March 30, 2007

via Dillon Westbrook:

useusage is seeking submissions for its inaugural issue: Building Prospects, which intends to create useful knowledge about the realities of construction, and our constructed reality. Details about the journal and its first issue follow below. The journal focuses on poetry and criticism on a new topic each issue. The journal is published on-line on a quarterly basis.

useusage is a praxis of consumption, but also of production- we help you s(h)i(f)t it all out. We know you’re working, you’re working very hard- everyone always seems to be. We’re here to share the load (poems with arms!). There’s a lot of information out there, let’s take a look together (poems with eyes!). Perhaps you can’t get all the news by yourself, but together we’ll stay on top of it (poems with ears!). We’re word workers, and we’ll a world unite.

We do poetry and we do criticism, but not criticism of poetry- that’s the next factory over. Our criticism is of “the world”, that scary place we encounter when we leave the factory each night. Criticism is a joint effort between our editor and reader volunteers. If you want to help with our critique, read over the list of future topics, and submit your resume of relevant experience for inclusion as a collaborator. If you have ideas for future topics, feel free to submit a proposal. Remember that we are trying to keep our topics useful- we are trying to help!- so include some explanation of why an essay on the topic you are proposing would be useful to our audience.

We welcome, with open arms, poetry for our current topic, and will select poems from up to 10 authors for each issue. We prefer fewer authors with more poems, but are interested only in poems by those authors that address our topic area. For each issue, we will publish a set of topic hints and ephemera, in the hopes of steering you aright. There are no style or genre guidelines. The words “experimental” or “avant-garde” will never appear outside of scare quotes in these guidelines. useusage is most interested in poems that do the work that needs doing in surprising or unlikely ways- we’d be equally surprised at a qualified villanelle as we would a qualified google poem. useusage will not discriminate against applicants for reason of historical tradition or poetic orientation- we are an equal-opportunity exploiter of resources.

-Submissions should be e-mailed (not accepting print) to: use.usage@gmail.com
-Submissions will be on-going until a workable stack is achieved. If your submission is accepted, you will be contacted by e-mail
- useusage editor will keep the e-mail of anyone whose work is not accepted and send out a courtesy notice to let you know that your work was not accepted and that its submission rights are once again free and clear.
- useusage is not interested in simultaneous or previously published submissions (useusage is slightly paranoid and too broke to afford a lawyer).
-Submissions preferred as word documents, though we will accept jpegs or pdfs if you want to maintain your layout strictly. These will open in the reader’s default pdf application. Future issues may include expanded media options.

Our first issue, Building Prospects, focuses on architecture and what Kojin Karatani called the “architectonic”- the way in which architecture becomes a structure of thought for the culture that lives through and in it. Very many of us spend the majority of our day in buildings, whether they are called “home” “office” “factory” or “school”, yet we rarely are called upon to reflect on their nature. Building Prospects looks both towards this nature and towards the future of our interactions with architecture. As such, we are paying particular attention to the idea of green building, what it means and what its effect will be on the rest of our consciousness. We are accepting poems touching on all or any of these areas until we have met our quota. The essay collaboration for this issue has already begun, but feel free to look towards future collaboration on these topics:

Sound Sorting
Computer/Author
Healthy Ideas