Feed the Crow: Submissions Call for Issue 58
Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Translated Poetry & Fiction, Graphic Fiction.
Details: bombaylitmag.com/submit (the rules, guidelines, submission form)
Deadline: May 31, 2024 (with one constraint)
What are we looking for?
Friend, if we really knew, wouldn’t we just write it ourselves? Look, forget about pleasing us. We are in the exploration business, the do-great-lit business, the magna errata business. We want the kind of writing that’s the outcome of courage and sincerity and the fine art of giving a damn. We want your awejum writing. Got it? Good.
Fortnightly Freudenfreude:
There is a quiet joy in taking credit for your friends’ achievements. We have five such opportunities this time: three new books by TBLM contributors and two prize announcements.
NATHAN LIPPS has a new collection of poems Built Around The Fire (Texas A&M Press). It includes four poems which first appeared in TBLM’s Issue 53: "Natural Occurrence", "Pastor", "The End of Self-Help", and "Rain When You Want It." Here’s an evocation from “The End of Self-Help”:
I may fade before it’s all finished—
birds free to examine where I’ve moved
the earth, the possibility of a wormwhich will be good enough.
Check on the dog. Plant those tomatoes.
Talk with someone of their taste.
ROCHELLE POTKAR, whose poems we published in Issue 51, was in conversation with SIDDHARTH DASGUPTA, editor of Visual Narratives at TBLM, about her latest collection of poems Coins in Rivers (Hachette). As the late Hindi poet Manglesh Dabral noted, Rochelle has the uncommon ability to mingle poetry with story. Her poem ‘The Strings’, began as follows:
The only thing Shalom remembered with his last breath,
was his violin stolen at a Berlin concert.
SAYARI DEBNATH, whose translation of Jayanta Dey’s Bangla short story appeared in Issue 55, has a new book out. The Keeper of Desolation (Harper Collins) is the much-anticipated English translation of Chandan Pandey’s collection of Hindi short stories. Pandey is hotter than a sweater in Bombay summer right now.
DEVIKA REGE’s book Quarterlife: A Novel was chosen as the Mathrubhoomi Book of the Year (2023). We’d published her little meditative marvel ‘How to Write Without Violence’ in Issue 53.
Speaking of prizes, the 2024 Commonwealth Prize received more than 7,000 submissions. Twenty-three writers made it to the shortlist, including AJAY PATRI. We’d carried one of Ajay’s short stories, Canned Life, in the July 2017 issue of TBLM.
Congratulations, Nathan, Rochelle, Sayari, Devika and Ajay. We are proud to have carried your work.
Colophon: The Responsibility of Rejection
PERVIN SAKET
Initially, I wondered if I should talk about rejection in my very first substack piece for TBLM, particularly because it is accompanied by a submission call. I wasn’t concerned about it sounding negative or off-putting, as much as it being, well, inauspicious. It is an odd concern, but perhaps on point when it comes to writers’ anxieties. So much of the writing life depends on luck, circumstance, connections and other intangible contexts that writers have no knowledge of, let alone control over, it can make writers superstitious. Long ago, when a senior writer asked to see a couple of my poems, I sent him three poems, in a document that had exactly three pages — some fuzzy connection to how my grandmother always rounded off any handover to an odd number of items, for good luck. It was routine to have my parents give me a crisp 10-rupee note for a school snack and for my grandmother to slip in an additional 1-rupee coin. Even her grocery bills and the istriwala’s hisaab were never settled in even numbers. Most days, the adult me finds these gestures of propitiation ridiculous. But on other days, some newsletter decides to share yet another list of 10 Literary Classics that Did Not Sell or an essay on 60 Years of Tracking Rejection or Excerpts from Rejection Letters Sent to Truly Brilliant Writers, and suddenly it feels like it is going to take all the good luck the world can spare.
Which is why we, the editors at TBLM, get it. We get anxiety and we get rejection. We even get the cover letter which starts with ‘I hope you are reading this in a good mood’. So while much has been said about how writers can approach rejection with the right attitude, right fortitude, right magnitude, this piece offers an editor’s perspective on rejection. No, that is too bland. It meditates on an editor’s responsibility towards rejection. Because, as all elves know, even small power can come with great responsibility.
