petalridge.com
the website of
Derek Kannemeyer
PERIODICALS
Some links to my JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS since October 2021
(For a list of earlier periodicals where my work is featured, see "Archives," farther below.)
July 2024
My vignette “Class Warfare Skirmish” appears in the July Verse-Virtual. Go to: https://www.verse-virtual.org/2024/July/kannemeyer-derek-2024-july.html
March 2024
Thanks to Cindy Cunningham and Wellspring Literary Journal for featuring two of my poems, “A Becoming” and “Writer Unknown: A Found Journal” in their inaugural issue, “The Source.” Website: https://wellspringliteraryjournal.com/
I’m especially grateful for their acceptance of the latter piece, as it’s ten pages long! It’s also the opening poem in my chapbook Found Voices, scheduled for fall 2024 publication by Clare Songbirds.
November 2023
“For the Dusts of Us,” the closing poem in YGIBTGTIT, is featured in Verse-Virtual.
https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/November/kannemeyer-derek-2023-november.html
October 2023
James Morehead has accepted “Laura in April” for his Viewless Wings podcast. I’m one of four poets invited to both recite and discuss one of their poems. Mine is about the actress Laura Keene, star of the play at which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
May 2023
The optional theme for the May Verse-virtual is “memory.” Jim Lewis is running two of my formal poems on the subject: “In Praise of Memory” and “In Memoriam the Nonsense Verse Nuts.” [Update: both are also in You Go In By The Gate That Isn’t There, where the former poem has been heavily revised.] Visit https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/May/kannemeyer-derek-2023-may.html
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February 2023​
I have two lyrical narrative poems in February’s Verse-Virtual.
https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/February/kannemeyer-derek-2023-february.html
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September 2022
(a) Thanks to Jeri Rogers for including my poem “For the Fools of April” in the 2022 Artemis. https://artemisjournal.org/store/
(b) And (thanks, Jim Lewis!), Verse-Virtual’s September issue features a poem I wrote in my late twenties: https://www.verse-virtual.org/2022/September/kannemeyer-derek-2022-september.html.
August 2022
Dear Booze just posted my piece, “In Which I Jump Off The Right Train,” to
https://dearbooze.com/cocktales.
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July 2022
(a) Two poems this month in Verse-Virtual. “Postcard from the Smoke” is about my first year in London, as an escapee from South Africa and apartheid. “T’ai Chi with the
Finches” is about Beijing in 1993.
(b) I also got an oddball piece (poem? you be the judge) into Dear Booze.
https://www.verse-virtual.org/2022/July/kannemeyer-derek-2022-july.html
https://dearboozecocktales.blogspot.com/2022/07/an-absurdist-absurdist-absurdist-
go.html?fbclid=IwAR3PQ8zgWkLjviuQQErRD7rkcdCNBi9Xf
1i3dfHxOfjR3DoIDqCVawA1HEw
May 2022
(a) "Corgis and Bess," my tribute to Queen Elizabeth and her corgis, appears in the current issue of LIGHT. Read it here: https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/derek-kannemeyer-winter-22/
(b) I have two poems in the May 2022 Verse-Virtual. You may find them here: https://www.verse-virtual.org/.../kannemeyer-derek-2022... The optional theme is "war." One poem, "Boat Woman, Towson," is reprinted from my collection Mutt Spirituals. The other, "Eva in April," is about the marriage and death, two days later, of Eva Braun.
April 2022
(a) To read my interview in the April issue of KIRKUS REVIEWS, please check out "Praise and Press" at the PUBLICATIONS tab.
(b) For my poem in Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa Igloria's National Poetry Month initiative, please visit her website blog at http://www.luisaigloria.com/.../09-april-poetry-postcard... She invited contributors to mail her a postcard featuring our artwork and an original poem. We were to touch on our concerns for our "immediate natural environment and community," especially in the light of such threats as climate change. My poem is called "Sonnet On My Neighbor's Holly Tree."
