WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE 6, 2026!

Chant de la Sirène

Calls for Work & Submission Guide

Submissions to Chant de la Sirène are per Call for Work on each annual issue’s specific topic. The calls are usually posted in spring with late spring or early summer deadlines. We only consider work during these calendar periods and on the current issue’s subject matter. Within those limits, we embrace a wide range of work.

Sumissions are free of charge but must fall the guidelines described in our CFW.

All submissions must be sent via ATTACHED WORD DOCUMENT (which might include hyperlinks in documents for on-line multimedia) or JPEGs for visual work to our SUBMISSIONS ADDRESS at:

chantdelasirenesubmissions@gmail.com

Laura Hinton, Below Ponza Island (August 2024, Italy, GoPro 9)

A Call for Work Chant de la Sirène, Issue 6

FIRE & ICE 

 

The Ecopoetics of Oceans & Water in a Time of Climate Change  

Deadline JUNE 30, 2025 

The last issue of Chant de la Sirène was both a study into and protest against the rise of U.S. fascism under Trump’s political MAGA hold—a fascism also trending for many other Western nations. But the anti-democratic and corrupt, inegalitarian forces at our current historical juncture are very much linked to our former CDLS issue on climate change. The perpetuation of radical global warming is succeeding in the era of MAGA’s climate denial, and the refusal of the Trump administration to work within the Paris Climate Agreement. This refusal to join many other nations in battling climate catastrophe couples with the necessary distraction we face fighting against Trumpian tyranny to doing this also necessary climate work.

Putting so much of our progressive political energy towards combatting the urgent situation of our would-be American Regium also has taken progressive power away from this existential issue of our time: earth’s fast transformation from a relatively paradisical Holocene epoch (approximately the last 11,000 of history) into the so-called Anthropocene, beginning with our increasing exploitation of fossil fuels by the mid-20th century.

The burning of fossil fuels to warm and cool our homes, to provide swift methods of transportation, to provide the very food we eat, the toothbrushes we use to clean our teeth, the homes we build to live in and among—the petroleum-based chemicals that support nearly every facet of our modern lives—notoriously has caused temperatures to rise by about 1.0 degrees Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the end of the 19th century. Climate change has had not only a great effect upon the land that hosts our homes and cities and food-producing fields. It has also been radically altering the state of our oceans and seas, rivers and waterways. It is affecting once-familiar patterns of storm and rain across the planet. It causes too much rain and flooding, or too little rain—creating long-term droughts. It is shriveling lakes and reservoirs that so many communities reply upon for their water supply. It is transforming both the existence of—and our relationship to—oceans and water everywhere.

In Issue 6 of CDLS, we hope to consider the importance of our oceans and waterways, and also to investigate through poetics and multiple media of the arts these new realities we have created as humans for the crucial bodies of water that sustain our planet. These might include (not an exclusive list)—

 

sea level rise and the threat to coastal cities and habitats

the Gulf Stream with AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) under threat

the endangerment of coral reefs throughout all seas

the status of our waters’ flora and fauna as oceanic PH factors become more acidic

the role of oceans in absorbing warming global temperatures

the collapse of major glaciers, the meltdown of Greenland and parts of Antarctica

the opening of new sea-coastal oil rigs by the Trump administration

changes in the fishing industry and community survival

community water supplies under siege

the channeling of rivers, the failures of dams

the intensification of mega-storms, heavy rains, flooding—as well as unforeseen droughts

the social consequences of climate change

climate justice or injustices in the U.S. and around the globe as climate transforms

climate change grief and climate change denial

the effect of climate change on younger generations

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Please read and follow these Guidelines for Submission

Written documents—

Send us one document containing all submitted work (take it easy on the length, please!), in Word typescript, 12 pt. font, with 1-inch margins and single space formatted into the document. No headers or footers. If you use footnotes, please use Word Endnotes formatting in MLA Style; we may need a plain-format version of your text later in the process, and will contact you if so.

Send documents to us via Word.doc ATTACHMENT—at the submissions email above before or by the deadline. Keep a copy of the email for your records. You may also send an accompanying PDF version should tricky formatting issues arise in, say, a poetry document, but the Word doc version is essential.

 

Visual pieces—

Send your work via JPEG ATTACHMENT for each piece, making sure that the final attachment includes exactly the image of your full visual work as you wish it displayed. Attach via Word doc a complete list of titles for each image, including creator name, media used, any physical dimensions of original 3-D work, year of production.

 

Video work—

Upload to Vimeo (with your first and last name labeled on the file). Send us the hyperlink in a Word ATTACHMENT file. Additionally, write title and other relevant information with creator’s name, length, media type, year of production). Do not send links in body of email but in this ATTACHED Word doc. Thank you!

 

Oral recordings—

Similar to video work, send any oral product via Word doc with Soundcloud hyperlink link (after uploading there—you can get a free account). Provide in the ATTACHED document the same details as described for Video work above.

Label all attachments simply, with your first and last name. They may show up in journal so make sure the labels are clean and simple.

Note again: we must receive all pieces, visual or verbal, by Word ATTACHMENT.

