The process of “civilization” is a continuous negotiation of what it means to impose order on a world given to entropic tendencies. The traffic warden, the queue, the systematization of knowledge, and institutions built to administer justice are all cogs in humanity’s “anti-chaos” machine. Greek and Hebrew cosmogonies equally hold this perspective – the creation event was civilizing; from an initial chaos and formlessness, order is fashioned. In a sense, don’t all literary and artistic production follow a similar format? The poet looks at a disorderly morning in a busy bus park (or his life, shattering in different directions) and cages that chaos in a single line.
For the 2021 issue of Agbowó, we are accepting submissions on the theme – Chaos.
We are seeking literary and visual art that contemplate or describe the chaotic. Is there an inherent utility to chaos? Isn’t it paradoxical that our internal chaoses persist in an increasingly ordered world? We want stories from the viewpoint of the outsider that inform about the subjectivity of order and we won’t begrudge work that responds to the theme with chaotic forms – the poem that leads nowhere, the story that leads everywhere.
We look forward to receiving your work as we curate another issue of Agbowó.
Submissions should be sent, as MS Word attachments or high-resolution images, accompanied by a short bio and to prose.agbowo@gmail.com, essays.agbowo@gmail.com, poetry.agbowo@gmail.com, and visualarts.agbowo@gmail.com for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual arts/photography submissions respectively. The subject line of the email should read “Submission for the Chaos Issue”. Please remember to include your portrait along with your bio.
Please submit no more than 3 poems, 1 short-story or essay, or 5 photographs for consideration.
The deadline for submissions is the 30th of April 2021.
PS. The annual Agbowó magazine is our most prestigious publication of the year. However, the payment structure for Agbowó weekly online publications does not currently apply.