P – Magma Poetry Seeking Submissions about: Performance

Performance

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts. – from Shakespeare’s As You Like It

While broadly defined, there are many unique layers to Magma 89’s theme of Performance. For instance, there are gendered, and erotic undertones. Hermann Hesse decried:

How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man…

Can poems explore the rawness and fragility of that, and the different anxieties and pressures that certain notions of performance bring?

Or else, when does playing a role, or having a mask, become erotically charged? Who are we performing for and why? What does it mean to put on a show? When is being seen and watched consensual or unsafe?

Of course, at first glance, readers might think Magma’s Performance issue applies mainly to poets who have a specific style of poem or personality: slam poetry, being in the ‘spotlight’. We welcome submissions that want to celebrate and experiment with that – in style, content or form.

Or they might want to challenge what performance means for poetry entirely. Is there a difference between ‘performance poetry’ and ‘other types’? What changes if poems are written specifically with the intention of connecting with a live audience? What about different kinds of artistic performance: from theatre to music to dance to circus?

These few lines by Shakespeare offer up questions not just for performers, but for people too. How have poets wrestled with authenticity and pretence? When do we switch between roles, contexts and identities?

A final lingering question for us is this: if all the world’s a stage, then where is the backstage?

What happens when there’s no one to perform for, when no one is watching, when everybody has gone home? Who are we then?

We look forward to reading your poems.

HOW TO SUBMIT

• The submissions window for ‘Performance’ is open 4th December 2023 – 4th January 2024
• We welcome poems that have not been previously published, either in print or online.
• We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission or contact us if it is accepted for publication somewhere else first.
• You may submit up to 4 previously unpublished poems (poem + translation counts as one poem):

ONLINE via Submittable in a single Word or PDF document,