After wrapping up Issue 57 last month, an internal survey revealed that TBLM editors rejected around 80 times more than they accepted, and spent just under 70% of the reading period working through rejections. With such a large proportion of our time and energy devoted to the various processes of rejection, naturally, we have some pointers. Naturally, I will make sure there are exactly 3 of them:
Responsibility as Humility:
Editorial humility isn’t a performance. It isn’t about stock (and necessary) phrases like ‘this is not a reflection of the merit of your work’ or ‘these decisions are entirely subjective’. It involves ensuring emotionally uncluttered time slots for reading. It requires passing material to another editor when it is too familiar or unfamiliar to make an honest decision. It even keeps an eye out for subtext in cover letters, recognising that the writer is not a row in some database. The poetry team once delayed a rejection letter by a week because the email address included a number that appeared to be the writer’s date and month of birth — a combination that was very close to our intimation date. We were probably entirely wrong about this sleuthing, but why take a chance and possibly send bad news on a birthday? Of course, with hundreds of submissions and automated systems, this is not always feasible. And we do have hundreds of submissions and we do have automated systems. But humility can help bring an alertness to not letting the soul get callused through routine and necessity.
This orientation is not entirely intuitive; it also reflects in numbers. The Poetry vertical, for instance, sends out 75 personal rejections per 400 submissions. Which means that almost 20% of the submitters receive personalised emails from editors quoting their verses, discussing their themes, and generally offering genuine engagement.
The point is not that we are doing something special. The point is we are dealing with something special and must act accordingly.
Responsibility as Thick Skin:
Rejection can hurt editors, especially those of small indie magazines. It is not unheard of for established writers to view magazines as places to send mothballed stories, overnight poems and almost-there experiments. Editors know when they have received surplus stock that did not sell in New York or New Delhi. That’s when we take a deep breath, dread the next encounter at Small Town Lit Fest, put our own manuscript on the line, and nevertheless type out we regret to inform you. We’re all too familiar with being ghosted or being WhatsApped to ‘clarify’ or being frenemied just when we thought the whole thing went amicably.
If writers are routinely advised a thick skin, I’d recommend a rhino hide for editors. Because giving in to the subtle or direct pressures of the market, of self-interest, or the Big Five serves no one, least of all our love for literature. Even if you have your own next novel doing the rounds of publishers. Especially if you have your own next novel doing the rounds of publishers. It is easy to pass on an unknown emerging writer from halfway around the world; our conscience is tested when we must rankle the very person who can send us our next acceptance letter. Thick skin and a mild death wish.
Responsibility as Perspective:
When e. e. cummings said ‘yes is a world / & in this world of / yes live / (skilfully curled) / all worlds’, every editor nodded enthusiastically. No one wants to live in this world more than editors, except perhaps Petrarchan sonnets. We love saying yes, we are relieved when we can say yes, we even risk saying yes to pieces that might not be fully there yet, knowing there may be buyers’ regret later. But during our more sober moments we have to acknowledge that rejection is a rejuvenating aspect of a journal’s life. What autumn is to spring, what mulch is to seed. This is particularly relevant for a magazine like TBLM which sources most of its selections through open calls. In fact, in the last issue of the magazine, every single poetry selection came to us through our submission system. Keeping this opportunity open for writers means keeping rejection in play. For eliminating rejection entirely would mean sourcing everything through invitation, and reducing outlets for writers outside our immediate circles.
Perspective also reminds me of a sub-point (it might have been its own point were it not for the necessity of our rule-of-three): an upward gaze. An editorial role model or a composite of several editorial perspectives as a personal lodestar. I’m thinking, for instance, of Toni Morrison’s frank, detailed rejection letters during her time at Random House. They not only frequently included notes on craft and style, she even shared her frustration about market conditions and sometimes pointed writers to other imprints where their work would be received more favourably. (This is before rejection letters were tiered and had to be decoded, like dating lingo, to decipher just how much an editor was into you, but that is another article.) All stars don’t have to be Ezra Pounds and Max Brods either; a living, breathing, flawed, sharp, invested, invisible, local editor who has become one of the voices in your head can shape an editorial practice more than any of these legends.
A meditation on rejection is perhaps best wrapped up by celebrating the rejection of rejection. I’m referring to an editorial perspective that sees rejection as an honest direction, guided by our greater desire for each writer to find their kind of reader. If we expect writers to not get disheartened by editors who send rejections, we too might demonstrate greater faith in writers whom we reject. Not in the fact of this specific story or poem perhaps, but in the act of this story or poem. Of creating, however flawed, worlds of possibility. Each time we open a submission, we recognise the responsibility of keeping that spark alive, even if we must move the writer towards other outlets, other versions, other approaches. Because any writer finding the right words is a win for what we love.
having to do rejections is one thing I do not envy at all about an editors job. Having to tell people no, when they put their hearts and souls, even when a piece is great, or especially if it isn't but you can tell it was worked carefully, having to tell so many people now when you want to say yes, whew, my heart is a little stressed thinking about it and I don't have to do it. I'd rather receive a rejection than have to do the rejecting, so respect to editors on that front.