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By Simmons Buntin, September 2, 2010 12:21 am

The editors of Terrain.org are pleased to preview the upcoming issue, our 26th, with the theme of “The Signal in the Noise.” We also want you to know that the issue launch date has moved back two weeks — to October 4th — to allow for systems upgrades (i.e., the editor-in-chief’s computer died and a new one is on the way; since he’s also the web guy, there is some downtime).

So what’s in the upcoming issue?

• Guest editorial by Kathleen Dean Moore, Spring Creek Project
• Interview with Alison Hawthorne Deming
• Visual and acoustic art by Andrea Polli
• Poetry contest winner Laura-Gray Street and finalists Reeves Keyworth, Sara Talpos, Julie Hanson, Tom Daley, and Davi Walders
• Poetry also by Eric Paul Shaffer, Laurie Klein, Ben Howard, Sherry O’Keefe, Mary Cisper, Derek Sheffield, Cynthia Huntington, Jason Myers, Jeffrey Thomson, Emily Wall, E. Louise Beach, Jeff Newberry, Nick Ripatrazone, Paula Sergi, Nickolas Butler, and Janine DeBaise
• Nonfiction contest winner Elizabeth Dodd and finalist Michael Palmer
• Photo essays by John R. Campbell on the Andrews Forest Residency in the Oregon Cascades and Gregory McNamee and Stephen Strom on what makes a desert
• Other essays by Russ J. Van Paepeghem, and Sara Loewen, who introduces our new feature  called “To Know a Place”
• Fiction contest winner Andrew Wingfield and finalists Kevin Catalano and Jasmon Drain
• Other fiction by Debbie Weingarten, Frances Kerridge, and Lucy Jane Bledsoe
• Articles on bringing employment centers back to neighborhoods, the literary legacy of the European starling in North America, the policies of identity and suppression in the burning forests of the American West, and social justice from Hurricane Katrina
• A photo article by Jolie Kaytes and Paul Charpentier on permaculture as the ecology of home
• Plus reviews, regular editorials, and more!

Whew! We hope you’ll find — as we know we will — that Issue No. 26 is worth the wait.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 27, 2010 10:33 am

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is pleased to announce the finalists and winner of our inaugural poetry contest, judged by acclaimed writer and publisher Jessie Lendennie:

• Winner: Laura-Gray Street for the long poem “Goya’s Dog”
  
• Finalist: Reeves Keyworth for “Summer Evening, the West Side”
• Finalist: Sara Talpos for “Mammoth,” “350,” and “Body of Evidence”
• Finalist: Julie Hanson for “They are Widening the Road” and “Allocation”
• Finalist: Tom Daley for “The Woman in the Pamet River,” “Overpass,” and “Theology”
• Finalist: Davi Walders for “Not in ideas…” and “The Path”

Here’s what Lendennie had to say of the winner:

Laura-Gray Street will receive the cash prize of $250 and publication in our forthcoming issue, No. 26, with the theme of “The Signal in the Noise.” The issue launches at www.terrain.org on September 20, 2010. The issue will also include poems by all the finalists: Reeves Keyworth, Sara Talpos, Julie Hanson, Tom Daley, and Davi Walders.

Congratulations to Laura-Gray, Reeves, Sara, Julie, Tom, and David, and many thanks to those who submitted to our first contest. We had a wonderful array of poems from which to choose.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 26, 2010 12:12 am

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is pleased to announce the finalists and winner of our inaugural fiction contest, judged by acclaimed writer and teacher Aurelie Sheehan:

• Winner: Andrew Wingfield for “Right of Way”
  
• Finalist: Kevin Catalano for “Into the Lake”
• Finalist: Jasmon Drain for “Wet Paper Grass”

Andrew Wingfield is the winner of the Terrain.org inaugural fiction contest.

