November 2011 UPDATE. WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR: The best in contemporary poetry and more. Open to all styles.
We pay on publication for original material. Issues appear four times per year: fall, winter, spring, and summer,
and we sometimes publish new material spontaneously. $10 minimum for short verse such as haiku, 20c/wd after 50 wds, $50 max per poem. Response time: 1-3 months.
We're looking for poetry in translation and sometimes
in languages other than English. Especially interested in French poetry. Contact or submit up to 5 poems to
jerseyworks as Word document or copied into body of email. Photos and art:
Jpg. files of
excellent quality under 200 kilobytes.
Although we will continue to publish an occasional short story, we can no longer read unsolicited fiction; and
poetry spam not addressed specifically to Jerseyworks or its editors will be deleted unread.
Jerseyworks went online in July 2001, and growth has been organic, budget minimal. The editor was
fortunate to begin with contributions of excellent poets like Marylisa DeDomenicis and Shirley Lake,
who choose to live here in South Jersey. We now have readers in over 40 countries and have published writers from
four continents. Antarctica is not represented, but neither are South America (with the exception of
Argentina) or Africa.
Our "world" reaches
across the ocean, but not below the Gulf of Mexico; and the reasons for
this are worth thinking about. We would be interested in hearing from writers south of that gulf.
Readership (number of individual computers who had logged on to
jerseyworks) passed 50,000 in 2008, with over 500,000 jerseyworks pages viewed. We estimate from our Web statistics
that approximately 1300 individual readers, Unique URLs, log onto Jerseyworks each month and request more than
6500 Jerseyworks pages. More than 67,000 Jerseyworks pages were requested by servers during the past 12 months.
Countries outside the U.S. with greatest readership
are Russia, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Denmark.
We are
actively seeking the best poetry we can find. We are looking for that
place where the highest and most original poetic language encounters the world. This can range from the deeply and subtly
personal to the openly political, but we like poems that are about something besides themselves. We have a low
interest (near zero, actually) in poems about poetry or poets. We love language, but sometimes poetry makes it into jerseyworks
because it has something to say. We want the most finely-crafted poetry available, but we want it to arise from the ancient need to
"say," to tell, to reach. Ah, we want it all. We want "The Wasteland." We want "Howl." "Brooklyn Bridge." "Sunday Morning."
We are open to poetry or other forms that express/investigate the unique nature of New Jersey and that create a picture of
our state for those not lucky enough to pay taxes here. We also want to filter a vision of the world through the consciousness of
Jerseyworks. We seek poets everywhere. We will publish in translation and sometimes in original languages. We're looking for great
poetry, and in that process we hope to be part of bringing people together.
The following is our original statement published in 2001:
Are we South Jersey? All Jersey? All
America or even All World? If
you're from Philly or Princeton, or San Francisco or Anchorage, will we consider your submissions? Will we let you
look at our pages? The answer is yes to all of the above. Do we
know who we are? Will "Edna's Kitchen"* actually appear on Jerseyworks?
Can we get away with
using primary colors and still keep an intelligent audience?
Are we serious? We do not aspire to be as serious as a heart attack, but we do expect to
be at least as serious as a bad clam, as annoying as a laughing gull and as beautiful
as a sail-- or a roller coaster in the snow.
SUBMISSIONS AND COPYRIGHT
Jerseyworks is produced in Northfield, NJ, and is edited and designed by Ron Gaskill. Consulting Editor,
Poetry: Susan Cavanaugh; Tech Consultant: Bernard Sypniewski; Associate Editor, Photography: Charles Raglund;
Design Assistant: Maggie Seahill. New material copyrighted as it appears on this site. All rights are retained by the authors and artists, and
use online or in print is limited to quotation for the purpose of review.
What we are looking for is material with imagination, intelligence, heart, and
maybe humor. We are always looking for good poetry and fiction, and
we especially like to see fine photography, artwork, graphics, cartoons?
hypertext, philosophy, and social criticism/analysis in the vein, say, of Sigmund Freud
visits Margate, or a photo-essay of a development in Egg Harbor Township. We are interested in the
creative and beautiful use of webspace and are open to possibilities. We want to
be as hip as possible while trying hard to be cool about it. Our focus begins with the
emerging consciousness of South Jersey, but we will also reach out and bring in
from anywhere on the planet or beyond.
*Edna of Heislerville, a cook of local notoriety. We had hoped she would write a recipe and advice column for us, but
she has been incommunicado for several months. Her phone is disconnected. This is a shame; we wanted, at the least,
to pass her recipe for tidepool soup on to our readers.
|