vienna poetry school call for text submissions 2024

vienna poetry school call for text sumbissions 2024

sfd& groteske
magazine of the vienna poetry school #06

deadline: 14 july 2023

we welcome unpublished short texts in german and english from austria and abroad!
please send your manuscripts on the topic of "grotesque".
the length of each submission may have a maximum of 3,000 characters and all literary genres are accepted.
a jury will select the texts for publication.
for details on the call for texts and participation see the info below.

'the grotesque', but also 'grotesqueness'

from an art and literary point of view, everything seems to be settled: "grotesque – depiction of a distorted reality that paradoxically combines horror and deformity with comic features". wikipedia also points out that this genre and genre term "is used in the arts with very different meanings depending on the epoch".

but the once highly regarded genre term has long since withered away, the grotesque is now only used as an interjection, as an exclamation of excessive demands or unreasonableness: "grotesque, what you're asking of me", "what a grotesque misjudgment". one could almost think that the grotesque has reached its end or that it can no longer be distinguished as such from reality, because its 'distortion' has become normality: a monstrous figure like trump as president of the united states ... right-wing extremist situationism among identitarians ... identitarian moral guardians from the left ... queers for palestine. 20 years ago, such phenomena would have been relegated to the realm of foolish fantasy, perhaps as a 'grotesque distortion of the facts'.

today, the latter are called 'alternative facts', which could also explain why the so-called 'grotesque' is hardly used as a term anymore: what was once perceived as horrible and in its 'impossibility' also as funny has become commonplace, it determines all our lives in permanent crisis mode to such an extent that the familiar and unremarkable seems to us like nostalgic sentimentality. how can we put this mess into poetry, what can we write about?

how? come hell or high water! and with the courage of despair. wiktionary would have these types of writing on offer: "outlandish, absurd, bizarre, eccentric, odd, macabre, peculiar, bizarre, extravagant, unconventional, unusual, eccentric, distorted, whimsical". that's a good way to go about it. always bearing in mind the knowledge that madness has been normalised.

what? we are looking for grotesque texts as well as grotesques in the sense of the genre. all types of texts are welcome: short dramas, short stories, poetry, manifestos, etc. we are also happy to receive grotesque drawings and cartoons. as long as the cruelly tragic is paired with the horribly comic. when in doubt, a transcript of any news programme will do.

fritz ostermayer for the vienna poetry school

additional info: the magazine will also feature a selection of texts from the classes of the sfd-academy 2024 "the grotesque" with lydia haider, rebekka kricheldorf and stefanie sargnagel.
classes take place from 29 may until 12 june 2024, info (in german) >> http://sfd.at/fruehling24


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call for text submissions

sfd& groteske

magazine of the vienna poetry school #06

terms & conditions:

deadline for submissions: 14 july 2024

upload your texts via the online form only: https://sfd.at/en/text-submission
(one text per form!)
(please note: only texts sent via the online form are accepted. formatting such as paragraphs is recognised by the online form - please check the automatic email confirmation to see how your text has been submitted.
sfd applies in its publications radical use of small letters. if your text requires capital letters or any other special formatting, ie visual poetry, please contact us at sfd@sfd.at.)

german and english texts can be submitted.
max. length: 3,000 characters (incl. spaces, excl. title).
literary form: open
topic: grotesque (see above)
the vienna poetry school's >> privacy statement applies.

publication date of the magazine: november 2024 (exact date to be announced)

the text submitted has not been published before. (the texts must be free from third party rights and written by the participants themselves)
the copyright remains with the authors.
each author whose text will be published, will be contacted by sfd beforehand. he/she will receive a free copy of the magazine.
we cannot respond to requests/comments about the submitted texts.
the participants in this call automatically give permission that their texts can be published in the sfd magazine sfd& free of charge and that, if applicable, they can also be presented at a public event organised by sfd. they also give permission that their texts can be published either in part or fully on the sfd website and via social media.
by taking part in this call for text submissions the participants explicitly and automatically agree to these terms & conditions.

(c) lukas weidinger

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issues #01-05:

sfd& wut, sfd& gespenster, sfd& ohne netz, sfd& tiere, sfd& pataphysik >> https://sfd.at/publikationen