Contemporary Verse 2

NOTE: Contemporary Verse 2 accepts submissions from Sept. 1 through May 31. No submissions will be accepted during the summer months of June, July and August. 

Submissions of poetry, reviews and critical writing are accepted.

If you wish to submit for a specific themed issue, please indicate this in your cover letter.

Full submission guidelines

• Participating poets can be any age, but must not have published a full-length book of poetry. All entrants must be willing to provide proof of their publication history if requested. 
• Open to Canadian and International poets. 
• Entry fee: $26 (first entry, includes 1-year subscription), $16 (subsequent entries)
• Due to high international shipping costs, the subscription term for contest entrants residing in the US is 9 months (3 issues). For international residents the subscription term is 3 months (1 issue). 
• Your entry may consist of 1-3 poems, and is not to exceed 80 lines.
• Deadline for all contest entries: November 1st, 2021 at 11:59pm central time.  
• Early Bird Deadline: Enter by October 15th, 2021 and submit an extra poem at no charge! The length of the extra poem must not exceed 80 lines.
• Do not identify yourself on your attachment. Enter your name and address information in the form provided in Submittable. In the space reserved for a cover letter please enter the title(s) of your piece(s) and line count. On occasion, CV2 magazine makes subscriber names and addresses available to external organizations. If you do not wish to receive such mailings, please state this clearly in the space reserved for a cover letter.
• Your entry must be formatted on 8 1/2″ x 11″ using single spacing and a 12 point font.
• Entries must be sent in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format using Submittable. 
• Winners of the 2021 Foster Poetry Prize will be notified by email (or telephone) and results will be available on the CV2 website in early January 2022.
• Each piece must be original, unpublished, not submitted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor accepted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor entered simultaneously in any other contest or competition for which it is also eligible to win a prize.
• Winning pieces will be published in CV2 magazine, with authors paid for publication.

“Nothing I’ve written here is for the well and intact, and had it been, I never would have written it” (Boyer The Undying 279)

“If disease is synonymous with diagnosis and illness with personalized experience, sickness is a relation” (Heather Houser / Ecosickness)

We are looking for poetry that explores the limits and boundaries of sickness, disability, illness, madness, and crip. How do these terms and identities get demarcated, lived, and embodied? What does sickness encompass and what does it exclude? This issue does not aim to be an answer, but rather an opening up: a call for more sick, crip, mad, and disabled poetry in CanLit. What stories are missing from our journals and what conversations can we begin?

We are open to poems and poetic essays on any of the following (or related) topics:

• Sickness and intersecting identities (race, class, gender, queerness)
• Chronic illness, chronic pain, temporality, sick time
• Non-apparent illnesses, marginalized or rare illnesses
• Accommodations, access, and mobility
• D/deafness
• Blindness and vision loss
• STIs and HIV
• Covid-19, long-Covid, global health
• Disability, mad, and crip activism
• Mental health, madness, neurodivergence
• Healing, care, and justice
• Sickness and relationships
• Pain, pleasure, sexuality, joy
• Abjection, sickness, and death
• Neoliberalism and productivity
• Online communities and social media
• Representations of sickness
• Crip/disabled aesthetics and fashion

This title draws inspiration from the work of Lauren Fournier and Margeaux Feldman including and their "Sick Theories" conference. 

See also:

Feldman, Margeaux. 2021. "Touch Me, I'm Sick: Hysterical Intimacies, Sick Theories." Dissertation. English Literature, University of Toronto Certificate in Sexual Diversity Studies.

Fournier, Lauren. 2018. "Sick Women, Sad Girls, and Selfie Theory: Autotheory as Contemporary Feminist Practice." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 33.

Deadline to submit: Oct 15, 2021

General Guidelines:

- Submissions of poetry, reviews, interviews, and critical writing are accepted.

- Please submit no more than 6 pages of poetry, with each poem starting on a new page.

- Please submit just once and submit all your poems in a single submission.

See below for general guidelines.

Full submission guidelines