Welcome to another day on planet Earth. Today’s call for submissions revolves around how one of The Abstractapy Initiative’s ultimate goals (displaying poetry gathered on the website in physical form in public spaces) is coming into focus. Here are the particulars:

Where on earth? Well, not in galleries or museums (at least for now). The potential audience is just too small to be effective and there is also the chance that we’ll just be “preaching to the choir” so-to-speak. We don’t want to just reach sympathetic parties already “in the know.” We seek to reach people who are unaware of the issues or who don’t see the importance of them.

With that in mind, the focus shifts to the great outdoors, to places highly trafficked by people seeking escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life, namely, parks, trails, and various other recreational areas. Not only are people in these environments in a more relaxed, receptive state to their surroundings but they are more in tune with the natural world, in general. These areas offer ideal opportunities to engage the viewer with thought-provoking works of art that complement the surrounding environment.

The goal is to display a collection of written works in a public setting (along a walkway, for example) on elevated placards made from materials (such as bronze or aluminum) that can withstand the rigors of the environment. These displays can be either temporary or permanent.

So, this is a call for environmentally themed poetry. The goal is to raise awareness of our place in the natural order and our responsibilities with regards to the environment. We will be maintaining a separate blog on the site specifically for this topic and anything in this blog is under consideration for inclusion in the first exhibit. So, break out your best work. Every piece in this topic will be highly scrutinized (for things such as typos, grammar, spelling, and punctuation), not to mention the message, before it is produced physically. Because of space limitation (the piece may be printed on a bronze plaque where space is at a premium) the CHARACTER LIMIT of work for this project is 1,500 CHARACTERS. General guidelines still apply to work targeted for posting on the website alone which allows for up to 1,500 WORDS.

We screen all submissions for relevance to this project, but, if you wish, you can include a note in your email stating that it’s for the environmental project.

Thank you for reading this rather detailed call for submissions. I look forward to reading your work as we move toward creating our first group exhibit to raise public awareness.

The submissions page is here
http://abstractaphy.org/submissions