RABBIT is a print journal for nonfiction poetry, based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded by Jessica L. Wilkinson in mid-2011 and has recently released its 36th issue.
A pioneer in the field, RABBIT intends to celebrate the potential for poetry to explore and interrogate the boundaries of nonfiction writing. RABBIT encourages poets to openly engage with auto/biography, history, politics, economics, mathematics, cultural analysis, science, the environment, and all other aspects of real world experience, recollection and interpretation.
RABBIT publishes all things poetry – poems, reviews, essays on poetry and poetics, interviews with poets, and visual art by poets – with an emphasis on new and emerging rabbits (poets) and a focus on supporting Australian poetry.
Some of the contributors to the journal include Jordie Albiston, Natalie Harkin, Johanna Drucker, Dennis Cooley, Craig Santos Perez, Jaya Savige, Justin Clemens, Jennifer Compton, Jane Hirshfield, Kenneth Goldsmith, Stuart Cooke, Melody Paloma, Lisa Gorton, Duncan Hose, Michael Farrell, Petra White, Cassandra Atherton, Liam Ferney, Miriam Wei Wei Lo, Amy Brown, Alison Whittaker, Anna Jackson, Alex Skovron, Alvin Pang, joanne burns, Robert Sullivan, Ian McBryde, Jeanine Leane, Kate Middleton, Jill Jones, Bonny Cassidy, Patrick Jones, Eileen Myles, Ann Vickery, Lesley Wheeler, Ania Walwicz, Pierre Joris, Peter Boyle, Ken Bolton, Fiona Hile and Pam Brown.
Rabbit is currently accepting poetry submissions for Issue 38: the ARCHIVE Issue, to be guest co-edited by Anne Casey and Jason Wee.
Jeanine Leane refers to writing from the archive as a way 'to fill in the spaces; to engage with the materiality—gather the scattered shards and move it to the emotion, to the voices still screaming to get out of the box—to be freed from the cardboard prison’. How can we, as poets, return to the archive and reanimate voices and lives silenced through time and the resolve of official record-makers? How else might we think of, approach and (re)imagine archives, as cosmologies, as expansive structures for comprehending larger, wider dimensions, like the past, time, universes? For this issue, we are interested in poems that explore, engage with, test and challenge 'the archive' as place, space, repository and/or concept.
We invite poets to send up to 3 poems in one document through Rabbit’s Submittable site. Please include in the cover letter of your submission:
• full contact details (postal address, email)
• 50-word max. bio
• a short (50-word max.) response to the following: "Name a poem that you like that draws on/relates to archival research/thinking and why you like it."
SUBMISSIONS CLOSE MIDNIGHT Friday 28th April 2023
About the guest editors:
Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, ANNE CASEY is author of five poetry collections. A journalist and legal author for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in The Irish Times' Most Read. Anne has won literary awards in Ireland, Australia, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, India and the USA, most recently American Writers Review 2021 and the Henry Lawson Prize 2022. She is the recipient of an Australian Government scholarship and a bursary for her doctoral studies in archival research and poetry at the University of Technology Sydney. anne-casey.com @1annecasey
JASON WEE is an artist and a writer. He is the author of two chapbooks, most recently as a part of his installation 'A Poem, An Essay, A Fable' for the 2022 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, as well as three poetry collections. His most recent, In Short Future Now (Sternberg Press), was a Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize finalist and received a Judges' Citation for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. He was a part of 52 Artists, 52 Actions, a multi-platform exhibition project at Artspace Sydney. He exhibits regularly with Yavuz Gallery. He is the co-editor with Cyril Wong of Softblow Poetry Journal, and he directs Grey Projects, an art library, residency and exhibition space in Singapore. @jasewee
RABBIT is a journal of nonfiction poetry. If you are concerned that your take on the ‘real world’ is slightly abstract, don’t worry–include a line or two to tell us why you categorise your poem as ‘nonfiction.’ We are very much open to poetry experiments! Please note that we do not accept previously published poems; simultaneous submissions are fine (provided you let us know immediately if your poems have been accepted elsewhere).
RABBIT also publishes book reviews, essays interviews with poets and visual artworks by poets. The editors regularly solicit this material, but are open to expressions of interest. Please see the website at rabbitpoetry.com.