Monday, December 04, 2006

Kwansabas for Maya Angelou CFS extended to January '07

Subject: "Kwansabas for Angelou/Troupe": Deadline extended to Jan 1, 2007

TO: All Media, Poets, Writers, Cultural Centers, Libraries, Schools,
English Departments

FROM: Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club/SIUE English
Department/Drumvoices Revue

Contact: 618 650-3991; eredmon@siue.edu; FAX: 618 650-3509

WRITERS CLUB & ‘DRUMVOICES REVUE’ CELEBRATE POETS:
Issue “Call” for “Kwansabas for Maya Angelou & Quincy Troupe"

East Saint Louis/Edwardsville, Illinois--For its Spring 2007 issue, Drumvoices Revue, a multicultural literary journal co-published by the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is issuing a “call” for “Kwansabas for Maya Angelou and Quincy Troupe.” The original date for submission of the seven-line poem—Nov. 1--has been extended to Jan. 1, 2007.

The kwansaba, a 49-word poetic form invented during the Writers Club’s 1995 workshop season (in East St. Louis), consists of seven lines of seven words each; each word must contain between one and seven letters. Exceptions to the seven-letter rule are proper nouns and some foreign terms. Previous issues of Drumvoices have featured kwansabas for Katherine Dunham (2004), Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez (2005), and Jayne Cortez (2006). Following is an
example of a kwansaba from Drumvoices #13:

Neo Kwansaba in Barakan Verse
(Mali Newman)

Poetree grown from stanzas tongues my ears
Don’t play Dough Ray Mi Vaso Latte
Unless Dada Doowop Dadaism is dead, unless
Trans (it) Blues in C, major or minor
Died by volumes twenty one times, don’t
Play scale up/scale down, while Baraka
Breaks off a piece of his mind.

Kwansaba submissions should be sent by Jan. 1, 2007, to Drumvoices Revue, English Department Box 1431, SIUE, Edwardsville, IL 62026-1431. Submissions should be in hard copies as well as on Microsoft Word disk. For more information, call 618 650-3991, email eredmon@siue.edu, fax 618 650-3509, or write EBRWC @ P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, IL 62202.

Founded in 1986 and named after East St. Louis Poet Laureate Eugene B. Redmond, Writers Club trustees include Amiri Baraka, Angelou, Walter Mosley, Barbara Ann Teer, Troupe, Dr. Lena Weathers, and Avery Brooks. Trustees also serve on the editorial board of Drumvoices Revue. Deceased Trustees include Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), and Raymond R. Patterson (1929-2001).

The Club is currently celebrating its 20th year of twice-monthly meetings (first/third Tuesday), 6:00-8:00 p.m., in the Library (Building B) of the East St. Louis Higher Education Center, 601 J. R. Thompson Drive. Meetings are held September through May. All writers, from beginners to professionals, are welcome.

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