Thanks to all who have submitted beautiful poems to this project. I plan to read through them all in the next week and will reply to all, whether selected or not, as soon as a decision has been made.
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Lipstick Press is planning on publishing a chapbook anthology (which means 20 poems) about beautiful women, beauty that is true and natural. To challenge the oppressive images of beauty that teaches young girls, through clever advertising and propaganda, to strive for a false ideal. To challenge the idea a woman's worth depends upon a man's opinion.
Apart from the trillion dollar industry designed to instill insecurity in consumers, urging them to strive for a certain look, it sends young, vulnerable girls and boys into destructive, soul-destroying activities in search of a vague success.
Children are the canaries in our hyper-capitalist world. While a woman has more options than a hundred years ago, media influence has placed her on the slut continuum - popular and desirable at one end, or invisible and cold at the other; and the level of bullying in schools illuminates the confusion, self-doubt and fear our youth are trying so hard to overcome.
So why a book of poems on beauty? To reclaim the original meaning of beauty. What is beautiful to the poet? Who are the beautiful women around you? What is it that makes them beautiful? Is it grace, confidence, kindness - or is it something that cannot be objectified? Yes, men are beautiful too but that is a topic for another occasion.
Please send three short, previously unpublished poems to Lipstick Press - lipstickpress@shaw.ca
with "Beautiful Women Anthology" in the subject line.
Deadline February 14, 2013.
All submissions will receive a response.
