Submissions

Rabbit is currently accepting submissions for Issue 40: the EXTINCTION Issue, to be guest co-edited by Elena Gomez and AJ Carruthers.

The sixth mass extinction bears the marks of centuries of capitalist accumulation. While the science of climate catastrophe is well documented and broadly accepted, ways of preventing extinction are far from settled. Poetry has engaged with the destructive nature of capitalism and imperial expansion since early English industrialisation, and contemporary poetry confronts these questions with aesthetic curiosity and force. If it feels impossible to imagine a future, poetry offers itself as a site to do just that.

EXTINCTION asks for poetry inspired by science and ecology, geopolitical/materialist writing, writing from avant-garde or prophetic traditions, and human–nonhuman relations.

EXTINCTION considers the social and economic inequalities produced by capitalism’s climate catastrophes, its effects on gender, social relations, and the dialectic of classes and nations. It demands we look at what is possible beyond what has already been.

We’re especially interested in non-Western poetic forms, and work that explores non-Western perspectives on relations between empire, colony and production.

We invite poets to send up to 3 poems in one document through Rabbit’s Submittable site. Please include in the cover letter of your submission:

• full contact details (postal address, email)

• 50-word max. bio

• a short (50-word max.) response to the following: "What is the role of the poem in an era of decline?"

SUBMISSIONS CLOSE MIDNIGHT Wednesday 31st July 2024

About the guest editors:

Elena Gomez is the author of Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt and Body of Work, as well as several chapbooks and pamphlets. She lives on unceded Wurundjeri country.

AJ Carruthers is a poet and poetry scholar and the author of Axis, an ongoing project since 2014, which comprises the following volumes: AXIS Book 1: ‘Areal’ (Vagabond Press, 2014), AXIS Book 2 (Vagabond Press, 2019), and AXIS Z Book 3 (Cordite Books, 2023). He is also the author of monographs Literary History and Avante-Garde Poetics in the Antipodes: Languages of Invention (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Stave Sightings: Notational Experiments in North American Long Poems (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He received the 2024 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry.

RABBIT is a journal of nonfiction poetry. If you are concerned that your take on the ‘real world’ is slightly abstract, don’t worry–include a line or two to tell us why you categorise your poem as ‘nonfiction.’ We are very much open to poetry experiments! Please note that we do not accept previously published poems; simultaneous submissions are fine (provided you let us know immediately if your poems have been accepted elsewhere).

RABBIT also publishes book reviews, essays interviews with poets and visual artworks by poets. The editors regularly solicit this material, but are open to expressions of interest. Please see the website at rabbitpoetry.com.