Abridged, the
poetry/art magazine is looking for submissions for its In Blue issue.
This issue
encourages the consideration of the vital connotations of the concept of ‘blue’
to the human condition and the individual’s contemplation of place, purpose,
self and essence. The strong association of the colour blue with the natural
(the sea and sky), the broken (melancholy) and the forbidden (pornography) have
led to said colour concurrently evoking ideas of apparent wholesomeness, failure
and seedy delinquency. Blue runs underneath us and domes above us; it is what
bore us and what we aspire through imagination to return to: another dimension,
another means of perceiving, breathing, moving, experiencing… It is the colour
of the most subtle moods of pain, not burning with the disarming immediacy of
horror or despair but throbbing in mellow multiplicity and tonal diversity,
slowly moving through the depths of reflection. Blue dances with dappled light,
altering perception and renewing reflection. In creative discourses we take it
from outside us and hold it as our own, making our subtle moods of humanity
material by weaving them through its soft, swelling diversity. Blue was our
home, to blue we long to return. We wish to wallow in its mellow discontent
hoping for a return to the good old days. Days that never did or could have
existed: days that define us.
Abridged 0 – 13: Mara Submission Call
0 – 13: Mara sees
Abridged explore our home city’s forgotten spaces, the excluded places lost and
alone that impinge on our consciousness like an aching tooth, the covered up and
boarded, the hidden and hurt, the Derry and Londonderry lurking in
Derry/Londonderry. Mara in Buddhist mythology is apparently the embodiment of
all unskilled emotions and a metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence.
We have no interest per se in religious mythologies but note that the similarity
of the ‘conditioned existence’ of Buddhism, and the ‘terms and conditions
applied’ of Abridged. This is not a project about the beauty of contemporary
‘ruins’ though in some cases there is an undeniably poetic appeal to decay and
neglect. It focuses on the forgotten architecture and social places, the places
that whilst seemingly unimportant were vital cogs in the engine of a place or a
person. Nostalgia is not an aim of this work; rather it is a reflection on where
we are now and how we have arrived here. We are looking for poetry only for this
issue. It DOES NOT have to be about Derry. Architectural abandonment and decay
can be seen as a metaphor for a million other things…This issue will be in
association with artist Mara Cavalli whose photographic work will be featured in
the issue and whose film-work will be available on the Abridged website
initially exclusively for the Abridged readership. The issue will contain a
password which gives access to the work. There will also be an exhibition.
A maximum
of 3 poems may be submitted of any length.
Art can be up to A4 size and can be
in any media. It should be at least 300 dpi.
Submissions can (preferably) be
emailed to abridged@ymail.com or posted to: Abridged c/o The Verbal Arts Centre,
Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry BT48 6PU.
Deadline: 30th September 2013.
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