Mind Map Review needs you!

Jet Payne, formerly headbosschief of Arts Pneumonia, has engaged in a most intriguing sport, launching a zine that encourages your synapses to run riot - the Mind Map Review!

A freely distributed London arts review magazine based around a simple concept, Mind Map Review covets reviews in the form of a ‘mind map’, 'brain storm', ‘spider diagram’, ‘flow chart’ or similar diagram, with the aim of simplifying the reviewing process, stripping it back to the essential points as they would appear at a planning stage.

The London Mind Map Review launches in May, and Londoners should submit reviews of art exhibitions, spoken word events, theatre, gigs and other arts events.

Further specifics can be found here.

Deadline for the May issue is 1 May with the 1st of each following month marking the deadline for that month’s issue.

Contact themindmapreview@googlemail.com

Introducing Irregular Features!

The inestimable Dr Fulminare of (he of Sidekick Books fame/infamy) begs to alert all merchants, mountebanks, bards and footpads to his latest experiment, Irregular Features, a sporadically updated, peer-reviled journal of poetry goings-on, in which the following reactions and imbalances may or not occur:

• Things to Make and Do - games and guides to coerce you into such unatural practices as generating 10,000,000,000 pantoums in but clicks, using fridge magnets to constuct your own poetry blurb, folding your own stanza-stimulating origami swift, crafting the images of famed poets from dots and much more.
• Poetry Top Trumps - pit the varied talents of Ted Hughes, Frank O' Hara, Getrude Stein and Giorgos Seferis against each other in a duel to the (probably car-crash or oven-related) death, with further metersmiths to be added.
• Woe's Woe - a directory of suffering, for when 'blue' won't cut it and 'out-of-sorts' is too infuriatingly non-specific to pinpoint exactly what kind of pain you are feeling. You will be introduced to such diagnoses as Faughstalkery, Lentopression and Repustress and before long, Dr F vouchsafes that you should be able to accurately diagnose misery at a good ten paces!
  
• Plus Articles, Reviews and Interviews with poetry types, as the benevolent Doctor permits.

Dr Fulminare requests contact with any sharp-witted types who, upon spying this literary litany, feel they too may wish to contribute ingredients, or, tangentially, anyone with staunch amounts of scentless sulphur for sale at a reasonable rate. Contact him through the Devil's Wiretangle at drfulminare@googlemail.com

Ambit 200 Competition Deadline Soon!

A quick notice from the mighty Ambit!To celebrate our 200th issue Ambit invites you to enter our 200 WORDS COMPETITION!
Judged by Ambit writers Naomi Foyle and David Gaffney.

Send us poems or prose of 200 words* for a chance to win!

1st prize: £500
2nd prize: £200
3rd prize: £75

Entries cost £4 for the first one, and £3 for subsequent entries.

(*no shorter than 196, no longer that 204. This includes the title!)

Closing date is 15 February 2010.

Good luck!

Launching a mission to MARS!

Salutations crewmates!


Much news from Fuselit Central! First off, MARS is now available to buy! After a six month gestation, the spawn of everybody's efforts is rampaging about causing untold havoc to all space travellers! Check out the poems, pictures, comic, tales, puzzles and sounds of a distant galaxy somewhere near to the starbelts of Whitechapel.

(Please bear in mind that if we get a high number of orders, there may well be a slight delay before you receive your issue, but it will get to you, come meteor storm or Drakzoid war-ship!)

Operation TILT is now officially closed for submissions. Thanks to everybody who's contributed so far - it's going to be a right dizzying experiment. If you're waiting for a reply on a piece, I should be back to you pretty smartish. If you've been furiously trying to make radio contact with your muse and have a piece you meant to send, get it to us in the next couple days and we'll consider it for the issue.

So what does this mean for the future? Well Fuselit is very excited to reveal that our next call is for submissions on the theme of JACK. Skellington or Springheel, Black or White, Sprat or Horner, we want your poetry, prose, artwork and sounds on this one!

Until next time, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Kirsty x

FuseLit is plying its trade on Facebook - join us!

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To join the FuseLit mailing list, email me at contact@fuselit.co.uk with something uncanny like SUBSCRIBE as the subject. To unsubscribe, please send me an email titled UNSUB ME PLEASE! and I will get straight to it. Cheers!

Brockzilla II

This October is the return of the 'Brockzilla' exhibition in the Broca cafe in Brockley, London, near Brockley train station. They are still looking for submissions of pictures of monsters attacking Brockley by month's end, so if you happen to live in the area there's still time to whizz one off and drop it in, either physically or electronically.

I mention it because last year's Brockzilla was the inspiration for the Foxleigh Battles Death in All Its Forms pictures and computer game featured in Fox. I might try to run something simple off for this one as well, but alas, so little time!

