Dear Corporation

…timely & relevant poem by Adam Fell…not all poems go to Poets & Writers Picnic, some appear here on occasion. Besides, Adam teaches at Edgewood College, Madison WI, one of us. Poetry, music, art, etc make a  fine break from the ongoing madness of news, calls to action, movement rhetoric. Remember Gregor. If we don't take spiritual nourishment. We could wake up one morning transformed into giant cockroaches, bugs, administrators or other vermin. 

Dear Corporation,  by Adam Fell I don't know how to say how I feel politely, or poetically, or without the jugular and collapse of the immediate heart, so tonight, I won't say anything at all. Just stare out the window at our stunned little writhe. Hold back the strongest urge to knock out a few of the capitol's most critical walls, replace its fiber optic cables with lightning bugs, replace the investment bankers all with bunker busters. I lock eyes with the capitol's bright and empty rooms and admit that, sometimes, deep in my affluent, American cells, I miss my body carved to projectile. I miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands massive and molded from molten to the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack and cudgel and quarterstaff and flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and I am not proud of this. I know it's not a healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to un-cock. I try to practice my breathing. I try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly, Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse our bodies so much before we realize it's not our bodies that need detoxing. Copyright © 2012 by Adam Fell. Used with permission of the author. About this poem: This poem is from Dear Corporation, forthcoming from H_NGM_N Books in 2013.  Poetry by FellI Am Not a Pioneer December 12, 2012 Adam Fell is the author of I Am Not a Pioneer (H_NGM_N Books 2011). He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he teaches at Edgewood College. Related Poems Dear Empire [these are your temples] by Oliver de la Paz Dear Lonely Animal, by Oni Buchanan Dear Migraine, by Gail Mazur Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles. Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010.

Editing Update & Call for Submissions

Jeanette Jeneault, Syracuse University, writes...

I've been planning on sending out a notice about sections and deadlines for the anthology tentatively titled Contingent Faculty Researching Contingent Faculty. We have collected about 10 abstracts ~ and have not forgotten any of you. 

To date, there are sections on: 

• Academic Freedom
• Women and Contingency
• Evaluation Practices
• Online Teaching Related Issues
• Alternatives to Tenure

Each section containing chapters and offers poetry, photographs, and personal stories to intermix ~ good lead offs to sections. Marc Bousquet has offered to write a forward, and Marcia Neufield to be my co-editor. 

Any who still want to contribute or edit, just send me a quick note. Submission schedule:

• Proposal already submitted: first drafts, January 15, 2010
• Not submitted? Last chance for proposals / abstracts is January 15,2010
• Second drafts, March 15, 2010
• Final drafts, June 15, 2010

It is not too late to join the Contingent Faculty Researching Contingent Faculty project. Sections can be added depending on interest and submissions. I would like to add one on working conditions or something similar. Also let me know if you have changes your topic or abstract.

October was extremely busy for me, but I will have more time especially in December and January to devote to this. Also, we have been offered help finding a publisher, and of course, all proceeds will go to The New Faculty Majority.

This book will be a labor of love...and a stand of truth.

Please join us ~ Jeanette Jeneault, email jjeneaul@gmail.com, Syracuse University

in our own write: word•river review and others

Have you seen word•river review, a juried literary journal for adjuncts only, published yearly. Submissions are accepted year round, final deadline: October 31, 2010. Issues 1 & 2, Spring 2009 & 2010, can be ordered online.

word•river

We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program also are eligible.

This morning, looking for something else (isn't that always the case?), I came across a 2001 adjunct ezine, Part Time Post. From Editor Abby Lynn Bogomolny's dedication:

Will conditions change if enough people become aware of the great disservice being done to students, our colleges, and contingent-academics workers? Will a fruitful triad of actions-litigation, local negotiation and lobbying of state representatives-tip the balance to remedy the conditions? We know the human impact of present policies.

Now, do we laugh or do we cry? Abby Lynn Bogomolny, wherever you are: yes, we think so too. We're still working on it. Our written landscape continues to expand: adjunct blogs (not all are just for advocacy. organizing), online publications like Adjunct Nation and (often juried) group blogs with the non-tenured sharing masthead space with the tenured. 

Among them:

Sage to Meadow: 

Jack Matthews writes, 

Sage to Meadow is my ecological reflection about living with the land and people of the American Southwest. It encompasses historical narratives of the past and immediate present. The most important element in this blog is nature. The second most important element is humanity's presence in nature. The dynamic between the individual and nature is my focus.

Wordsanctuary and Wordsanctuary Revisited, Maria Shine Stewart's two blogs. Surely. you've seen her her Adjunct ABC's / abcedarium renderings on the Contingent Faculty Email List, in Bosquet's Brainstorm column, or on Raye Robertson's The Adjunct Voice.