A fine cigar and good literature: two of life's finer pleasures.
At The Smoking Poet
, we publish flash fiction, fiction, poetry, reviews, non-fiction, and author/artist interviews that ignite our imagination, inflame our passion, leave us with a smoky aftertaste. We'll also consider the occasional novel excerpt as a special feature.
Submit to us your finest flash pieces; we are open to all genres, within good taste. All we ask is that you submit your best work - polished to the highest level of your ability, and that you leave yourself open to, at worst, rejection, at best, constructive criticism.
See The Smoking Poet for full submission guidelines and deadlines.
Be sure to also check out our Links & Resources page at The Smoking Poet. It includes our favorite links for literary resources, literary publications, and our favorite cigar site links, too.
The Smoking Poet only lists links to cigar sites that do not discriminate or objectify women smokers or women in general (e.g. portraying women dressed as "your favorite flavor"), although sites that are otherwise geared to male or female smokers only are just dandy. Please send us your favorite cigar site that fits this category and we will be happy to include it!
Movies
Some of our favorite cigar labels...
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Books
TSP is delighted to feature in our Summer 2009 Issue - click to read now - a feature interview with author, Bonnie Campbell.
Bonnie Jo Campbell grew up on a small Michigan farm with her mother and four siblings in a house her grandfather Herlihy built in the shape of an H. She learned to castrate small pigs, milk Jersey cows, and, when she was snowed in with chocolate, butter, and vanilla, to make remarkable chocolate candy. When she left home for the University of Chicago to study philosophy, her mother rented out her room. She has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss Alps on her bicycle, and traveled with the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus selling snow cones. As president of Goulash Tours Inc., she has organized and led adventure tours in Russia and the Baltics, and all the way south to Romania and Bulgaria. Her collection Women & Other Animals details the lives of extraordinary females in rural and small town Michigan, and it won the AWP prize for short fiction; her story “The Smallest Man in the World” has been awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her novel Q Road investigates the lives of a rural community where development pressures are bringing unwelcome change in the character of the land. Her new short fiction collection, American Salvage, consists of fourteen lush and rowdy stories of folks who are struggling to make sense of the twenty-first century. For decades, Campbell has put together a personal newsletter The Letter Parade, and she currently practices Koburyu kobudo weapons training. She has received her M.A. in mathematics and her M.F.A. in writing from Western Michigan University. She now lives with her husband and other animals outside Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Visit The Smoking Poet to read an interview with author Bonnie Campbell.
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Submitting for a Book Review and Author Interview
Please query first to submit a book review you've written. If you wish your book to be reviewed, or
to be considered as a feature author in prose (including a
novel excerpt and an interview), please send a query to
the editors and we will provide an address to which you
may then send a review copy of your book.
See our Web site at The Smoking Poet for full submission guidelines!
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Online NOW - THE SUMMER 2009 ISSUE:
Featuring:
Interview with author Bonnie Campbell
A Chat with Poet Shaindel Beers ("A Brief History in Time")
Winners Circle of TSP's Second Annual Short Story Contest - Dan Skelton (First Prize); Emily Burns Ross (Second Prize); J. Louise Larson (Third Prize); Stephen Joseph (Honorable Mention)
Poetry by Holly Virginia Clark, Marit Ericson, Rachel Gruskin, Matthew Hittinger, Chris Lord, Aditi Machado, Erika Moya, Sergio Ortiz, Diana M. Raab, Josh Stewart, Christian Ward
Fiction by Kate Bowen, Richard Spuler, Mary Youngerman
Non-Fiction by Stephen Joseph
Book Reviews
(posted throughout the season)
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Birds of a Feather (A Maisie Dobbs Mystery) by Jacqueline Winspear
Lines of Wisdom: Young Writers, Old Stories, Timeless Encounters by Martin Hughes and Beth Hall Editors
Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Cigar Lounge
Cigar and Cigar Lounge reviews by J. Conrad Guest, Zinta Aistars, Skye Leslie, W.T. Lackey
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - DEADLINE August 31, 2009 - see The Smoking Poet for full submission guidelines!
The Smoking Poet seeks cigar reviews of between 100 and 300 words. Let our readers know what your favorite smoke might be — maybe it’s a Nat Sherman Explorer, a Punch Rare Corojo, or a Romeo Y Julieta Reserva Real, or whatever you’d care to share with us. Tell us what you like and why, and maybe even when you like it. Maybe there’s a cigar lounge, where everybody knows your name, at which you stop nightly to unwind on your way home from work. If so, tell us about it.
Paste your review into the body of your email — no attachments — to the attention of Fiction Editor. Subject line should read: Cigar Review — Last Name. Click The Smoking Poet to find contact information.
Deadline for the FALL ISSUE 2009 issue of TSP ezine is August 31, 2009, but we accept submissions all year long.
Writers and readers and artists and cigar aficionados, all who are smoking with creativity. And NO! you do NOT have to be a smoker to enjoy literature that is hot to the touch. We welcome all.
This doesn’t look like a cigar lounge. It doesn’t smell like a cigar lounge. But it is — a virtual cigar lounge for the literati. A dusky lounge where, if you listen closely, a jazz quartet plays in the corner. A fine brandy warms in your snifter. The warm lighting lets your mind drift to faraway places... and the frazzled nerves of the day are soothed smooth again.
The Smoking Poet
is the literary magazine you’ll someday find on the coffee tables in your favorite cigar lounge - your own living room or den.
Hope this day finds you well, and that it fills you with a sense of awe and wonder in the world. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for your friendship.
For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart.There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel—looking, looking, breathlessly.
~ Carlos Castaneda The Teachings of Don Juan : A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
THE UNTAMED is available for order from your local comic shop. Find us on Diamond Previews on pages 285 and 286. But don't take our word for it, take Clive Barker's:
I am looking forward to friend and fellowship with you.
I truly hope that you visit
my page often and feel the
presence of the HOLY SPIRIT
at work here.
Place us in your top friends for easy
access for your friends
and for yourself.
......Check your bulletins daily for my inspirational post....
......Ask me about my latest book!
......My writings can be reposted, with proper credit.
......Tell your friends!
ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS
ARE WELCOME HERE!!!
Prayer For A Friend
----------------------
I sent a prayer to God today
Because you are my friend.
I asked that He bring your problems
Abruptly to an end.
I prayed for resolution,
And for all your trials to cease.
But most of all, oh friend of mine,
I asked for God to bring you peace.
After you've finished here, you may like to hear this poem sung on myspace...
Poem 162 of 230, WalkaboutsVerse (please see my blog): TEES TO TYNE: FIRST IMPRESSIONS - SUMMER 2001
Where traditions are not so rare; Sea, country and works scent the air; A multitude of monuments, Planted tubs and patterned pavements.
The longish pedestrian malls; The remnants of defensive walls; Historic buildings are a gauge Of the respect for heritage.
Wheat, rape and pines in the fields; Estuaries guarded by shields; Long sandy beaches and wide scenes; Romantic-ruin go-betweens.
Rivers in parts licked by trees, Or fringed by boat clubs, wharfs, gantries, And crossed by practical delights - Varied spans, forming pleasing sights.
Fine churches headed at Durham; Football kits ad infinitum; Kept castles - one for study; Masonry behind masonry.
And, with moulding-works out that way, It’s somewhere for a longer stay..?
Online Now!