The Forest call for stolen submissions!

Hello hello! Here's some exciting news from long-time FuseLit friends The Forest!

Dear all,

The following is a call for submissions for the new anthology from Forest Publications. Please feel free to pass this along to writer's whom you think might be interested. Further, do not hesitate to contact me with any questions regarding this project.

Below is the challange:

Never, ever trust a writer. They cluck and nod and listen and then three months later they splash your tragedy/foolishness/very embarrassing incident involving a raspberry jelly and a pair of warm curling tongs over the tawdry pages of a literary quarterly. We feel there is no shame in this. Quite the opposite: we believe this ugly fact deserves to be celebrated with all the pomp and hullaballoo we can possibly muster. Therefore we are compiling an anthology of the finest stolen stories, the anecdotes and overheard conversations that simply demand to be told. We feel that it is time to be honest. This is where our ideas come from.

Stories should not exceed 5,000 words in length and must, must, must be accompanied by a short note that explains the nature of your theft. We would prefer that you did not steal from well-known television shows or anything equally obvious.

Send your stolen story to: stolen.stories.book@googlemail.com

Closing date for submissions: July 3rd

^{Explore The Forest!}

An ode to every bird

Leafing through my WHSmith/Reader's Digest 'Book of British Birds' (which is the best birdbook I've ever come across) I wondered if it was possible to compile a poetry anthology which featured one poem about every bird in the book. Probably not, in all likelihood. But how close could you get? Would the list be dominated by the romantics, or would contemporary poets make a strong showing?

Here's some I can come up with off the top of my head:
Kingfisher by Ted Hughes, from River
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
Ode to a Nightingale by Freaky Keats
The Heron by Paul Farley, from Tramp in Flames
The Twa Corbies, a Scots ballad (concerning crows)
The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins (concerning the kestrel)

I'll probably add more to the list as I think of them. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know! Could be a nice little sideline project.

AQUARIUM!

So much news! Where to start?

At long last, CABARET is out and shaking its sequinned money maker in the wide world. Buy, share, delight in this fishnet-bedecked lovely. Everyone so far has gone nuts for it and you will too.

FOX is in production. We have some chuffing good ideas for making this one absolutely stunning and original. We even bought posh hand-dyed paper. It gets better.

The next issue for which we court your songs and scribbles is AQUARIUM! This time around, we've set no deadline, but when the issue feels almost ready to harvest, mailing listees will get a heads-up for any lingering submissions to be sent our way.

The wonderful Happenstance Press publish a gorgeous chapbook called Sphinx, to be found here and they're featuring none other than your FuseLit editor and production designer in the next issue! Gorgeous and a snip, well worth a gander.

In other news, we're about to rehaul the website (many thanks to Robin for hosting us) and incorporate all sorts of fun and games into the hard copy of our beloved magazine. Keep you posted! Meanwhile, send us poetry, prose, artworks and music on theme of AQUARIUM!

Thanks everyone, and I hope Lent is being kind.
K x

FOX deadline extended! Submissions please!

That's right! The next issue of FuseLit, for which we court your lickable, chaseable, scavengeworthy art, poetry, prose and music is called FOX, and you now have a snatch extra time to send us your finest scribblings on the subject! See bottom of post for details!

Here's the gist, for those new to this joint:

1. You take a good long look at the word of choice and think "hmm, FOX, you say..."



2. You write, sketch, paint, strum or toot a piece based around that word.



3. You send it to us and we have a good ruminate and enjoy your finery before letting you know whether we'd like to include it in FuseLit.



4. FuseLit is for serious AND fun! Share it with friends and tamarins!



All contributions to fuselitmag@yahoo.co.uk by December 31st please!

Edinburgh Performers wanted and Mimesis Competition

Greetings one and all Fuseliteers!


OK, so the Edinburgh festivities will be held on Saturday 21st July, as you know. We'll be producing a flyer and you can email us for any information, but you're all very much invited for a night of FuseLit reading and performance with quite possibly a Cabaret-themed party afterwards.

Furthermore, we want your performing skills! Any contributors to
FuseLits past and present need to email me about performing as we need to let the guys from the Forest Project know how many people need a floor to crash on. We're going to try and get a guitar amp, and I'm bringing a bass amp, and there's a PA there too.

Let's have a big raucous ole ball in Scotland to kick off NUDE in style!

OK, second item: Mimesis magazine are running a Mythic Poetry Competition. Full details can be found here: http://forum.deviantart.com/galleries/writers/873275/


Basically, writing a poem from the POV of a mythical character. Prizes include Lulu vouchers and subscriptions to the rather excellent Mimesis, so well worth entering!

OK, signing off! Let me know about Edinburgh if you want to strut yer stuff. I'm unpacking my feather boa as we speak!

Much FuseLove,
Kirsty x