​Penumbra Journal of Literature and Art at California State University Stanislaus

Invites Submissions for its Online Fall Issue of

Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Hybrid and Art

Featuring

Dirt

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“Although the surface of our planet is two-thirds water, we call it the Earth. We say we are earthlings, not waterlings. Our blood is closer to seawater than our bones to soil, but that's no matter. The sea is the cradle we all rocked out of, but it's to dust that we go. From the time that water invented us, we began to seek out dirt. The further we separate ourselves from the dirt, the further we separate ourselves from ourselves. Alienation is a disease of the unsoiled.”
                       ― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

 

“Trillions of microorganisms, even in my own smallish backyard, like a great dark sea swarming with tiny creatures—it almost makes me feel a little seasick standing here, knowing how much business is being conducted right under my feet.”
                        ― Kristin Ohlson, The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists,

                             Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet

 

As the above quotes indicate, soil—the epidermal layer of the body of fertile Mother Earth—is life itself; however, it is also death: it’s where we return, usually with dirt thrown in our faces as the human body experiences open air for the last time and gives itself to the billion-blooded earth. Soil implicates itself in most every aspect of experience; it is in fact key to life in the Great Central Valley of California, an agricultural center and the breadbasket of the United States. Agricultural soil is an increasingly fraught political issue worldwide, as the number of small farms dwindles across the earth in an era of widespread farmland consolidation, a change threatening biodiversity and crop diversity, ultimately putting the world’s food supply at risk. Monsanto is turning India’s small-holding farmers into cogs in its Great Reset wheel of global agriculture, resulting in mass protests and suicides among farmers. The widespread use of GMOs has led to contamination that has affected seed purity and damaged the livelihood of non-GMO farmers. Beyond the economics and politics of soil, dirt has theological import: Adam was the “dust of the earth” inspired with divine breath; the Jewish golem is shaped out of clay and brought to life with a secret word; in Greek mythology, Prometheus shaped humanoid figures of clay and Athena provided them with the breath of life. Soil is also a crucial aspect of our everyday lives, even though we experience the world largely through screens, simulations, memes, and digital images without substance or texture—the common condition of humanity in the grip of modern life. But to plunge one’s hands into the moist, friable earth is to connect, once again, with our primal, childlike selves. We at Penumbra are anxious to gather a body of art and literature, locally sourced and from around the world, that focuses on earthy, dirt-related themes.

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Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to…

• Dirt in all of its forms—silt, chalk, sand, peat, loam, mud, diatomaceous earth…

• Rocks and dirt

• The aesthetics of dirt; the various physical sensations arising from contact with the soil—the smell, visual stimuli, sounds—and the memories accompanying such contact; the experience of gardening, landscaping, or working the soil

• Landscapes: crop fields, deserts, plains, gardens, steppes, wetlands, the sandy sea floor (and perhaps the opposite—the hard, dirtless cityscape)

• Cultural practices involving dirt, such as the long history of geophagy or the daily replenishing of the sacred dirt at El Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico

• Dirt in theological contexts

• Dirt and monstrous or mythological beings: consider Hercules’ defeat of Antaeus, or the creation of the Jewish golem, or the Slavic bolotnik, the Murphysboro mud monster, the swamp thing, the gargoyle…

• The politics of dirt, including farming, territoriality and moving borders, “lines in the sand,” drilling, fracking

• The creatures who live and thrive in the dirt: the trillions of infinitesimal underground creatures, the worms who churn the soil, the ants, the mud-loving pig…

• Dirt as life, dirt as death; dirt and the human body

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Reflect deeply upon any of these topics or other related ones which may emerge for you, and then create and submit your poem, story, or image to Penumbra for consideration. Each contributor may submit up to three poems, short stories, pieces of creative non-fiction, art or photography, or hybrid pieces in any combination (e.g. three poems, one poem and two short stories, one short story, one hybrid piece, one watercolor painting, etc.).

 

The deadline for submissions for the online fall edition is October 11th at midnight. We look forward to hearing from you!