Dissonances

Nigel McLoughlin's new book Dissonances is out at bluechrome. Nigel has two poems, Cailleach and Snapshot in the current SCR, as well as translations in The Chimaera.

He'll be reading at these venues:

7pm Thursday 28th February 2008

The Poetry Cafe
Betterton Street
Covent Garden
London

and

Buzzwords at The Exmouth
Bath Road, Cheltenham

Sunday March 2nd 2008
7pm for the workshop
8pm for the Reading.


"...Dissonances is a fiercely ambitious collection which succeeds in creating its atmosphere of unease and voices McLoughlin’s concerns articulately and forcefully."

—Round Table Review.

Pat goes to the Movies

Our own brilliant Pat Jones has one of her inimitable graphics animated by the clever Beau Blue to read a Rachel Dacus poem, 'One Night, Light', using Rachel's voice, here. How cool is that! Rachel Dacus was one of the poets who gave great support to SCR in its infancy—and SCR of course went on to spawn The Chimaera.

Check out more of Beau's great poetry animations at Blue's Cruzio Cafe.

More of Pat's art here—and of course in SCR, passim.

Across the Grid of Streets

Quincy Lehr was one of the Shit Creek Pioneers—his 'Alternative Rock Song' appeared in our very first issue. Now he has his first full-length poetry collection, Across the Grid of Streets up on amazon.co.uk.

The hardcover edition is here.


The softcover edition is here.


And there's more! For the accompanying chapbook, go here.

The quintessential Quincy! Another glorious triumph to rival his famous victory in a poetry contest sponsored by Tig Neactains Pub Galway, for which he won 300 quid.

Singing in the Dark

You might remember Alison Brackenbury's 'Out of the Box' from the SCR Horror and more of her work from The Chimaera #1 .

Just released is her new book of verse: Singing in the Dark. Alison's website is here.

I received my copy a couple of weeks ago, and it is a real delight. Here is a poem from it reprinted in The Guardian.

Storm in Disguise

Mask in Progress

Time to get to work...

SCR 6 Travelling Issue is afoot..

...or a jar

...or a door—a portal into other universes!

...or an online poetry magazine.

Anyway, SCR's Travelling Special for January, 2008 is now up and running at

http://www.shitcreekreview.com/

Climb on board the little canoe! It's perfectly safe...

Verbal and visual artefacts by

Mark Allinson, C.B. Anderson, David Anthony, Alison Brackenbury, Emily Brink, Patrick Carrington, Antonia Clark, Robert Clawson, Peter H. Desmond, William Doreski, Dennis Greene, Nigel McLoughlin, Tim Murphy, Amy Nawrocki, Cindy Nelson-Nold, Stephen Payne, Thomas Rodes, Peter Wyton, Mark Bulwinkle, Justin Evans, Patricia Wallace Jones, Peter Schwartz, R. K. Sohm, Donald Zirilli, Nigel Holt and Captain Philip Barrie. Lurking somewhere behind the scenes are Peter Bloxsom and Angela France.

The scientific reasons for SCR's January issue coming out in February are explained with amazing clarity here.

The theme for our next issue (May, 2008) will be 'Masks'. You will
find details on our Submissions page. Submissions for the Shit Creek Review May 2008 issue must be received by March 23rd, 2008.


Other news:

* We are changing our email address to editor(at)shitcreekreview.com. The old account at Yahoo will continue for a while, but will eventually be decommissioned.

* The daughter of Shit Creek Review, The Chimaera, also has a new issue, which includes a feature section on Translation, and a special feature of Tim Murphy's 'Prayer for Sobriety' poems.

*The Chimaera's May issue is calling for general prose and verse submissions, as well as for submissions for its themed feature section 'Belonging (and Alienation)'. See the Submissions page for details.

The Chimaera may be found here:

http://www.the-chimaera.com/


Happy paddling!

Open Poetry Competition

Co-editor of SCR-spawn The Chimaera, Peter Bloxsom, has been short-listed for the Open Poetry Sonnet Competition, which has a first prize of £1400! Mike Alexander, who contributed to SCR+II, and David Anthony who had a sonnet in SCR #4, are also on the short-list. Well done, and Good Luck!

Jet Lag

Wasn't that the theme?

A Scientific Explanation of Shit Creek Time

A New Scientific Explanation

Inattentive readers, as well the general run of members of the Shit Creek Society for the Suppression of Civilised Customs, have reported having trouble understanding the concept of Shit Creek Time (see also Cook Islands Time, Cthulhian Time).

Shit Creek Time (SCT) is a very complex yet fundamentally simple process. In the final analysis the concept is meaningless. For example, when a Shit Creeker says 'Issue 6 of SCR will be online in January' he or she is uttering a verbal construct that has no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. Shit Creekers are incapable of deploying or even engaging on the most superficial level with notions of time, sequence, seriality, cause, effect, estimation, planning, predictvity, analepsis, prolepsis, synchronicity, diachronicity, before, after, during, when, then, big hand and little hand, and so forth. Simply put, this is because of the presence of a huge number of psychic, psychotic and metaphysical variables which constantly disrupt the Shit Creek cognitive continuum.

One recent manifestation of this is the abduction of the Shit Creek Webmaster away from his coding duties by a band of rogue Elves and Fairies. He is literally 'Off with the Pixies', which in turn has led to his total loss of the concept of 'January'. In layman's terms, 'January' has become for him 'February' or even 'Late April'—a temporal-cognitive aberration that might only be rectified by repeated application of low-level electrical shocks to his cerebral cortex, accompanied by highly-loaded doses of Mogadon administered intravenously.

The Shit Creek Crew are working around the clock (a concept they have no hope of grasping) to temporally or temporarily rehabilitate the Pixilated Webmaster, and hope for a positive outcome in the Foulness of Time—perhaps early next week. Or something.

________

Works Consulted

Anon., Enuma Elish.

Anon., 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Time'.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe.

J.W. Dunne, An Experiment with Time.

Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets.

Hugo Gernsback et al, Amazing Stories 1926-2006.

Robert Graves, The White Goddess.

Stephen Hawkings, A Brief History of Time.

Hesiod. Works and Days

Hesiod, Theogony.

H. Hupfeld, 'As Time Goes By'.

Rob Hyman and Cyndi Lauper, 'Time After Time'.

James Jones, From Here to Eternity.

Limbourg brothers et al., Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Ti. Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Narura.

Andrew Marvell, 'To His Coy Mistress'.

P. Ovidius Naso, Fasti.

P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses.

Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Richard Pynson (trans), The Sheapheards Kalendar.

Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek.

St. Augustine, Confessions.

Wililiam Shakespeare, Macbeth.

William Shakespeare, Shake-speares Sonnets.

Kenneth Slessor, 'Five Visions of Captain Cook'.

Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar.

Time Warner Communications, TIME Magazine.

U.S. Navy Astronomical Applications Department, Phases of the Moon.

H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

Various, The Bhagavad Gita.

W.B. Yeats, A Vision.

W.B. Yeats, 'Phases of the Moon'.


Shit Creek Review team hard at work