Here’s what Sheehan had to say of the winner:

“Right of Way” is filled with microbursts of surprise, the fine prose unfurling a nuanced, but powerfully directed story with tension and drama. I appreciated the underlying wit in the narrative, which leavens the increasing snarl of moral compromise.  A story dwelling in the complexities of motherhood and compassion, “Right of Way” also explores the tension between the wild of the right of way and its occupants, and the tamer, tortured civilizers.

Andrew Wingfield will receive the cash prize of $250 and publication in our forthcoming issue, No. 26, with the theme of “The Signal in the Noise.” The issue launches at www.terrain.org on September 20, 2010. The issue will also include the finalist stories by Kevin Catalano and Jasmon Drain.

Congratulations to Andrew, Kevin, and Jasmon, and many thanks to those who submitted to our first contest. We had a wonderful array of stories from which to choose.

~~~

The finalists and winner of the Terrain.org inaugural contest in poetry (judged by Jessie Lendennie) will be announced on the evening of August 26th.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 24, 2010 1:56 pm

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is pleased to announce the finalists and winner of our inaugural nonfiction contest, judged by acclaimed writer, musician, composer, and philosopher-naturalist David Rothenberg:

• Winner: Elizabeth Dodd for “Sinuous”
• Finalist: Kelly Hayes-Raitt for “Still Alive”
• Finalist: Michael Palmer for “Kinds of Quiet”

Elizabeth Dodd beside a petroglyph in Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Photo by David Rintoul.

Here’s what Rothenberg had to say of the finalists and winner:

It has been a pleasure to read the three top entries of the nonfiction category of Terrain.org’s annual writing contest. “Still Alive” presents a haunting, gritty, honest picture of the kind of troubles and confusion the Iraq War has brought to people in the midst of it, a straight story of the kind we rarely get to hear in media-saturated America. The life of an over-caffeinated Brigham Young student in “Kinds of Quiet” who becomes a vacuum specialist is funny, dark, and painfully real in a wandering, wonderful way. But it is “Sinuous” that impresses me the most, with its movement from the direct experience of a snake-shaped petroglyph to a whole history of engagement from archeology, legend, tradition, and literature right into the moment of our attempt to look straight at an ancient image and try to make contemporary sense of it, finding the signal in the noise of history, record, and information.  It is always hard to combine writing based on raw personal experience of something mysterious and magical with all the reading we can do to offer experts’ visions of what our own encounter might actually mean. This author has combined these two elements seamlessly, so it is to this piece that I award this year’s first prize, and congratulations as well to the two fine runners-up.

Elizabeth Dodd will receive the cash prize of $250 and publication in our forthcoming issue, No. 26, with the theme of “The Signal in the Noise.” The issue launches at www.terrain.org on September 20, 2010. The issue will also include Michael Palmer’s essay.

Congratulations to Elizabeth, Michael, and Kelly Hayes-Raitt, and many thanks to those who submitted to our first contest. We had a wonderful array of essays from which to choose.

~~~

The finalists and winner of the Terrain.org inaugural contest in fiction (judged by Aurelie Sheehan) will be announced on this blog on Wednesday, and the finalists and winner of the inaugural contest in poetry (judged by Jessie Lendennie) will be announced within the next week.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 23, 2010 11:59 am

William Bartram: The Search for Nature’s Design – Selected Art, Letters, and Unpublished Writings
Edited by Thomas Hallock and Nancy E. Hoffman
The University of Georgia Press, 2010, 520 pages

Reviewed by Claudia Broman

William Bartram (1739-1823) was much more than a botanist.  He was an influential philosopher and thinker in colonial America whose unorthodox views of life’s interconnectedness filtered through his interests in nature and exploration.

Thomas Hallock, assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida, and Nancy E. Hoffman, adjunct professor at Villanova University, explore these lesser-known aspects of William Bartram in William Bartram: The Search for Nature’s Design.

The book, which presents previously unpublished material by Bartram, results in a more complete picture of the man behind many, if not most, of the botanical observations made in North America in the 1700s.

