Tag: night forest

The Body, Biopolitics and Covid, The Night Forest Journal Issue 4 – Call For Howls

A repost of https://nightforestpoetry.wordpress.com/2021/07/30/the-body-biopolitics-and-covid-the-night-forest-journal-issue-4-call-for-howls

A howl erupts from the body, out into the world. From the flesh of the animal howling, its musicality rides the air, unseen but undeniably there.

A cough or a sneeze releases tiny particles of a disease named Covid-19 from the body, a presence that can ride upon the air and infect those who cannot see it, or deny its presence. It is not a friend to those animals it makes its host – perhaps it has become a friend to authoritarian governments however? Or has it been a monkeywrench in the machine, undermining political-narratives and creating issues for the state? Perhaps neither? Perhaps both? We do not pretend to know, with any quality of definiteness.

We know that we encounter the body as beautiful. We feel a desire for the bodily presence of living beings. If eroticism is assenting to life up to the point of death, as Bataille defines eroticism, there is an erotic quality to our life-desire. What does desire, eroticism, or love mean amidst a pandemic? Is this space that we find ourselves in the best or the worst space for love poetry? Again, we do not pretend to know.

For the fourth issue of The Night Forest Journal, we are asking for submissions on the body, biopolitics and Covid-19. As with previous issues, we will accept poems, essays, short stories and visual art for this project. Suggested areas of focus are –

Health and wellbeing

Bio-medical authoritarianism

Love, sex and desire in the pandemic

Free-love during lockdowns

Conspiracy and the art of seduction

Medicine-person praxis

Vaccine passports and (micro-)nationalism

We will publish up to 3 submissions from each contributor, but will consider any submissions sent to us. There is no limit in length of poems or essays. Submissions can be sent to us via nightforestpoetry@gmail.com or via our social-media presences. The deadline for submissions is the winter solstice 2021.

Night Forest Journal Issue 3

The world has been a strange place since the release of the second issue of our journal. This strange quality has permeated near all aspects of civilisation, in more ways than we could articulate here. In a very long book, the philosopher Schopenhauer described poetry as being greater than history, as history can only account for a generalised description of the world (re-presented at a distance), while poetry articulates the experience of living in a moment, as the experiencer seeks to express ir. So, while these words are not a generalised totalising narrative of the experience of being in the world, they are expressions that these individuals wished to articulate, of their experience of this strange world.

This announcement is not for just one release, but for two. Alongside the release of our third journal, we are releasing a collection of poems written by Phen Weston and Julian Langer. To all of those who have contributed to the journal, we are sincerely grateful to receive your words. To all of you who may read these collections, we hope you find some beauty in these works.

Click to access night-forest-poetry-issue-3.pdf

LINK: https://nightforestpoetry.wordpress.com/2021/04/24/night-forest-journal-issue-3/