A Shot Glass - the Small Poem

For a short shot of poetry visit Shot Glass Journal: Online Journal of Short Poetry an ezine devoted to short poems (up to 16 lines) with US and International sections, plus a featured country. Issue 8 features Australia. Poems to mention:

Jennifer Chrystie’s (Aus) ekphrastic poem Underground Carpark at Dawn after Janenne Eaton’s drawing After Adelaide 1983. Delicious order and solitude in tune but somehow you know all is out of tune. The rakish tilt of her …smart black hat. I think of Judith Wright’s poem Legend.

To see how simple happiness is read Stuart Barnes’ (Aus) Cento for Fourteen Australian Poets and take note of the sources for more must-read poems.

Cally Conan-Davies (Aus) portrays in Looking Out for Gert the women the world can depend on. Gert …hanging out another load to dry and everything that that is a metaphor for. The poem is solid, domestic, takes you to a precipice.

Alasdair McAndrew’s (Aus) Four Men at the Funeral of a Workmate is misery to the bone. No one moves, no one weeps. Everything, is inwards. Everything, out of their control.

Two of the smallest poems are among the punchiest: After by Ruth Arnison (NZ) who edits Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ) and Arbor (also a delicate poem) by Sa’ad M Al-Obaid (US).

Shot Glass provides a convenient glossary of short forms. You might like to try a black out poem, a ghazal (developed in Persia), the naani (India), a roundel (a variation of the French rondeau), a Sijo (7^th century Korean). Some are more complex than others. The sonnet of course is more familiar or you might want to simply write a shorter prose poem.

Plan for the next submissions deadline: January 15.