World Zombie Day

Voodoo Museum, New Orleans

Don't look behind you, but World Zombie Day is coming up on Saturday October 12. Do you have plans yet?

open grave

the moonlight glistens

on coffin splinters

--Joshua Gage

If you don't, here's a plan for you: hide away safe indoors with a good book.  Let me suggest Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, Joshua Gage's book of zombie haiku, out from Poet's Haven.

• World zombie day: survival tips.
• Examiner survival tips

Check in at World Zombie Day Headquarters on Facebook.

• Review by Diane Severson

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"open grave," from Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, copyright Joshua Gage, used with permission

Some Amazing reviews

A couple of Cleveland poets who write poetry toward the speculative direction in the geography of poetry have recently gotten reviews from Diane Severson in Amazing Stories.

Cleveland's haiku master Joshua Gage's new chapbook, Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse (OR Inhuman: Zombie Haiku in Four Acts) (just out from The Poet’s Haven, as No. 18 in the Poet’s Haven Author Series) was reviewed in the most recent issue.  Diane writes:
"This is a volume to enjoy as a brief diversion on a stormy night and also to pull out each October in preparation for Hallowe’en."

At six dollars for a copy, it's a bargain for any poetry fans with an interest in haiku, or in horror.  And it's not too early to start thinking of gifts to give your friends and family for World Zombie day!

And Mary Turzillo's book Lovers and Killers (which has been mentioned here before) also rated a good review from Diane in the April Amazing: 
"I really like Mary Turzillo’s writing style. It’s less formal than many poets in her syntax and word choices, which makes it easy to read.  It’s a book that could be ripped through, it’s so easy to read, but its many-layered nature benefits from a bit more leisure."

Canton First Friday

One of the more interesting, although less well-attended, poetry readings in the Northeastern Ohio area is the Canton First Friday Poetry Spectacular, an event put on by PoetsHaven.  It's interesting because it's put on as a part of Canton's First Friday Arts Festival, which is (to quote their web page) "a monthly party in the downtown Canton Arts District featuring themed music, performance and visual arts events and always a few surprises for adults and children."  The First Friday is a lot of fun if you're turned on by art; the whole arts district of downtown Canton is converted into an arts fair, with music, galleries, painting on the sidewalk, and (of course) poetry.  I'd like to sincerely recommend that you check it out this month (October 5) or next (November 2), while the weather's still nice enough to hang around outdoors and enjoy the spectacle of being surrounded by art.
--if you're a poet, the First Friday reading is a good one for another reason: in addition to the featured reader and the open mike, it features a poetry slam open to anybody who wants to perform, and (pay attention here) the slam pays out cash prizes, courtesy of Arts in Stark.  A great place to try out your performance pieces, see how they work out, with the chance of a little bit a' booty to boot!

• Facebook page for Canton First Friday Poetry Spectacular

Friday Oct. 5the feature will be John Gibson, "JG the Jugganaut"--plus (always) the open mike and slam.  The theme of the Canton First Friday will be "Once Upon a Time."

• Event page on Facebook for the October 5 spectacular

And, for the next month, first Friday comes on November 2, the day of the dead, so the theme of the Canton First Friday will be "Zombie Artvasion."  The spectacular feature poet will be Mary Turzillo.
  --Poetry opens doors at 7, but do come to Canton at 6, when the first Friday arts starts up!

November 2: celebrate Día de los Muertos with poetry from Mary A Turzillo (image: dappled dawg)

... and a tip o' the hat to the indefatigable impressario Vertigo XX, for putting on the show!

Cordite Zombies

The April issue of the Cordite Poetry Review is a special issue on zombie poetry.

Zombies are a peculiarly American trope, and it's odd to see Cordite ("Australian poetry and poetics") doing an American obsession. Despite their invention in Haiti (does anybody still connect zombies with vodoun any more?), zombies were drafted into America by George Romero, who, with Night of the Living Dead, reenvisioned and redefined the idea of the walking dead so vividly that even forty-some years later, we still see them as Romero saw them. As authentically American as American flags on the fourth of July.

(I was at a party last year when the discussion turned around to peoples' zombie-apocalypse contingency plans (*). What are your plans for how to survive when the hungry walking dead prowl the abandoned, burned-out homes of your home town? Quick tip: moving to an island doesn't work. Zombies don't need to breath; they can walk on the bottom.)

So, back to Cordite. (Cordite, by the way, is a World-War-I era form of gunpowder used for rifles and artillery. It's called "cordite" because it's formed into cords-- it looks like strands of orange-white spaghetti. If you're writing men's adventure fiction (or poetry), could you please stop talking about "the smell of cordite"? It's mostly obsolete, hardly anybody uses it any more. Thanks you.) So, zombies have long since infected the world, even Australia.

What makes us so fascinated about zombies, anyway? Does the world need zombie poetry? And, more important-- is it any good? Death has fascinated poets since around when Gilgamesh was king-- Death be not proud, Because I could not stop for death, Rage, rage, Garden of Proserpine, not to mention about a million others, including just about every poem that Edgar Allen Poe ever wrote. So, what are zombies, but death on the prowl, coming for you at any moment your attention wanders?

So, sure, why not zombie poetry?

Editor Ivy Alvarez says:

"We know more about the undead species who have lived in our hearts and dined on our minds than ever before. We have probed into their weaknesses, evaded their tricks and know well of their canny (and uncanny) chicanery.
We know these things … because they were once like us. Let us not rest on our laurels. Let us be vigilant and as ready as we can be for the uneasy future that is Zombie 2.0."

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*See also the story "Some Zombie Contingency Plans," by Kelly Link. Check it out; Kelly Link is really weird. And I mean that in a seriously good way.