Bartram was the son of a self-taught botanist and lived on a farm in Kingsessing township in Pennsylvania.  For four years in the 1770s Bartram gathered botanical specimens on an exploratory tour of the southeastern United States.  His observations were published in the book Travels in 1791.

Correspondence included in The Search for Nature’s Design traces Bartram’s botanical adventures in chronology.  His previously unpublished papers cover botany, medicine, geography, gardening, native culture, slavery, environmental protection, commerce, aesthetics, philosophy, and religion.  Illuminated journal entries and botanical illustrations depict the natural detail of the 18th-century America Bartram observed.

William Bartram: The Search for Nature’s Design provides contextual depth for a man who continues to influence the nature writing, botanical, and horticultural movements in the United States today.

~~~

Learn more about William Bartram by reading Lucy Rowland’s article, “America’s ‘First’ Rare Plant: The Franklin Tree” from Terrain.org Issue No. 18.

~~~

Claudia Broman lives in Ashland, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in Writing Nature: An Annual of Fine Nature Writing and Drawing.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 17, 2010 4:54 pm

Recently, artist Nicole Antebi sent us a little information about a new media/book website:

Water, CA: Creative Visualizations for a New Millennium
www.watercalifornia.org

Water, CA is a series of 22 contemporary projects engaging the history, mystery, and challenge of California’s water. Presented by Antebi and artist Enid Baxter Blader, Water, CA is a multimedia experiment in geography that incorporates mythological and playful understandings of complex histories. The enticingly interactive website features essays, painting, photography, video animations, and a California water timeline.

And I think we may just be looking at the future of creative, place-based multimedia. It is accessible, informative, artistic, and — once you’re familiar with the format — easy to move through. I admit it took me a while to figure out how to get into the individual projects (hover over the location of your choice then click the artist’s name). Ideally there should be a connect between the list of water projects in the blue box and the website visitor’s ability to then get into the projects — but they only indicate where in the state those projects are located. Just remember where they’re at, hover your pointer over that location, and you can dive in, so to speak.

That aside, we at Terrain.org think this is a pretty fantastic collaborative effort, and encourage you to check it out, pronto.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 2, 2010 9:46 am

Terrain.org’s submission period — for Issue No. 26, “The Signal in the Noise” and other issues — is now closed. Look for the new issue in mid-September, including the winners and select finalists of our inaugural contests in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, plus another diverse and exciting collection of literature and technical contributions, including an in-depth interview with poet, essayist, and teacher Alison Hawthorne Deming.

All contestants as well as regular submitters can expect to be notified on or before September 1, and our reading period will open again on October 1, 2010.

Thank you.

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By Simmons Buntin, July 11, 2010 11:17 pm

Terrain.org Inaugural Contests in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Deadline August 1

The deadline for the inaugural fiction, nonfiction, and poetry contests for Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is August 1. View submission guidelines and instructions for paying and submitting online at http://www.terrain.org/contest.

Fiction judge – Aurelie Sheehan
Nonfiction judge – David Rothenberg
Poetry judge – Jessie Lendennie

$250 prize in each genre plus publication. All entries eligible for publication. $10 fee per entry (1 story, 1 essay, 3-6 poems).

View submission guidelines and instructions for paying and submitting online at http://www.terrain.org/contest and view the current issue of Terrain.org at http://www.terrain.org.

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By Simmons Buntin, June 9, 2010 1:10 am

Duotrope’s Digest, the online writers’ resource listing over 2,900 current fiction and poetry publications — including Terrain.org — has just added to its ongoing series of interviews with publication editors.

The interview with Terrain.org editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin is now online at:

http://www.duotrope.com/interview.aspx?id=1142

The interview includes compelling responses to such questions as “Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less,” and “What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?”

If you’re interested in submitting to Terrain.org, or just want to read a bit of the strange workings from Terrain.org’s founding editor (not to mention fiction editor Patrick Burns), check out the interview now.

