Dadaoism Anthology

*The Dadaoism anthology is now closed for submissions.*

Dadaoism anthology submission guidelines

The submission deadline was the end of March, 2011.

‘Dadaoism’ indicates awareness of fiction as an artefact of the imagination. Just as a plastic figurine of a postman is created in the same way as a plastic figurine of Darth Vader, so a story about a post office in Bury St. Edmonds and a story about Jedi Knights are equally works of the imagination. From the point of view of Luke Skywalker, Bury St. Edmonds would be a remote, exotic, almost unimaginable place.

With Dadaosim Chômu Press hope to collect work that is inventive and original in form, style and content, and thereby demonstrate that the imagination is not limited to genre. We aspire to edit and compile an anthology that will be the literary and psychic equivalent of a tour around the edges of a dying galaxy in a spectacularly malfunctioning space vehicle.

Please send any pieces of up to 20,000 words (preferably under 15,000). Essays are also welcome, as long as they are imaginative in form and language (we are especially interested in essays that are also fictional, or vice versa). Poetry will also be considered, but will have to be exceptionally good. We would prefer material specifically written for this anthology, but it can be something unpublished you have lying around if you feel it fits. Contact us by clicking here or email to submissions at chomupress dot com. Please note: All e-mails should be headed ‘Dadaoism anthology’.

For points of reference, please see the original Chomu blogzine or consider the following authors and things:

Chin Sheng-t’an’s ‘33 Happy Moments’, Cordwainer Smith, Into the Pandemonium by Celtic Frost, Hartnell-era Doctor Who, Oulipo, Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, Vic and Bob’s Catterick, Kamo no Chomei’s Hojoki, anaemic Ealing comedies, Nicolas Roeg, Dare Wright, synaesthesia, Daoism, dadaism, Jeremy Reed, Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, Mumonkan, Maruo Suehiro, Pu Songling, Bruno Schulz, and so on.

This is not, of course, a list of people and things to emulate, but rather an indication of the kind of elements from whose butterfly chaos we would like to see the anthology emerge as present or future.

Further guidelines and suggestions:

Write whatever you want, but get expressionistic, and think outside genre, think outside conventions. Take MFA rules and break them. Write autobiographical fiction, formalistic metafiction, lyrical dream stories – or, ideally, a combination of all of the above.

It should just be GOOD WRITING. Try to come out with something personally important to you and don’t just be clever. No vampires, Whitley Strieber aliens, or recognizeable genre tropes. No parodies of said tropes either. Don’t do anything that’s “weird just to be weird”. If you usually write in a particular mode, try a different one. Give yourself some kind of theme or constraint and adhere to it. Play around with language.

Cross-cultural themes (interaction of different cultures, lifestyles, ideas, etc.) are particularly welcome, although obviously not in a didactic or PC way. Chômu Press is interested in everything from the varying metaphysical/spiritual systems to the level of street fashion and music culture, politics and organized crime.

WRITE 21ST CENTURY FICTION, NOT 20TH. “Post-modernism”, “Magic Realism”, “Post-colonialism”, “Metafiction”, “Naturalism” – these terms are all DEAD. They are describing movements from a different century. Come up with something better. We are trying to connect very disparate dots and form a picture that no one has seen before, a snapshot of “now” in writing.

If you’ve been feeling in a rut with writing or like you wanted to try something different, some new direction, this is your chance.

Remember, the world as we know it is ending. Why waste time playing safe in what you write or read? Let us break the fourth wall of fiction, but not in a tiresome winking way. Let us break that imaginary wall with imaginary hammers, and allow the reader to be a part of the destruction or creation taking place.