 

Bios—

Do not send your bio at this time. We will request your professional bio later in the process, should your work be accepted. Details to be provided…

Unpublished Work Only—

It is presumed that any work you submit to is previously unpublished and not under consideration by other publications, unless it is in the process of becoming part of a published book (but not yet released by early fall 2026). If your work published in CDLS is later published in book form, we appreciate a journal credit.

 

 * 

Give us plenty of time to review your work. We expect to have acceptances going out by early fall. We will get back to you as soon as we possibly can.

Thank you for your patience in letting us read and consider your pieces.

 

 Call for Work Chant de la Sirène, Issue 5

This issue was published in December 2025 & is now LIVE.

 

Tyranny & Hybrid Poetics

 

Observing / Documenting / Resisting MAGA & the Global New Right 

 

Deadline May 1, 2025 

Submissions must be sent to chantdelasirenesubmissions@gmail.com

 

In its emphasis on the hybrid literary arts as they document our social times, Chant de la Sirène will continue its interrogation of language & form in Issue 5--this time on the topics of tyranny, autocracy, and the Radical Right, as they take over the United States and other supposedly "pro-democracy" countries.

Here are a series of questions we might consider in Issue 5, "Tyranny & Hybrid Poetics"—

  • What does poetry & multi-media art have to say about MAGA & the Rise of Authoritarianism within what have previously been considered “democratic” nations? Can artistic expression somehow get to the root of what is wrong about our accepted forms of "democracy"?

  • Can “poetics” & art provide an analysis of authoritarian systems in ways journalist prose and talking heads cannot?

  • How might writers and artists document & react to the New Right in the U.S.—and beyond—in ways that resist the fascist moves? 

  • What are historical accounts of literature & art resisting authoritarianism and autocracy? 

  • What are historical accounts of literature & art collaborating with authoritarianism and autocracy?

  • Are “poetics” necessarily against tyranny by definition? (Or not?) 

  • How can poetics & the multi-media arts educate, inform, even warn communities about demagogues and the concentration of dictatorial power? 

  • Can poetry and art effectively challenge recent attacks by MAGA and the US Radical Right against groups of people potentially politically vulnerable—women, LGBTQ communities, brown and Black communities, new immigrants (documented or undocumented), the disabled, religious-spiritual communities not affiliated with Christian conservatives, intellectuals & artists?  (Or not?)

  • What are current issues regarding Climate Change that emerge under the Trump / New Right regime(s)? What can we do about them? 

  • What is it like to write or produce art under a system of political tyranny? (Consider issues of funding, public censorship, access, all forms of communication, audiences.)

  • Do the coercive strategies of authoritarian leaders and their social structures change or negate the creative role of all the arts, in personal and/or public manifestations?

  • Do audiences for art and literature change under fascism and tyranny?

_______

 

Submissions might include:

 A series of interrelated poems; essays that are scholarly, “creative,” and/or memoir in form (or a combination); book or art reviews; experimental prose pieces; video or film; painting & illustration; photography & the graphic or plastic arts—and, of course, the hybrid interweaving of any of the above. Documents regarding radical pedagogy will also be considered. 

Successful submissions will bend, challenge, or otherwise question traditional conventions of genre & form.

Literary submissions must be submitted in Word doc by ATTACHMENT, with any special formatting including page numbers deleted. Visual pieces can be submitted by .jpeg, or by links to video/film work to Youtube or Vimeo. (We prefer Vimeo.) Large files can be received in special cases via WeTransfer. Please consult the editor if you have questions about how to best submit your work. 

Note: An extended deadline beyond May 1 may be granted with consultation in advance. Queries welcome!

 

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In addition, in connection with the upcoming issue, CDLS is sponsoring 

ANTI-TYRANNY READING / WRITING WORKSHOPS 

Towards the making of “Tyranny & Poetics,” Chant de la Sirène is organizing small independent writing & reading workshop groups via on-line platforms like Zoom. We are calling these Anti-Tyranny Writing/Reading workshops. Visual artists may also want to join. Consider these "resistance cells" of creativity in the midst of tyrannical political conditions. We hope you will want to join.

The fine print: For those of you generating or wishing to produce new creative work on topics (and forms) concerning tyranny & the Radical Right, please sign up to attend one or more of these Reading-Writing groups. The small groups will be convened with the goal of encouraging new work, collaboration, and dialogue on "tyranny" as a topic for the arts. They may also help distill the fear and anxiety many of us feel as we involve ourselves in creative response (especially what is occuring post-Inauguration in the US.) Short readings may also be integrated into the workshops, per group wish. Workshops will take place in March and April this year, using an online platform like Zoom, and TBA, depending on scheduling needs.

If you’d like to help convene an Anti-Tyranny Reading-Writing Workshop (thanks to Jen Scappettone for the language), or if you’d simply like to join one, please SEND A NOTE TO OUR SUBMISSIONS EMAIL (above).

It is hoped that work may emerge from Anti-Tyranny Workshops that might be considered for Issue 5. Regular CDLS submission processes still apply. 

For examples of the kinds of work we publish, and if haven't taken a look at CDLS's "Climate Change & Poetics" Issue 4 (or the previous "War & Peace" Issue 3), please go to the menu bar at the top of the page to navigate to these issues:

www.chantdelasirenejournal.com 

A special feature of each issue once we publish is a contributor READING, open to the public via Zoom.

Thanks for your interest and potential work. 

—Editor, Chant de la Sirène