Please subscribe and support the magazine:
Please subscribe and support the magazine:
The Tears in the Fence Flash Fiction Competition is now open with a First Prize of £200, Second Prize of £150 and Third Prize of £100. The winners and other highly commended entries will be published in issue 66. The competition will close on 27th May 2017. Winning entrants will be announced on the Tears in the Fence website https://tearsinthefence.com/flashfiction site on 24th June 2017.
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions may be done on http://tearsinthefence.com or by post to Tears in the Fence Flash Fiction Competition, Portman Lodge, Durweston, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 0QA, England.
RULES AND GUIDELINES
All entries must be unpublished and 400 words or less and the original work of the author.
There is no set Theme.
There is no limit to the number of entries that one person may submit.
Entries may not be submitted elsewhere for the duration of the competition.
This competition is open to anyone over the age of 16 years.
The editors of Tears in the Fence will judge this competition.
The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
All entries will be judged anonymously and considered for publication.
Please do not put your name, address, email or any identifying marks on the Word or rtf document in which you enclose your flash fiction.
No entry form is required.
Please enter by email to tearsinthefence@gmail.com through the Submissions page on the magazine’s website or post to Tears in the Fence with a separate covering letter and appropriate fee.
Fees
Entries must be accompanied by submission fees of £5 for a single submission, £7.50 for two and £10 for three. More than three flash fictions should be made on another entry.
Entries are only included in the competition when payment is received by PayPal, follow the instructions on the DONATE button on the magazine’s website, or by cheque, made out to Tears in the Fence.
60 editions of Tears in the Fence, plus the Larmer Tree special issue – and if you have any copies, we’d love to see them.
We want to gather as many photos of copies/collections of TITF as possible for display at the Festival (October 24-26th in Dorset UK. See tearsinthefence.com/festival).
Whether you have one copy, 20 copies or even the whole lot (!!), please take a photo and send it to us:
A. Picture them any way you want – snap them where they stand on your bookshelves; pile ‘em high on your desk; or make any arrangement you like – even put yourself in the photo (a TITF selfie!)
B. Send the photo to tearsinthefence@gmail.com, or post it on the TITF Facebook group page; or tweet it using the hashtag #titf60
Any information about yourself, e.g. the country you live in, thoughts on the magazine etc. will be entirely a bonus.
Now: get your phone and… SNAP!
Your participation really matters.
Privacy and permissions
The purpose of the ‘Picture This’ project is to create a display board full of photos at the Festival (as part, by the by, of demonstrating the reach of the magazine).
We would also like to use some in posts on Facebook and twitter, and some or all on the website, as part of the publicity drive for the Festival. If you would prefer that we do NOT use your photo and/or your name online, please let us know when you submit your photo.
Many thanks again for your participation
The TITF team
There’s a milestone coming up and some interest has been expressed in old Tears in the Fence covers. So, in the service of all things vintage, I thought I’d track down a few.
Following on from the cut-up illustration by Elaine Drake used in No. 23. Summer 1999, not long after I joined the magazine, and right away embarked upon what in hindsight we’ll call the ‘bright phase.’
This is the second cover from the Tears in the Fence archive. Here we’ve jumped years to, I think, the last incarnation before the present design. Issue No. 48 – one of the bridge series. In this case, the Forth Bridge, using a photo that I took on a visit to Edinburgh. And yes, I do think maintenance was being undertaken at the time.
I was looking on the cover, and then inside, for the date. Annoyingly I must have decided that a date was unnecessary or, more likely, that not having a date added to its timelessness. Hmmm! But, strike that. I’ve just looked on the spine and there it is: Summer 2008.
By this time the format of the magazine is A5, and we have dispensed with varnishing to give a more tactile feel, but it is still single colour print onto card. The font is Garamond.
Westrow Cooper 21st July 2014
Mandy Pannett’s All The Invisibles (SPM Publications, 2012) is an uplifting, grounded and coherent collection of poems that stem from a deep absorption in the history and mythology of the English landscape and natural world. It is a living awareness of the literary and historical associations of the people, animals and wildlife that live on or near the land. These diverse poems, wonderfully rooted in the things of the world that inspire and intrigue, converge into a pattern of existence that is at once both magical and lived in the raw. The great strength of these poems is that they are open to the natural world in both its light and shade. Pannett, a regular contributor to Tears in the Fence for the past two decades, has a keen awareness of the potential and danger within the borderland of wilderness and a cultivated culture, impinged as it is by knowledge and shadow. Many of the poems point to a movement outside of ordinary relationships that stunts, liberates or neutralizes. This frisson undercuts the poems that offer sunlight to produce a continual counter-movement of broken bliss. The heart and body is at once, through reference to the Romantics, geology, toxins and decomposition, out of kilter with and vulnerable to the dialectic of the land.
The Hurt Of Man
… A black and wolvish
world of ice, too thick at first
to shatter-cut while hurt of man
is seeding in the grass. Enough
to measure shadows with a twig
and cranberry notch, for time to turn around
the waning moon. Violating
silent girls he sees that those who plough
the viper fight for guts of fish. Now
a wolf devours the light …
This exceptional collection, written by a poet who understands her craft and is finding more than mystery in the world, is highly recommended.
David Caddy
Collected Poems: Michael Heller Nighboat Books; Distributed by UPNE (www.upne.com)
From his early spare poems written in Spain to the recent ruminative work exploring language, tradition (often Jewish and diasporic) and the self, this book collects four decades of Michael Heller’s “tone perfect poems” as George Oppen described them. Enriched with the detailed landscapes of the phenomenal world and mind, This Constellation Is A Name confirms Michael Heller’s place at the forefront of contemporary American poetry.
An article on Michael Heller’s work including his seminal book on the Objectivists, Conviction’s Net of Branches, his essays in Uncertain Poetries and his edition of Carl Rakosi, Man and Poet will appear in Tears in the Fence 56.
We’ve been hearing rumblings of this for the last year and a half and now it looks like it’s finally coming to land. Spearheaded by the poet Simon Armitage this promises to the biggest poetry event in the world. Ever. Certainly, it feels like the most ambitious. Can anyone say, United Colours of Poetry?
All very exciting!