The Chimaera's Pushcart Prize Nominations

These are the poems nominated by The Chimaera for the Pushcart Prize. Congratulations to these poets, and to all those other poets who appear in The Chimaera:

Alison Brackenbury 'In the gap'

Don Kimball 'Prayer for My Father'

Peter Richards 'An Adolescent Contemplates Leaving'

David Rosenthal 'Bechtle’s Alameda Gran Torino, 1974'

Salli Shepherd 'Homesick'

John Whitworth 'Not You'

The poems can be found under their authors' names in the Current Issue here:


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

The Chimaera Lives!

The Chimaera has arrived. It has crawled out of the primeval sludge of The Shit Creek Review and and now runs on its own four heterogeneous paws, gallivanting across the fields and foothills of Poetry and Prose which border on Mounts Parnassus and Helicon, and around the Lycian Way.

There is more real poetry here than you could shake a lyre at, and vigorous prose discussions too, as well as entertaining true fictions. We have picked what we think is the very best from a huge volume of submissions, and the result is a curious and provocative mix of styles, preoccupations and perspectives. We chose the work that appealed to us most, based entirely on high quality as we saw it.

To give a roll-call of authors in our first issue would be tedious and spoil the fun of exploring for yourself. And there are other mysteries for you to uncover, too: What is the magical Poem of the Day? How does being an Expat relate to being a poet? Who will win the William McGonagall Prize for Chimerical Verse? How can garlic bread be fraught with danger?

So pull on your Corinthian helmet, hop onto your faithful Pegasus and fly on over to http://www.the-chimaera.com to find out for yourself!

And mark you this: The Chimaera's next issue will accept general prose and verse submissions, as well as articles, essays and poems for a Translation special feature. Read the Submissions page for details:

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

Oh, by the way: expect something rather gruesome from The Shit Creek Review's Horror Department soon--very soon.

The Chimaera cometh

Chimaeras, ‘begotten between Feare, and Darknesse, which vanish with the light’ (Cornwallys).

What a Chimaera!

"What a Chimaera, then, is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe!"

—Blaise Pascal

The Chimaera Runs Loose

As II sinks beneath the surface of Shit Creek to lurk amidst the murk and possibly surge up again at any moment, a strange, bedraggled creature heaves itself from the waters, crawls up the muddy bank, shakes itself dry with a toss of its three heads, and prepares to gallivant off across the wastelands to terrorise Mount Parnassus.

It is The Chimaera. A terrible beauty is born.

The Chimaera will be an independent literary miscellany which hopes to publish a wide range of serious and satirical verse and prose. The design and content of The Chimaera will be similar to that which characterised II , but will develop in new directions over time. The Chimaera will be published separately from SCR. SCR will primarily focus on its mission of poetry/art/html fusion, but The Chimaera will be more text-based.

There is no set theme for poems or prose submitted to the October issue of The Chimaera: send us your best 1–5 poems, or one or more prose pieces, on whatever topic you like. We are happy to consider both formal verse and vers libre, and humorous, satirical and light verse as well as more serious work. But please read the General Submission Guidelines before sending your submission.

The Chimaera is taking over publication of the range of prose published in The Shit Creek Review (which will focus on poetry), including fiction (stories complete in themselves of up to about 5000 words), critical essays, memoirs, reviews, reports on your local poetry scene, wit and drollery and so on. We are happy to discuss the suitability of your ideas for projected prose pieces prior to submission.

The October issue of The Chimaera will include a special feature on expatriate poets, and submissions of prose, verse or other material relating to that topic are invited as well.

Submissions for The Chimaera's October Issue must be received by Monday, September 17th, 2007. Please read our Submission Guidelines.

Send submitted work to editor@the-chimaera.com


When the first edition of The Chimaera is ready (in October—not yet!) its url will be

http://www.the-chimaera.com

Say the sea is to be questioned. Below the bounds
of this estate the chimaera our madness does not cease to reinvent
and which we dare not think alive, crawls in a thick ooze.

—Carol Frost