(c) I also contributed to Mike Maggio's National Poetry Month Initiative, 30 FOR 30. The theme: "Love on an imaginary boulevard." The rules: an eleven line poem comprised of lines of exactly eleven syllables. Forbidden words: I, you, and love. My poem is "Two Sleepwalkers." https://mikemaggio.net/derek-kannemeyer-3/?fbclid=IwAR0gkrvAyowkk7DARBt9Jt99nbqd-ZnsNzOk0-VJVmi0-YF7S0Igrt53BZU
(d) The Life In Ten Minutes Project periodically puts out an anthology of mini-memoirs under the rubric "Unzipped." The current issue, BARE, features my pieces "Stubborn" and "Indoctrination Training." https://www.lifein10minutes.com/unzipped-issues/unzipped-issue-6-bare-anthology
(e) I'm also in the current issue of LUCKY JEFFERSON, at https://luckyjefferson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Gibberish-Online.pdf?utm_source=website&utm_medium=landing page&utm_campaign=Gibberish Online&fbclid=IwAR39gPkGoUnyCPdYp3K-GFmf2lGyNIYI3OqC4RZ1c1_6vyvv6QOrnfMmiNI. The theme is "Gibberish," and my poem is "Nistle." A nistle is a word that can form anagrams begun with each of its letters in turn. (Acronym, from nistle, inlets, silent, tinsel, listen, enlist.)
March 2022
I have two poems in the March VERSE-VIRTUAL. One is a self-portrait, of me as a 16 year old high school student, and one is a narrative lyric, about a father and his sixteen year old daughter. Here's the link: https://www.verse-virtual.org/2022/March/kannemeyer-derek-2022-march.html
February 2022
RIDDLED WITH ARROWS is running a Valentine's month love poems issue. One of my photographs (of grasshoppers pitching woo) is featured as visual art. Here's the site: https://www.riddledwitharrows.com/ [NOTE: As I put together my book about the fauna of Forest Hill Park Lake, this photo was one of dozens I took of mating grasshoppers. I used a different image for The Flap Over Tree Debris Island, but the quatrain I chose fits this pic just as well:
"All August, in the lakeside grasses,
we see their clasped shapes, groins to asses:
the grasshoppers, in slow, locked pairs—
no world and time but this; but theirs."
January 2022
"Alibi" is a longish poem about my grandmother and about me being questioned in a murder investigation. The version from my next MS was originally 200 words longer than this one, and it includes Americanisms. The journal has a 600 word limit and insists on British English only! I found this a fun and instructive adaptation challenge. The issue's theme is "Brown." Visit https://thepineconereview.com/poetry-issue-3/
December 2021
(a) RIGOROUS is running my snarky, exasperated Donald Trump sonnet, sometimes called, "A November Prayer" under the title "Because the Man Just Won't Go Away.
Visit https://www.rigorous-mag.com/v5i4/v5i4-index.html
(b) In the December VERSE-VIRTUAL you'll find two of my recent poems: "Taxiing." which is dedicated to my mother, and "A Wasp." The theme of the issue was "endings." You can find the poems at: https://www.versevirtual.org/archives/2021/December/verse-virtual-archive-2021-december-vol-8-no-12.html
November 2021
I am thrilled to have work in the latest issue of ANMLY—even more so because the journal is running two of my translations/adaptations from (excuse me while I fanboy out) RUTEBEUF himself! There are lots of writers I love. Many writers have influenced me. But who has ever cast a double spell to surpass the 13th century French poet Rutebeuf? ANMLY generously offers space for both a translator's note and an audio presentation. Check them out at https://anmly.org/ap33/, and why not browse the rest of the issue too? Thanks, Sarah and Maxine!
October 2021
VERSE-VIRTUAL is a monthly online journal edited by Jim Lewis. My sonnet "I Wouldn't" is part of a loose sequence of formal persona poems I call "Parental Advice." They are usually in the voice of an older person addressing a teenager, but occasionally it is the teenager who speaks. Here's the link: https://www.verse-virtual.org/archives/2021/October/verse-virtual-archive-2021-october-vol-8-no-10.html