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By Simmons Buntin, June 7, 2010 1:56 pm

One of the advantages of editing a journal like Terrain.org is that we often receive books from Terrain.org contributors, sometimes containing work appearing in our journal, sometimes not. Recently we received a trio of what — with only a small dip into each — I can already tell are searing landscapes of poetry. I’m excited to read them, and suspect you will be excited and delighted  once you’ve read them, too. Here’s a bit on each, with links to go out and get yours now:

Girl on a Bridge
Poems by Suzanne Frischkorn
Main Street Rag Publishing Co., 39 poems in 57 pages

“Suzanne Frischkorn is a fierce and fearless poet. In Girl on a Bridge, she first upends our dainty notions of girlhood and then leads us into the wilderness of violence, madness, fear, and love — and does so with beauty and tenderness.”
– Julianna Baggott

“Good citizens beware: Suzanne Frischkorn has let Girl on a Bridge loose on the world and she’s spreading the word about the furies of femininity and the madness of motherhood with its ‘stone weight of home.’ These poems burn holes on the fairy tale pages of domestic fantasy and uncover the treacherous (though more exciting) narratives of those women who dare stray from the path or, at the very least, who celebrate their desires: ‘What’s more flattering than being wanted by a mouth that waters?’ This book of finely-crafted verse holds up its poetry like a lovely razor blade.”
– Rigoberto Gonzalez

Read poetry by Suzanne Frischkorn appearing in Terrain.org Issue No. 18, and look for a review of Girl on a Bridge in our next issue, online in mid-September.

~~~

Venison: A Poem
By Thorpe Moeckel
Etruscan Press, 1 poem in 66 pages

“Food doesn’t get any more local, cosmic, primitive, tasty, or disturbing than in this book-length, lyrical-meditative poem. At stake are no less than the origins and mysteries of flesh and touch.”
– from the book back cover

“Thorpe Moeckel’s Venison is civilized and wild, like a life lived well, a barbaric yawp of pain and joy and true wonder at the brilliant ordinariness of a life lived close to the earth and close to the bone. Moeckel’s fine poetic is whetted on the visceral and cannily transcendental. Read it.”
– Christopher Camuto

“This book, a glorious and breath-taking incantation of the beauty to be found in killing for nourishment, spins into the realms of woods, home, family, and community. The language is dizzying, as beautiful as you’ll ever read.”
– Janisse Ray

Reading poetry by Thorpe Moeckel appearing in Terrain.org Issue No. 24 and Issue No. 24.

~~~

The Surfacing of Excess
Poems by Arianne Zwartjes
Winner of the 2009 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry
Eastern Washington University Press, 13 poems & 38 stitches in 87 pages

“These lively ‘eco-poems’ take the marvelous, but endangered, species called language on a lively quest for sustenance. Arianne Zwartjes contemplates mysteries, politics, emotions, and aesthetics, indulging us with a feast of realities. The ‘surfacing of excess’ turns out not to be a clever phrase, or a ruse, but the hard work that a beautiful mind accomplishes, thinking about life, in Zwartjes’s case, in an interlinked diction of science and religion, which resolves itself in a language of love.”
– Jane Miller

“Arianne Zwartjes’s thoughtful, playful poems map the surfaces of language, image, flight, and architecture. Reading The Surfacing of Excess is like removing the boring part of your skull and letting the sky abut your brain. Or like hanging around with the theoretical mathematicians’ guild, getting goofy, drinking wine by the jug, positioning geometries, speaking Greek. Ambitious, fragmented, and thinky in ways most poetry doesn’t even attempt, triangulating by stars including Weil, Carson, Plato, Calvino, and Heidegger, Zwartjes is a new breed of bird in a sky filled with sameness. Part descent, part descant, always vector, in her words, herein you’ll find ‘here / we know there is a mystery greater than beauty.;”
– Ander Monson

Read poetry by Arianne Zwartjes appearing in Terrain.org Issue No. 25.