You may have noticed an absence of female poets in ANGEL HEAD. So far we have featured only two: Ana Christy and Sharon Auberle. As opposed to a long list of males.
It's a matter of who submits. Ana's poems were solicited by me for the inaugural issue and Sharon submitted. But no other women have sent anything so far.
I wonder why? In an email to Sharon I proposed two explanations: one) the perception that the Beat/ post-Beat world is for boys, and two) my reputation, earned largely on these pages, as an obnoxious, unreasonable son******** who may possibly hate women.
Well, I am obnoxious and unreasonable, and I may have a take on poetry that you won't find anywhere else. But I don't hate women. Not as a rule--though there are some who piss me off pretty comprehensively. I did once put a post on SUFFOLK PUNCH called "Every Day Is Women's Day", but hell, I take potshots at everybody when I'm in a bad mood. As I recall I've also sniped at Blair, Bush, Beat poets, Americans, the English, animal rights activists and everybody in the world with a job! I hate those poetry sites where everybody goes because they know they're going to find something they agree with (there are as many in the post-Beat world as there are in the mainstream).
As to the Beat environment being male-oriented--well, possibly, though historical analysis/ revisionism is allowing us to see the previously-unappreciated contribution women made to the era (Elise Cowen, for example). But I don't want ANGEL HEAD to be defined exclusively by its Beat influences anyway. Beat is my literary hometown, so to speak; it's where I come from, but not necessarily all I am. And it's not necessarily all ANGEL HEAD is either. To me it's just a magazine for good poetry.
So if you have good poetry, try me with it. Doesn't have to mention Kerouac. Doesn't even have to be free verse, if rhyme is your thing and you can do it with freshness and surprise. Let's allow poets to express themselves with freedom, through the filter of my (possibly misplaced) sense of what is good technique.
One proviso: I will favour poets who don't appear in every other poetry magazine.
That's all. Nothing that bores me more than looking at a magazine and seeing the same names I see everywhere else.


Dahny13 said…
I would love to post a poem on this site but exactly where does one send one? Perhaps you should let your readers know this. Thanks, Dahny
Bruce Hodder said…
You can post anything you like in the comments field on this site: poetry, prose--I don't mind. For ANGEL HEAD you would need to take your chances by submitting three poems in the body of an email (no attachments) to me at bruce.hodder@tesco.net or blue.fred@tesco.net.Reporting time varies according to my workload and my mood and there is no payment.
Dahny13 said…
ok...here goes:
It Takes a Lifetime

She knew him when
She was younger
They both went to the
Same school,
Same church,
Read the same missal,
And had the same communion.

Later when she was older
She met him again:
He became her lover,
They read the same books,
Liked the same movies,
music, food and adventures.

It was then that he told her
A story about their childhood:

It seems that he was always
carried out of church by two
classmates because he
became ill and fainted there.

It took her until she became a
senior until she understood
the reason why that happened:

He was evil and God did not
want him there.