Shit Creek Review
Encyclopedia
The Shit Creek Review is an online literary and art magazine (webzine or e-zine). Its content is mostly related to poetry, and includes work belonging the differing styles of formalism
Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text.In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar...

 and free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

 by established authors and new writers. It draws on the authors and resources of a number of online poetry forums, such as Eratosphere
Eratosphere
Eratosphere is the largest online workshop for formal poetry -- it is free to join. Additionally, it caters to free verse, poetry and prose translation, fiction, art, literary criticism and critical discussions on writing. It was founded in 1999 by Alexander Pepple as a workshop complement to Able...

 and The Gazebo.

History

It was founded by Australian poet Paul Stevens in 2006 with Nigel Holt and Angela France, who also edits the U.K. print magazine iota as its poetry editors, Don Zirilli as its art editor, and Patricia Wallace Jones as artist-in-residence. It has published many notable poets from the U.K., U.S. and Australia, including Nicolette Bethel
Nicolette Bethel
Nicolette Bethel is a Bahamian teacher, writer and anthropologist. She was the Director of Culture in The Bahamas, and is now a full-time lecturer in Social sciences at the College of the Bahamas.-Life:...

, Alison Brackenbury
Alison Brackenbury
-Life:She studied at Oxford. She now lives in Gloucestershire.Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Stand,-Works:* * * -Reviews:Singing in the Dark is Alison Brackenbury's seventh collection of poetry...

, Maryann Corbett
Maryann Corbett
Maryann Corbett is an American poet.She grew up in northern Virginia. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, with a doctorate in English....

, Louie Crew
Louie Crew
Erman Louie Crew, Jr. is an American professor emeritus of English at Rutgers University in Newark. He is best known for his long and increasingly successful campaign for the acceptance of gay and lesbian people by Christians in general, and the Episcopal Church in particular...

, Denise Duhamel
Denise Duhamel
-Background:Duhamel received her B.F.A. from Emerson College and her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts recipient and has been resident poet at Bucknell University...

, Rhina Espaillat
Rhina Espaillat
Rhina Espaillat was born in the Dominican Republic in 1932 and has lived in the United States since 1939. She taught English in the New York City public schools for many years, and retired to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where for more than a decade she has led a group of New Formalist poets known...

, Andrew Frisardi
Andrew Frisardi
Andrew Frisardi is an American poet, and translator.-Life:He graduated from Syracuse University with an M.F.A. in 1996....

, M. A. Griffiths
M. A. Griffiths
-Life:Margaret Ann Griffiths, who was of English and Welsh parentage, was born and raised in London and studied archaeology at Cardiff University. She lived for some time in Bracknell and later moved to Poole, where she cared for her ailing parents until their deaths in 1993.Griffiths, also known...

, R.S. Gwynn, Bill Knott
Bill Knott (poet)
William Kilborn Knott is an American poet. Knott received his MFA from Norwich University and studied with John Logan in Chicago....

, J. Patrick Lewis
J. Patrick Lewis
J. Patrick Lewis is an American poet and prose writer noted for his children's poems and other light verse. He worked as professor of economics before devoting himself full-time to writing in 1998.- Career :J...

, Kei Miller
Kei Miller
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, anthologist and occasional journalist.- Biography :Miller was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. He read English at the University of the West Indies, but dropped out short of graduation. However, while studying there, he befriended Mervyn Morris,...

, Kevin Andrew Murphy
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Kevin Andrew Murphy is an American novelist and game writer from Northern California. He is a graduate of University of California at Santa Cruz and has a Master of Arts from University of Southern California. He has written gamebooks for Steve Jackson Games and White Wolf. He is one of the...

, Timothy Murphy
Timothy Murphy (poet)
Timothy Murphy is an American poet, farmer, and businessman. He has published two collections of poetry that have been widely reviewed...

, Lee Passarella
Lee Passarella
Lee Passarella is a writer and senior literary editor of Atlanta Review Magazine. His long narrative poem Swallowed Up In Victory is based on the American Civil War. -Works:...

, Craig Raine
Craig Raine
Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...

, Charlotte Runcie, A.E. Stallings, Wendy Videlock, Richard Wakefield
Richard Wakefield
Richard Wakefield is an American poet, and literary critic.He has taught at the University of Washington Tacoma, and The Evergreen State College.He teaches at Tacoma Community College.-Life:He is poetry critic for the Seattle Times....

, John Whitworth
John Whitworth
Air Commodore John Nicholas Haworth Whitworth CB, DSO, DFC and Bar, RAF was a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1930s and a commander during and after the Second World War....

