper’s account of the Persian Gulf War. In revising my manuscript and starting various adapted personal essays like “The Saint of 3F,” an interview comment of Swofford’s proved instructive.
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Metadata
A year ago today, the US government revoked Edward Snowden’s passport as he attempted to flee the country. Snowden, as we all know, had just leaked thousands of classified documents detailing the existence of global surveillance programs far more intrusive than previously thought.
As writers of poetry and fiction, how do we address current events without sounding too heavy-handed? Without losing our claims to art?
Daniel Hornsby’s short story “Metadata,” is one example of a successful crossover. Published in issue 54 of Hayden’s Ferry Review, the piece comments on global surveillance, even as it aestheticizes it.
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Contributor Spotlight: David McLoghlin
Introducing this poem, I’m reminded of a quandary that ghosts through my mind before a reading. I think: “This is obviously about the consequences of sexual abuse (or something like it), so why preface it? Do I need to?”
Well, it depends. Though I admire the way Sharon Olds, for example, doesn’t explain anything—the audience by now knows what to expect and so nothing extraneous needs to be said—I still spell it out at times. The main reason is to combat shame. The other reason I do it is more public. It isn’t that the poems can’t speak for themselves. It’s because I’m thinking of victims or survivors who are silent. But when I introduce a poem in this way, with words that appear in newspapers or courtrooms, there’s another danger: official terminology could establish a mask that’s hard to see past. That’s another reason why I sometimes prefer to let a poem speak for itself. I do this because one of my goals in my poems is to go beyond the official language to the experience itself.
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Call for Submissions: Chaos Issue
First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.
[John Milton, Paradise Lost]
Chaos has many meanings. The ancient Greeks saw Chaos as the dark abyss from which life sprung. Mathematicians use Chaos theory to explain how small decisions can give rise to unexpectedly grave consequences. For parents, Chaos is their child’s bedroom, their busy work schedule. Most of us spend our lives trying to ward off Chaos and keep order. But what happens when we no longer avoid Chaos, and instead embrace it?
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