The Delicatessen of Eros

Inkonoclast is accepting submissions for The Delicatessen of Eros, an anthology of epigrams on the subject of love, the curious relations between the sexes, and other aspects of human nature.

We want wit, insight, and formal excellence. Irony is nice. Extravagance and overstatement can work very well. We prefer edgy to sappy, but the anthology will likely reveal a variety of attitudes and experiences. Bawdy can work very well indeed. Traditionally, the most successful epigrams are satiric rather than emotional, assertive rather than doubtful, daring rather than tentative. But there are exceptions, of course.

Epigrams (as you know, since you are reading this) are brief, concentrated poems, usually couplets or quatrains, sometimes longer. We want ours to be metrically regular and rhymed.

The default might be a heroic couplet (two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter), but we like well done clever variations as much as the next reader. We are not opposed to longer poems that in style and content are complementary to epigrams. We seek poems that because of the quality of their thought and craft cannot be easily dismissed as light verse or doggerel.

Among our favorite writers of epigrams are the Greeks collected in the Greek Anthology (if you agree, you will likely enjoy Tony Harrison's rewritings of poems by Palladas). Much of Alexander Pope's poetry qualifies. Among contemporaries, some of the best epigrams have come from J.V. Cunningham, Thom Gunn, and R.L. Barth. Many good poets primarily writing free verse have now and then written epigrams.

Believing as we do that only poets can sell poetry books, our intention is to have all of the authors who are included evenly split the costs of production and to receive equal numbers of books.

We anticipate a January 2009 publication date, with a run of 500-1000 copies, but because we do not know how many poets will be included and because this is a co-op venture, the authors will have a say in this. Poets whose work is selected will know specifics before committing to being included.

If you have one or more appropriate poems, you may send them in the body of an email to us. With your poems, tell us about yourself, the sort of background that would go in a cover letter. As always, we believe in simultaneous submissions.

Interested? editorsinkonoclast.com