Sudden Denouement and Sudden Denouement Publishing is holding a book giveaway! We will be randomly selecting one name from those who sign-up for our new Email List to receive the Sudden Denouement Publishing title of their choice. You could be the winner of A Sparrow Stirs its Wings, Machiavelli’s Backyard, I Am A World Of Uncertainties Disguised As A Girl, Superstition, Composition of a Woman, or Anthology Volume I: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective. To be automatically entered, sign up for our new Mailchimp Email list.

Sudden Denouement’s Anthology Volume I: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective demonstrates divergence in a multitude of ways

In late 2017, not long after I had started my own poetry blog on Word Press, I came across an intriguing site.  Its black and white vintage photos and classic layout invited me in.  The poems I read on that particular day were uniquely honest, full of rich free verse and wonderfully chosen words, so I chanced a look at the submissions requirements.  Right at the top of the page, in neon lights: “Hell- -here” it greeted potentials; the “o” and “T” fizzled out.  I chuckled with anticipatory glee, for under the classic front, something mischievous and dark lay there.  And as I read more of the collective’s poetry and prose, I did indeed feel the pull of Sudden Denouement’s careful attention to what it calls “divergent literature,” although I had…

Sudden Denouement (SD) is a writing collective started on WordPress (WP) among fledgling and established writers and poets who came together in mutual appreciation of the genre of writing poetry, specifically poems that are honest and express emotions without compromise or apology. In this sense, SD was unique among WP authors as being the first attempt to collectivize those specific voices and generate a mode by which writers could advance and gain exposure using a safe platform and not being judged for expressing themselves honestly. “We are stray smoke in hurricane water.” (Stray Smoke, by Mitch Green).

One may imagine this is common-place but even in the world of creative writing and poetry, there are standards and expectations and many poets who tended to write about emotions were labeled as being too self-involved and depressing. Poetry collectives often focus on publishing and highlighting poets who are studying for…

There’s the pull of the tide of Azazel, dragging me down to obsidian depths where lampreys from alien worlds suckle at the teat of Leviathan.  Your arms are the Cambrian ocean, and I am a fabled creature long extinct, many legged like a sea scorpion, scuttling to your lips to latch on with pedipalp that can breathe both in and out of water.  My progeny will leave your bosom and flee to the shore, shipwrecked on pearly sands, and weave webs to capture sparrows and dragonflies and voles.  Feasting on your salty skin, I know the great extinction is fast approaching, be it comet or climate change or ocean acidification, and your shores will dry up and your cliffs of ice at the poles will pummel me as glaciers crash against my chitinous exoskeleton.  This is just a metaphor for how we fight, me the small arachnopod navigating your waves…