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Important Update

TAB: An April Update

In light of this past month’s horrific news of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the TAB staff extend our heartfelt wishes that writers and readers everywhere are taking care, staying at home, and washing hands. We also extend our condolences to the family of playwright Terrence McNally, who visited Chapman University just over a year ago.

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COVID-19 & the next issue

Here in California, our governor issued the stay-at-home order on March 19. Chapman University, where TAB is housed, had switched from in-person to online teaching a week earlier, and university staff who could work from home had already started that transition. You can read the university’s various statements and see the sorts of resources that have been developed by checking the COVID-19 section of the university’s website. We’re glad university leaders are doing what’s urgent and also making sure that our community is supported as much as possible as we adjust to this challenging situation.

This new way of working for TAB came when we were moving from the editorial stage to the production stage for the March issue, which is to be the first online issue at this website. This new platform and our increased efforts to make TAB as accessible as possible mean that the work has slowed. The March issue will appear soon.

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Events

TAB at AWP 2020

TAB staff & Chapman University MFA students at the AWP Bookfair Booth 2019
TAB & Chapman University’s MFA program at our AWP Bookfair Book in 2019

Free copies of TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics will again be available at our bookfair booth at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference on March 4-7, 2020. We’re at Booth #1543 in the middle of the bookfair hall.

As we head to San Antonio, we’re reading Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “San Antonio.”

We’re also looking at the Offsite Events so we can get out and see the city. Here are few that feature poets whose work has appeared in TAB.

  • On Wednesday at 7:00pm at Cos House, you can hear TAB poets Chloe Honum and Alison Benis White in the Tupelo Quarterly event.
  • On Thursday at 3:00-6:30pm in the Marriott’S Travis Room, TAB poet Allison Joseph is among the readers in Say My Name: Women Writers Readingpalooza.
  • Also on Thursday at 4:00-7:00pm at Candlelight Coffeehouse, catch TAB poet Denise Duhamel at the Nashville Review/Zone 3/Grist reading.
  • And on Thursday at 6:00-10:00pm at Smoke BBQ, TAB poet Hadara Bar-Nadav will read in Don’t Mess with Texts, featuring authors from Willow Springs and Florida Review.
  • In one more on Thursday at 7:00-10:00pm at Blue Star Brewing, TAB contributors Traci Brimhall and Oliver de la Paz will be part of the Baby-Sitters Club, a reading featuring 12 poets with new books sticky with parenthood.
  • On Friday at 7:00-9:00pm at Cos House, TAB poets Katie Farris and Jesse Lee Kercheval (they both published translation work in TAB) are part of Tupelo Press’s reading.
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Events Exciting News

TAB Poets: News

TAB staff & Chapman University MFA students at the AWP Bookfair Booth 2019
TAB & Chapman University's MFA program at our AWP Bookfair Book in 2019

TAB at AWP

Stop by Bookfair Booth #1543 at the AWP Conference in San Antonio on March 7-10, 2020. We’ll give you a free copy of the print issue of TAB (we’re bringing copies from the last three years!), and we’re happy to chat about what we’re up to and what we’re looking for.

Ragdale, Lake Forest, Illinois

TAB Editor at Ragdale Residency

TAB Editor Anna Leahy is spending the month of February at Ragdale, which welcomes writers, visual artists, filmmakers, and composers. In addition to Leahy, current residents include Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War; Richard Pasquarelli, whose visual art draws from research into hoarding and OCD; Oliver Caplan, a composer of contemporary classical music; and more.

Leahy is working on poetry, essays, and research on accessibility and inclusion in poetry under an institutional grant from Chapman University. Much of the recent innovation to make TAB more accessible is a result of this grant.

Residency sessions run either 18 or 25 days, with special themed shorter sessions for collaborative groups. The next application deadline is May 15, 2020.

Guest Curator for Tabula Poetica

We’re excited to announce that TAB poet Genevieve Kaplan is curating the Tabula Poetica reading series for Fall 2020. The series usually brings three poets to the campus of Chapman University for a talk and a reading, and the series concludes with a reading by students in the MFA in Creative Writing program. Kaplan already serves as one of the organizers of the Fourth Sundays reading series at the Claremont Library in California and teaches poetry courses at Chapman University. 

Forthcoming Books

Tabula Poetica visiting poet and Chapman University Presidential Fellow Carolyn Forché‘s new poetry book, In the Lateness of the World, is forthcoming in March. Publisher’s Weekly lists this one as one of the spring’s most anticipated.

