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The Top Ten - 2020 cover

Nightingale & Sparrow Micropoets: The Top Ten – 2020

Nightingale & Sparrow Micropoets: The Top Ten – 2020

Publication Date: 29 December 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press
14 Pages

 

 

In the leadup to each issue of Nightingale & Sparrow Literary Magazine, the N&S editorial staff selects a series of micropoems to feature on social media in the days leading up to each issue’s launch.  While these pieces aren’t published in the magazine issue, they’re posted to the N&S site alongside the issue’s web archive.

To further give back to our micropoem contributors, we’ve decided to publish yet another microchapbook of micropoems.  Featuring the “top ten” N&S micropoets of 2020, we’re thrilled to share the 2020 edition of Nightingale & Sparrow Micropoets!

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Contributors

The top ten micropoets of 2020 were chosen by the N&S staff.

  • His smile – Carl Alexandersson
  • And So We Dive – Claire Loader
  • Vs. – Amanda Crum
  • Finding Love in Coffee – Amanda N. Butler
  • Eternal Carvings – Timothy Kelly
  • Groove – Tanasha Martin
  • morendo – Maggie Wang
  • Miss, What If They Call It Gay Club? – Liz Chadwick Pywell
  • first grade mural – Matthew E. Henry
  • Forest of Us – Carolyn Agee

View all of our micropoems by issue here.

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What Lasts Beyond the Burning cover

What Lasts Beyond the Burning by A. A. Parr

What Lasts Beyond the Burning
by A. A. Parr

Publication Date: 15 December 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press

Genre: Poetry

What Lasts Beyond the Burning is an exploration of one woman’s journey away from violence, away from a life dictated by deceit and manipulation, away from everything she once thought she knew.
At times gritty and blunt, and others caressing and lyrical, this book chronicles a year in the life of a woman searching for a place called home. Through a variety of free verse formats and building to a refined crescendo, the poems offer a meditation on how to be free, on how to live after leaving.

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About the Author

A. A. Parr is a writer, artist, and entrepreneur who calls both Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto home. She holds a Specialised Honours BFA from York University in Theatre (Devised Ensemble Creation; Playwriting) with a double minor in Psychology and Cultural Studies. She is also the Founder and Managing Editor of Type A Media, publishing fresh, diverse perspectives in arts and culture from Northern Ontario and beyond. Most notably in this role, she edited and contributed to the anthology Isolated Together: Northern Ontario perspectives of life in a global pandemic.

Her ongoing poetry series written for and about strangers, “I Wrote You This Poem”, is published on Channillo.com. Her creative works have been seen on stages, in galleries, and in print throughout North America over the past two decades. In her work, she seeks to explore difficult themes in an attempt to shine a necessary light into our darkest crevices. Her most cherished role, of course, is raising two beautifully inquisitive little artists of her own.

For more information on A. A. Parr’s creative works, please visit her website at www.aaparr.wixsite.com/ourghosts

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2020 Full-Length Longlist

This past spring, N&S opened for full-length manuscript submissions. Despite the chaos across the globe, we were thrilled to receive thousands of pages of poetry and other genres to consider for 2020-2021 publication.

We are so grateful to each and every author who sent in their work—compiling this list was made incredibly difficult by the quality of each and every manuscript. With every batch of submissions we receive, we’re faced with the inevitable heartbreak of having to turn away work that speaks to us. We truly wish we could accept all of the below titles and more!

As always, manuscripts were reviewed without identifying information, so it was especially exciting to find that a few of our former contributors were the authors behind these works—and even more so to discover several names that are entirely new to us here at N&S!

From the following manuscripts, we’ll create our shortlist of full-lengths before choosing our final selections, which will be published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press through 2021.

The Longlist

Ave Mater Militantis – Sarra Culleno

cups in the cupboard – Clarissa R. Sutton

I Hear Your Music Playing Night and Day – Dave O’Leary

In Between Places: A Memoir in Essays – Lucy Bryan

Lamplight in the Fog – Daniel Mark Patterson

Larkspur Queen and Other Songs – Megan Leonard

Life is But a Moment in Time – Essie Dee

Mark. – Shannon Frost Greenstein

Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away – Christopher Woods

Mothership – Emily Uduwana

Open Zero – Sophia Naz

Out of Time – Aiden Heung

River Ghosts – Merril D. Smith

Sea Me – Adwaita Das

STRANGERS IN LOVE – Rebecca Ruth Gould

Thirty Years – David Hay

Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate – Peggy Landsman

Uproot the Hobbling Magic – Hibah Shabkhez

We Could Be Lovers – Kim Malinowski

We Will Meet the Sun Again – Kevin A. Risner

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ephemeral cover

ephemeral by Samantha Rose

ephemeral
by Samantha Rose

Publication Date: 10 November 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press
10 Pages

Genre: Poetry

Have you ever longed for something you could never touch? Have you ever touched something you knew you’d never hold?

