Poem Anthology Civilized Beasts 2016 – OPEN FOR SUBMISSION
by Pup Matthias
When most of us think of Furry writing we think of your standard novels, novellas, short stories, even comics, but one form that doesn’t get the same attention is poetry. Mainly cause there hasn’t been too many opportunities in the fandom to showcase anthropomorphic poems. There are a few exceptions like Heat and the soon to be released anthology Wolf Warrior III which offer collections that mix poems with short stories, but there hasn’t been an anthology dedicated to poetry alone. Until last year when Laura “Munchkin” Govednik released Civilized Beast. Now she’s back again for round two. Civilized Beast 2016 is open for submission.
So where did the idea of doing a poem anthology come from?
The idea for Civilized Beasts started in the Furry Writer’s Guild. I was surprised to find there were other members and future members who also had a high interest in poetry and hoped to see more of it in the community. Through various discussions, I realized that a poetry collection about animals for animals could be a great way for people in and out of the furry community to connect.
When it comes to theme, Civilized Beasts does the same thing as Heat by having a generally open theme for everyone to play with.
The theme this year is the same as last year: Animals, be it the outside observation of animals, in the mind of an animal, or the symbolism of an animal. By leaving the theme so open, it allowed poets a lot of freedom last year, and an incredible variety of poetry was submitted because of it. It is my hope that poets will be just as inspired this year, so I decided not to limit the theme.
Munchkin is looking for all kinds of poems. Whether they are your traditional rhymes, sonnets, haiku, or free verse. You are free to write what speaks to you. Munchkin wants you to think outside the box. To go wild. There’s even no word count limit to your poems.
For anyone interested, there’s no maximum or minimum line count, though longer poems will be looked at more critically since we only have so many pages to work with.