Tabula Poetica visiting poet and former visiting professor Victoria Chang‘s new poetry book, Obit, is forthcoming in April. This one has a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.

TAB poet Maggie Smith‘s new book is based on the tweets she wrote in the months following her divorce. It’s due out in May, and it’s already on this year’s lists from Marie Claire, Washington Post, and Parade. One of Smith’s poems appeared in last year’s print issue of TAB.

All three books are available for pre-order now, and TAB is convinced that all these books are going to get a lot of buzz.

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More about TAB

Get to know TAB Staff

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In 2011, poet and nonfiction writer Anna Leahy and information designer Claudine Jaenichen started talking about the possibility of the project that launched as TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics with the tabloid-format print issue in January 2013. Leahy serves as TAB Editor, and Jaenichen is TAB’s Creative Director. They work together closely on each volume of TAB and on decisions about the content and the design of both the print and online issues.

TAB editorial staff at desk

Brian Glaser serves as TAB Criticism Editor. He reads both the scholarly essays and creative nonfiction that’s submitted to TAB. Glaser teaches both literature and writing classes at Chapman University. His poetry collection The Sacred Heart was published by Aldrich Press (part of Kelsay Books) in 2018.

For the first time, we’ve asked MFA alums to serve on the staff. This year, we welcome Liz Harmer, whose novel The Amateurs was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. One of her poems, written during her time at Chapman University, was the runner-up for the Mitchell Prize in Poetry.

Liz Harmer

Alum Laila Shikaki also joins the staff. While TAB doesn’t publish those who are currently or recently directly affiliated with Chapman University, Shikaki’s work appeared in the Current Issue and in Volume 5, since she earned her MFA. Shikaki is from Palenstine and is now earning her PhD at St. John’s University in New York.

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Tryphena Yeboah

The current MFA in Creative writing students who are on the staff are Daniel Miess, Tori O’Leary, Jason Thornberry, and Tryphena Yeboah. Thornberry is working on aspects related to accessibility and inclusion under Faculty Opportunity Funding awarded to support the changes in TAB you’re seeing this year. We’re especially excited that Yeboah, who is from Ghana, placed a short story at Narrative her first semester in the MFA program.

You can check out the Staff page for more info.

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Submission Info

Reminder: Submissions Open Now

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TAB staff are immersed in reading submissions now, and we’d like to see more this month. We have spots left in the very next issue, and your work might be just what we’re looking for. In fact, we’re especially interested in seeing more work from writers of color, work from writers of all genders, and work from writers with disabilities. Please share our this call for submissions with writers you know.

We’re looking for poems, of course, and you can read around in the TAB Archives to see what a wide aesthetic range we publish. Our Criticism Editor is looking for work that ranges from scholarly essay with a works cited to personal essay, as long as it has something to do with poetry. And if you have an interview with a poet or a poetry collaboration with a visual artist, we’d like to consider it.

Please read our submission guidelines before submitting. We’d like to be faced with so much good work in the next few weeks that our final decisions about the next couple of issues are really difficult.

If you’ll be at the AWP Conference in San Antonio, we’d be happy to talk with you in person. Stop by Bookfair Booth #1543 to pick up a free copy of our print issue.

TAB Submittable page listing three categories for submissions
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Events Exciting News

TAB Poets: News

Exhibit featuring Lorene Delany-Ullman


TAB poet Lorene Delany-Ullman and artist Jody Servon are exhibiting “Saved: Objects of the Dead” at the Viewpoint Gallery at the University of California, Irvine, through February 17. This photography-poetry collaboration “Our project documents the lives, deaths and relationships of individuals whose objects are imbued with their emotional and physical senses, then saved by loved ones and friends as an affirmation of their love,” Servon told the LA Times.

Read two of Delany-Ullman’s poems and a review of her book Camouflage for the Neighborhood in Volume 2 of TAB. Her work also appeared in the print issues in 2015 and the Current Issue.

Lynne Thompson signing book for Chapman U MFA student

Fourth Sundays at Claremont Library

TAB poet Genevieve Kaplan is one of the organizers of the Fourth Sundays reading series. The January event featured TAB poet Patty Seyburn. On May 24, both Kaplan and TAB poet Lynne Thompson will read from their work.

Poems by both Seyburn and Thompson are featured in the Current Issue of TAB and were also featured in our very first issue in 2013. Kaplan’s work has appeared in Volume 4, Volume 5, and the print issue of Volume 6, after which she also began teaching at Chapman University. Her new book (aviary) is forthcoming from Veliz Books.