Sometimes it can feel as though being in the world consists of nothing more than passively watching people pass through from behind a glass wall, coming and going too quickly for us to fully realize the gravity of their presence. Life can also be described as a seemingly infinite series of moments woven together by the dizzying hand of time, and getting stuck in the details is somehow always easier than seeing the big picture. Seeing the big picture almost never occurs unless through the 20/20 vision that is hindsight.

And in those moments when you did manage to hold onto something, is the time we have with that thing, that dream, that person, ever enough?

I wrote this book on the premise that the answer to that last question is always “no.” The tragedy of existence is that the time we have in this lifetime will never be enough. Time is fleeting, and so are love and loss. Ephemeral is my attempt to explore themes of love, longing, loneliness, and endings, while a the same time, memorializing them. Everything is ephemeral – even this book – and we must remember not to miss the love in front of us, while also coming to terms with the fact that nothing – the good or the bad – lasts forever.

This tiny book contains ten short poems and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run.

Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted/folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character!

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About the Author

Samantha Rose has a BA in sociology and philosophy from George Fox University and resides in Portland, OR with her cat, Tuna. Unsurprisingly, she often writes about topics surrounding existence and meaning, sociopolitical criticisms, and the beautiful complexity of human relationships. Her work has been featured in journals such as Feminine Collective, Quail Bell, and Mojave He[art] Review. She enjoys art of all forms, and you can often find her painting with coffee when she’s not drinking it with her nose in a book

Blog | Twitter

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Heal My Way Home cover

Heal My Way Home by Rachel Tanner

Heal My Way Home
by Rachel Tanner

Publication Date: 27 October 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press

Genre: Poetry

 

Heal My Way Home explores mental health issues and physical health issues in the context of everyday life. The topics (ranging from buying jewelry to letting cats be in a wedding party) weave in and out of broader themes of illness and healing, just as life continues in and around chronic illness.

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Previously Published Pieces:

Take a sneak peek at some of the poems included in this chapbook: 

About the Author

rachel-tanner

Rachel Tanner’s work has recently appeared in Barren Magazine, Moonchild Magazine, Porridge Mag, and elsewhere. She lives in Alabama with her two cats, Samson and Cady. Writing bios makes her nervous.

Website | Twitter

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Queer Girl Falls cover

Queer Girl Falls by Lannie Stabile

Queer Girl Falls
by Lannie Stabile

Publication Date: 22 September 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press
10 Pages

Genre: Poetry

Queer Girl Falls is a brief but vivid story about a young girl discovering hunger. It starts with a scramble to name the pangs in her maturing body and ends in the confident swallow of a personal truth.

This tiny book contains ten short poems and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run.

Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted/folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character!

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About the Author

Noa Covo

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, often says while some write like a turtleneck sweater, she writes like a Hawaiian shirt. A finalist for the 2019/2020 Glass Chapbook Series and semifinalist for the Button  Poetry 2018 Chapbook Contest, Lannie’s first published collection, Little Masticated Darlings is now out with Wild Pressed Books. Individual works are published/forthcoming in Entropy, Pidgeonholes, Glass Poetry, Okay Donkey, and more. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee.

Website | Twitter

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All the Shades of Grief cover

All the Shades of Grief by Ellora Sutton

All the Shades of Grief
by Ellora Sutton

Publication Date: 8 September 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press

Genre: Poetry

Borrowing from nature, art, mythology, and personal memory, All the Shades of Grief represents an attempt to articulate the universal language of loss. From the death of a loved one to watching flying ants dying on the pavement, each poem in this chapbook seeks to confront grief and force it into the light as something we must all experience and exorcise.

Some of the poems refer directly to the personally seismic event of the death of the poet’s mother, such as an honest rehashing of ‘The Five Stages of Grief’. Others deal with grief and loss in a more ‘everyday’ way, trying to encompass all the myriad shapes (or ‘shades’) of grief that we go through, the kind that can creep up and breathe down your neck with no warning whatsoever, the reverberations that never quite go away. Poems such as ‘Apollo and Hyacinth’ and the first-place prize-winning ‘Daphne’ translate death and loss from ancient mythology to modern-day relevance. This book doesn’t seek to tell you that everything will be alright, that the pain will go away – rather, it wants to hold your hand and feel it all right beside you, to whisper in your ear that you are not alone.

