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“From The Ashes” Poetry for Bushfire Relief: Call for Submissions


The 2019-2020 bushfire season has seen unprecedented destruction, as well as an unprecedented national and worldwide response.

To contribute to that effort, Maximum Felix Media is accepting poetry and short prose pieces that confront and reflect our shared experience of nature and humanity, in conflict and in unity.

All proceeds will go to supporting animal rescue and care. The vast destruction to bushland means countless animals will be without the habitat they rely on for shelter and sustenance for months, if not years, to come, until the bush has recovered.

“From The Ashes” will be edited by C S Hughes, and published by MFM Press in February/March of this year.

Submissions may be sent by email, to palmereldritch@maximumfelixmedia.com
Attachments in doc, docx, rtf and PDF formats are preferred, though poetry typed directly in the body of your email is also acceptable.

A maximum of three poems or short prose pieces may be submitted, up to forty lines per poem or 500 words for prose. We are happy to accept previously published works as long as they meet the broad requirements of our theme. Please indicate where they were previously published so we can provide proper acknowledgement.

We would also like to include a brief biographical note about yourself, that in some way touches on your relationship with our often harsh but always beautiful environment.

All submissions are due by midnight (AEST), Friday, 31st January.

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An introduction is always a difficult thing…


Why write poetry, why publish it? I could say something glib about birds or mountains, but that would be inaccurate at best, and cliched at worst. The reasons are complex and many. Let me just say to the first, we do because we must, and to the second, we do because we can. That is why, at their heart, with perhaps a thought to where our everyday experience and ordinary reveries entwine with eternals, like truth, like beauty, we, who choose this way, at our peril climb, and that is why, despite the savage heights, we sometimes soar.

Maximum Felix Media began as little more than a lark, a fairly innocuous pun on the Latin to use as my brand as I played with the possibilities of new digital media, creating digital books with sound and randomicity and text that moved on the page in new ways.

Of course as my work changed direction to more conventional formats, MFM became my default imprint for self-publishing. When the opportunity arose to help others in the online poetry community who also wanted to see their work in print, as, perhaps, both a nod towards eternity, and in the here-and-now a very tangible way of sharing their life, their thoughts, their love of words, their acts of creation, I was happy to offer my experience in bringing their books to fruition.

Which brings us to your present locale amongst the ever swirling pixels of our imaginary universe. And that is simply a convenient place to gather together for your convenience, my dear readers and poets, all of the works published by us so far in this old fashioned but most happy medium.