An Original and Witty Collection
A new anthology from Alien Buddha Press gently subverts the genre of rejected work. Unloved poetry and flash fiction find a happy home in an exciting and witty collection, with rejection letters included. The juxtaposition of published work alongside letters explaining the reasons for rejection is both telling and entertaining. Much of the work is highly original and brings to mind a busy workshop of inventors and engineers working on a new experimental flying machine. Readers will find wings for their pleasure; poets and writers will find new ideas to fly in a wind tunnel of creative design.
The anthology earned a #1 New Release in Literary Letters on Amazon. It has also attracted two five-star reviews. I wonder what some editors who rejected the pieces would think now?
Tatuanui Roundabout finds a home
My poem Tatuanui Roundabout found a welcome place among works from everywhere else on the globe other than a small town in the Waikato. Preceding the poem is a rejection letter from a prominent NZ literary magazine. All identifying information is carefully redacted from rejection letters. It was challenging to conceal the shape and size of the magazine’s trade name – and it’s possible to see a faint impression of their logo! But who reads NZ poetry anyway? The Alien Buddha Gets Rejected is full of subtle humour – the picture of the smiling buddha bannered on all 2023 publications is perfectly apt here
Iconoclastic Poetry
Rejection is so prone to subjective judgment. A gem of a poem, How a Poet Dies, written by Cait O’Neill McCullagh, took my breath. Divinely crafted and inspired by the discovery of tombs in some obscure location, I cannot see how it failed to see immediate publication. Perhaps its iconoclastic beauty, that rows of dead poets honoured with golden tongues pressed into their mouths could all have been female, roused renunciation in modern eyes. Rather than the poem’s literary merit, it was perhaps the idea, which drew repeated rebuffs. But not all editors are myopic. The author may triumph and we may admire her work.
I love publishing projects that devote attention to ‘rejected’ works.