, Kirby Wright
Kirby Wright
Kirby Wright is an American writer best known for his coming of age island novel PUNAHOU BLUES and the epic novel "MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA," which is based on the life and times of Wright's paniolo grandmother...

 and Peter Wyton
Peter Wyton
Peter Wyton is a 'poet of page and performance' who has published a number of books and who has appeared on BBC Radio. He is a widely published and prize-winning poet who has appeared at venues as diverse as Cheltenham Literature Festival, Glastonbury Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Oxford TV,...

. The journal is archived by the National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...

.

The ezine was originally started by Stevens as a joke based on its name Shit Creek Review, which is a not-so-subtle ironic allusion to the many literary magazines which use the formulaic title "X Creek (or River) Review", as well as incorporating a play on the Australian colloquialism "Up Shit Creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle" (meaning to be in serious difficulties), made famous by Australian comedian Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

 through his persona of the ocker "Barry McKenzie
Barry McKenzie
Barry "Bazza" McKenzie is a fictional character originally created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries for a comic strip, written by Humphries and drawn by New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland, in the British satirical magazine Private Eye.-Background:The Private Eye comic strips were...

".

Stevens chief-edited the first ten issues until health issues caused him to step down in late 2009; Rose Kelleher chief-edited issues 11, 12 and 13 (February 2010 to July 2011).

Style

The Shit Creek Review combines poetry with art which seeks to reflect somehow the content or feel of the poem. The look and layout changes fairly comprehensively from issue to issue, so there is no real continuity of visual style, apart from the fact that each new issue seems to create a new self-contained narrative appropriate to its theme. Much of the poetry uses the traditional forms of New Formalism
New Formalism
New Formalism is a late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical and rhymed verse.-Origins and intentions:...

, though there is also a strong representation of Free Verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

.

The Shit Creek Review also publishes reviews and articles from time to time. Rose Kelleher's essay on 'Edgy vs. Nice' attracted the interest of The Guardian's Tim Radford. Kelleher's book, Bundle o' Tinder, published by Waywiser Press, includes many poems first published in The Shit Creek Review; the book was selected for the 2007 Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...

 Poetry Prize by Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....

. Publication in The Shit Creek Review is frequently cited by poets such as Larry L. Fontenot, Rachel Bunting, Kirk Knesset, John Milbury-Steen, Janet Kenny, Tammy Ho, Julie Carter, Eve Anthony Hanninen, Robert Clawson, C.P. Stewart, and many others.

Blog

Information about The Shit Creek Review can be found on The Shit Creek Review Blog, where serious and less serious discussions of literary and other matters take place, as well as links to poetry and art-related sites of interest.

The Chimaera

The Shit Creek Review spawned a subzine called II which was somewhat more text-based (rather than emphasising the art component). In October, 2007, II was detached from The Shit Creek Review and renamed The Chimaera, now edited by Paul Stevens and Peter Bloxsom of NetPublish. The Chimaera is a literary miscellany, publishing verse, short stories, articles, essays and interviews with prominent or rising poets, including Alison Brackenbury
Alison Brackenbury
-Life:She studied at Oxford. She now lives in Gloucestershire.Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Stand,-Works:* * * -Reviews:Singing in the Dark is Alison Brackenbury's seventh collection of poetry...

, John Whitworth (poet)
John Whitworth (poet)
-Life:He graduated from Merton College, Oxford.His work appears in Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement, London Magazine, The Spectator, Quadrant, New poetry, and The Flea.He taught a master class at University of Kent....

, R.S. Gwynn and Stephen Edgar
Stephen Edgar
Stephen Edgar is a contemporary Australian poet, editor and indexer.-Background and education:Edgar was born in Sydney in 1951 where he attended Sydney Technical High School. Between 1971 and 1974 he lived in London and worked as a library assistant in the London Borough of Lambeth...

.

Related Ezines

Paul Stevens also edits a "metaphysicalzine" called The Flea
The Flea
The Flea may refer to:*"The Flea" , a 1956 episode of The Goon Show*The Flea , a form of solitaire*The Flea , a character from the TV show ¡Mucha Lucha!*A poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne...

(after John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

's poem of that name), which publishes poetry loosely in the Metaphysical Poetry tradition. Peter Bloxsom publishes an online journal devoted to the Sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

 form, called 14 by 14.

External links

  • http://shitcreek.auszine.com
  • http://shitcreek.auszine.com/author-index/
  • http://theshitcreekreview.blogspot.com/
  • http://www.the-chimaera.com/
  • http://the-chimaera.blogspot.com/
  • http://www.the-flea.com/
  • http://www.14by14.com/
  • Nic Sebastian interviews Paul Stevens
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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