May 31, 2011
Dear Reader,
I frequently have been asked, since the rural Oregonian inception of this journal one month ago, “What is Unshod Quills?”
I am happy to answer this here, though the answer might bring only more questions.
Unshod Quills is a Pandemic Journal of the Arts and Letters. We are international, and we are everywhere. We know no borders.
Unshod Quills intends to accept and publish submissions in all possible forms.
An Unshod Quill is a writing implement running wild. The name was born of a discussion about quims – a word so archaic as to likely beg a Googling. An Unshod Quill, then, is sort of like a barefoot Victorian flower, only one of flesh, and one with which you can write or sketch.
Unshod Quills is like the bird flu, except it’s the word flu. It’s good to spread us like butter and honey on homemade bread… with intent and luxury – no need to cover your nose if racked with ecstatic sensory sneezes after reading our prose and poetry and looking at our videos and imagery. Share the source and spread the contagion. You should remember never to wash your hands after writing a poem or taking a photograph. Make art and then touch door handles. Art saves lives. We are pandemic. You are pandemic.
What ever it is you do or make or create, we want to see it. Poems? Fiction? Essays? Reviews? Recipes? Photos? Paintings? Sculpture? Video? Scientific theory? Fashion? Architecture? If you can relate it to our call for topic-based submissions, we will consider it. If it can be posted on the internet, we want to consider it. Eventually, we hope to have to be able to consider submissions which can be printed in ink, but for now, we are not so limited. We have few limitations in our present form; in our future, on paper and at live events, we will have different limitations.
Unshod Quills was born of a group of writers who write or create art based on an assigned weekly topic. The topics assigned to the premiere issue of Unshod Quills, were lipstick, beasts, transportation, sonnets, mirrors and “When We Two Parted,” as taken from the poem by Lord Byron.
None of these assignations are meant to be taken literally, though if they are, that’s fantastic. That’s the point – the editor assigns a theme, or topic, and it’s up to the artist or writer to interpret that theme to the beat of his or her own drum machine, or dream machine, or literally. For this issue, one of our themes was sonnets. We love sonnets. We’ll take a look at a sonnet any day, and love doing it. We’ll take a look at an oil painting of a naked woman and assign it to the theme of sonnet if it meets our definition of sonnet and the artist agrees with us. We’ll accept a champagne cocktail called an Elizabeth Taylor, drink it, put in purple contact lenses, go write our own sonnet, and then perhaps get married a whole bunch of times and buy some jewels.
We will be printing our online journal every three months and the next one will come in September. It will likely be a smaller journal, with perhaps half the contributors. This first issue is swollen with contributions of art and literature, and we hope you will find something you enjoy here.
We will be sending out a call for submissions in between issues, and each will call for submissions based on assigned themes. Upcoming themes will include fire, America and villanelle. Our next reading period begins on June 15 and ends July 15. We also are currently seeking submissions of video poetry. Please see our submissions guidelines for more information – we need you and your art and literature. To keep tabs with us, find us on Facebook or Twitter , or simply email the editor at dena@haliterature.com and request to be added to the mailing list.
What’s next for Unshod Quills? Our first chapbook is due out in July and will be published by the newly formed Old Heavy Press, an offshoot of Unshod Quills. Eventually you will see Unshod Quills printed on paper at least twice a year. We have dreams. You can’t imagine our dreams, nor we yours, but we have them all day long and into the night.
With that, we thank you, the reader, and also thank all those who made submissions to and assisted with the construction to this issue, and all those who appear in this issue. Most of all we’d like to thank the Unshod Quills Writers Collective. Cheers, kids.
We hope you enjoy our first issue. We hope to hear from you, be it with comments or with submissions of your own. Now go and read and then be dirty in the good way and spread the arts and letters like sticky little microbes. Get sloppy.
Cheers,
Dena Rash Guzman
Editor
Unshod Quills, a Pandemic Journal of the Arts and Letters
"Unshod Quills", photo by and of the editor, Stargazer Farm, Oregon, May 2011
Marvelous, really!
This sounds delicious! I am so excited about reading t!
Bravo. Gimme more!
Madame Editor: I beg to quibble about quim. Quim is certainly by no means archaic, being very much au currant in the finer drawing rooms, literary salons and gentlemen’s periodicals. Any lexicon which designates any word as archaic is ninety-nine times out of one hundred misinformed and woefully ignorant of real world language usage; and of course, any online source is should be dismissed out of hand. As John O’Hara famously said: “I do not consult the makers of dictionaries. The makers of dictionaries consult me.”
Dear Sigerson,
Few people know what a quim is. They wouldn’t know a quim if they had one, in fact.
The Editor.
Yes yes yes!!!
xo