All the Shades of Grief is part coping-mechanism, part moonlit-wondering, and a whole heart, trying to heal itself.

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Zoom Launch

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From Ellora: “Please join me for an evening of poetry readings to christen my debut chapbook, All the Shades of Grief. There will be readings from poets Jack Cooper, Nadia Lines, and Kevin Kissane, as well as readings from All the Shades of Grief. I am so excited to share my first book with you all. Come and enjoy an evening of free poetry!”

Tickets available here

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Previously Published Pieces:

Take a sneak peek at some of the poems included in this chapbook: 

About the Author

ellora-sutton

Ellora Sutton is a Creative Writing MA student living and working in Hampshire, England. Her work has previously been published in Nightingale & Sparrow, The Cardiff Review, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, The Hellebore, Poetry News, Honey & Lime, and Eye Flash Poetry Journal, among others. She has been commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize and has been a winner of several Young Poets Network challenges. Her favourite things to write about include badass women, art, nature, and death. She only feels like herself when she’s writing.

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An excerpt from All the Shades of Grief

On the anniversary of Van Gogh’s death

You, who wielded yellow not like a weapon
but like a looking glass. Did you find it?
The ochre on the inside of starry eyes,
in the yawning mouths of terminal flowers,
the hay in the buttery shade of cypress trees?

You, who forged blue into an ocean of tiny suns,
burning Paris back to itself on the wings of crows
scouring away their heartfelt blacknesses and cawing
in that moment, forever. The people in your paintings
always have such heavy shoulders.

It must have been unbearable.

from All the Shades of Grief

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Author Statement: All the Shades of Grief

Dear Reader,

As I sit here, looking out my window at ferns and nettles dancing in the British rain, it occurs to me for the first time that the publication of my debut chapbook is a somewhat bittersweet occasion. Sweet, of course, for the obvious reasons. Bitter, because the one person I want to share it with most will never get to read it. Allow me to use this space to tell you a bit about that person, that such a person once existed.

My mother, Victoria Sutton, was a deeply remarkable woman. She was a teacher. She read me bedtime stories. She would write down the stories I told her, long before I fully understood what an author was. Every blouse she owned was purple. The only thing she could cook was spaghetti bolognaise. She took me to see a big Van Gogh exhibition in London. She showed me a beachfront in Italy where she fell in love once. She could always win something out of those arcade claw machines. She loved Peter Andre. She wrote I love you in the front of every book she ever bought me. Above all else she was unwaveringly and profoundly kind, a kindness of sorts that very few possess. Often, when I think of her now, I think of her before I knew her – as a teenager, charming her way across the US to visit James Dean’s grave; hiding a stranger from the police in the boot of her bright pink beetle; wearing bottle after bottle of Bodyshop perfume.

There is no way of dressing this up. She died when I was fifteen, after four years of a cancer that was supposed to have killed her within weeks of diagnosis. Death is rarely a truly peaceful process. For those left behind there is a cacophony that births a tinnitus that never completely dissipates. The poems in All the Shades of Grief give form to my own personal tinnitus. They are not all about the death of my mother but rather they are all coloured by the background noise of that grief, as everything is and always will be for me.

The result is, I hope, not intensely depressing but honest. And kind, like her.

All my love,
Ellora x

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Bouquet of Fears cover

Bouquet of Fears by Noa Covo

Bouquet of Fears
by Noa Covo

Publication Date: 28 July 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press
9 Pages

Genre: Fiction

 

This microchapbook bridges between nature and personal fears, creating a story in which the natural world is intricately tied with the emotional. It is composed of three small fiction pieces: Ocean, Bouquet of Fears, and There Used to be a Sea Here. Each piece contains nature, whether it is inside me, beside me, or around me, and explores fear, worry, and insecurity through the lenses of a force far more significant than myself.

The consistency of nature is the backbone of this microchapbook, but it is not a work of stagnation, but rather one of human development. It is a work of slow, never ending personal growth, constant, and yet always improving, entwined with the tides, the seasonal blooms, and the slow formation of mountains.

This tiny book contains three fiction pieces and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run.

Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted/folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character!

Print | PDF | Kindle

About the Author

Noa Covo

Noa Covo is a teenage writer and high school student. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Reckoning, a journal of environmental justice, Newfound’s Virtual Realities issue, and Rune Bear. She lives in Tel Aviv, Israel with her parents, two siblings, and a fat cat.

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