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Exhibit curated by Nancy Kuhl

TAB poet Nancy Kuhl has curated the exhibit “Travel Papers in American Literature” at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, where she oversees the American poetry collection. The exhibit is set to run May 11, 2020, through August 9, 2020.

Kuhl’s work is featured in the Current Issue and the print issue of Volume 1 as well in an online issue in Volume 5.

Forthcoming Books

Mark Jarman‘s new collection of essays, Dailiness: Essays on Poetry, is due out in February from Paul Dry Books.

Allison Joseph‘s new chapbook, The Last Human Heart, is due out in March from Diode Editions.

TAB published work by these poets in the print issue of Volume 1. Joseph’s “Compliance” also appeared in the print issue of Volume 5.

Send us your news…

If you’re a TAB poet with a new or forthcoming book or know of an accomplishment by someone whose work we’ve published, we’d like to hear about it. We also share local poetry event info with the MFA students at Chapman University. You can use the Contact form on the website or email us at poetry@chapman.edu with the subject line “TAB poet news.”

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Exciting News Submission Info

TAB Submissions Open

design detail from Volume 8, 2020 print issue

TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics is now open for submissions, and we’re now using Submittable. We consider poetry, scholarly and creative essays that address poetry, interviews with poets, poetry-artwork hybrids, and other cool stuff. We don’t charge a fee to submit, and we consider simultaneous submissions.

Before you submit, we recommend that you do two things.

First, read around in the Archives. We’ve spent the last year making the archives more accessible and moving them to this website platform. Sorting through all the wonderful work we’ve published since 2013 has reinvigorated us and deepened our gratitude for the writers who’ve shared their work as part of TAB.

Second, read the submission guidelines. And share them with other writers who might be interested in what we’re doing at TAB.

Our staff looks forward to a pool of submissions that will make for some tough decisions.

We’d like to share TAB Musings via email. Subscribe here.

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Exciting News

TAB Musings and more…

TAB Graduate Assistant Jason Thornberry wrote a fantastic article about the re-launch of TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics for Chapman University’s blog. He focuses especially on the “accessible principles” that now underpin the decisions of the Editor (Anna Leahy) and Creative Director (Claudine Jaenichen). We hope you’ll read Jason’s article and also the Design Statement for the new print issue to better understand our approach to poetry-meets-design.

We’ve set up a way for readers to subscribe to TAB Musings, our blog to share new issues, calls for submissions, and ideas about poetry. Please take a moment to subscribe. You’ll need to check your email to confirm your opt-in.

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Exciting News

TAB 2020 Print Issue

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Copies of the amazing new print issue of TAB are going out into the world! You can read about this year’s innovative design on the Current Issue page.

TAB will be at the AWP Bookfair in San Antonio in March will FREE copies for writers and readers who stop by Booth #1543. And we’re happy to send a batch to teachers and librarians who contact us with a request. Plus, submissions are now open

You can keep up with all the news (including submissions info) by signing up for our Musings Blog. Just enter your email address in the form at the bottom of any TAB website page.

Contributor Grant Hier (who is Poet Laureate of Anaheim, California) shared his experience of opening this year’s print issue with a video on Facebook. And then he built a fantastic sculpture out of the issue’s notched cards. We look forward to hearing more about readers’ experiences in the weeks to come.

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Events Exciting News Submission Info

TAB re-launches in 2020

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In January 2020, TAB is re-launching with this new website, newly accessible issue archives, and a Submittable portal.

TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics started in 2013 as a collaboration between poet and essayist Anna Leahy and informational designer Claudine Jaenichen. You can find out more about the project and the staff on the About pages of the website.

The relationship of design and text has driven this project from the get-go and continues to shape how TAB creates a distinctive reading experience. We recognize that print and online formats work differently.

In our print issues, we have consciously used design to make readers aware of the materiality of text and the challenges of access. Our January 2020 print issue, however, explores issues of accessibility. In addition, the TAB archives have been updated for increased accessibility. The new TAB website (using an accessibility-ready theme) will change the look and feel of our online issues. TAB welcomes new design constraints and opportunities, for reading is always a designed experience. We urge you to read more about how design drives TAB in our Design Statement.

On December 9, 2019, Tabula Poetica celebrated its 10th anniversary with a reading by more than a dozen poets at Chapman University. Read more about this events at the Los Angeles Times. The Tabula Poetica reading series occurs every fall, with talks and readings by visiting poets and a reading by MFA in Creative Writing students. We look forward to the next decade of varied poetic voices and perspectives as part of the Chapman Experience.

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