FreeWrights Peer Review™

The project is not about professional show-type, Hulk Hogan-type wrestling, but about the fine collegiate sport of wrestling.

This is a reminder call for wrestling poems, with some updated information. If you've been mulling, it's time to bring the inspiration to the tabula rasa. I'd like to get this online by the end of November. We have some excellent translations and original poems by some very fine poets already.

Here are links to the wrestling forums around the USA that are looped into this project: Wrestling forums looped in.

Here are links to the poetry forums looped into this project: Poetry forums looped in.

I am calling for original poems on wrestling and translations as well. But we also need some artwork to go along with the project. Here is the write-up on the project at Clattery MacHinery on Poetry: The Wrestling Poetry Project

Submissions are by online poetry forum here: Submission forum

To submit, simply register (http://pochapocha.com/babilu/register.php?3) or log in if you're already registered (http://pochapocha.com/babilu/login.php?261), go to the submission area (http://pochapocha.com/babilu/list.php?261), and click "New Topic" beneath the photo of the wrestlers.

On the translations, we have an original translation of Jacob wrestling with the angel, a translation of Rilke's "Der Schauende", and an original of the wrestling scene in Homer's Iliad. More of these are welcome.

However, I received this note from Jayson Iwen:

"There's also a famous wrestling account in the life of Muhammad, not in the Koran, but in the most famous/accepted biography (I think it's called something like "The Life of Muhammad"). He converts a town by beating their unbeatable wrestler in a wrestling match. Probably also a must have for the project."

I agree, but cannot find any trace of it online. It would be fabulous if one of you could take that on.

There is also the Wrestling Poetry Workshop, where you will find some of the entries here:
http://pochapocha.com/babilu/list.php?260

You can use that if you wish. I'll be popping in from time to time to read and give constructive feedback, and you are welcome yourself to give feedback to anything there.

Thanks.

Feel free to ask questions. E-mail me at lowelldude@aol.com

Yours,
Rus Bowden

This is a last period "call" for wrestling poems, which I intend to put up at Clattery Machinery on Poetry on November 29th, depending on the usual contingencies. This should be perfect timing. Wrestling is a winter sport in our high schools and colleges. It should be good for the athletes to take the poems into a new season, and for the poets to take wrestling into the future. And maybe through this project, more people outside wrestling and poetry will come to appreciate the good that both communities are up to. By the way, a strong percentage of the poets contributing to this project are former wrestlers, and there are wrestlers' parents contributing as well, myself included.

To submit either artwork and/or poems, do not e-mail me, but do it online instead at the forum called Babilu, in the Wrestling Poetry Project Submission Area. This keeps the project growing before everyone's eyes. Posting is as easy as e-mailing, and you can revise in time. Here are the instructions:

Preliminary steps:
1. Register: http://pochapocha.com/babilu/register.php?3
2. or Log In: http://pochapocha.com/babilu/login.php?3

How to post your work:
3. Go to the submission area: http://pochapocha.com/babilu/list.php?261
4. Click "New Topic": http://pochapocha.com/babilu/posting.php?261
5. Put your submission into the message box, and/or attach a file
6. Click "Post this message"

The wrestling poetry project is not about professional, staged wrestling, but about the collegiate, Olympic and amateur styles of wrestling. The initial announcement of the project went out four months ago, in a call for both poems and artwork to go along with the poems. That announcement, which includes guidelines for submission and tools to help with the musing and writing of a wrestling poem, can be found here: Wrestling Poetry Project Guidelines and Discussion.

Here's another tool I just came across: Basic Wrestling Fundamentals prepared by Warren Applegate. It's a pdf file, with a glossary of wrestling terms, for you more language-oriented writers to become inspired through, and to help others simply to find the right word or phrase.

A second update went out a couple weeks after the first, and was primarily a call for translations, which yielded some remarkable work from the Homer, Rilke, and more, and now includes from just this past week, a translation out of Kitchener Ontario of Rakana's wrestling with the Prophet Muhammad into English.

A third update went out last month, with a second call for artwork. This has not been fulfilled. I will go with photos in the public domain, but would love to have some original work. Artists? Photographers?

In this, what should be the final update, I would like to make a special call to those of you who publish books. The Wrestling Poetry Project now has over 20 poems, including fresh original work, English-language classics, and translations. See the submission area where they are collecting: Wrestling Poetry Project Submission Area. At this point, we cannot know how many will be in the full collection, but maybe two or three dozen, and I want to scan through Emily Dickinson's work to see which of hers to include as well.

The submitted poems are excellent, and worthy of gathering into book form and placed onto shelves in homes and schools. I am not in this to make any money, nor are the poets necessarily. And this side of the project is not up my alley. But it seems the project has reached a point where this should be given serious consideration. I have all the contact information of the poets whom a publisher would need to e-mail. Contact me at lowelldude@aol.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. If no one comes forward, I will make a further call for a print publisher at least after the poems are up at Clattery MacHinery on Poetry. It seems too, that if no artist or photographer submits work for use at Clattery Machinery, that this aspect can be addressed by a book publisher, to make a wonderful and valued edition.

This message is going out to:

23 of the best US amateur/collegiate wrestling forums:

24 of the best online poetry forums in the world:

Over 2500 of my Facebook friends, plus others via e-mail.

Thanks.

Yours,
Rus Bowden

You may know me as:

Managing Editor of the InterBoard Poetry Community

Poetry and Poets in Rags columnist

dansdad at MassWrestling.com