“...In the night no refuge is to be found in sleep.”
* Maurice Blanchot, “Sleep, Night”

 

Lying in the dark - sleep eludes - again. Night after night after night our displaced bodies and minds wander in a perpetual limbo - between dreaming and wakefulness - between night and day - between existence and death.

“But who can sleep with the broken state of the world today?” you ask. Not many of us it seems.

What if, we wondered, we welcomed the nightly specter of restlessness into our beds, resisting  the impulse to reject it, as sleep has rejected us?  And if, continuing to ruminate (we aren’t sleeping after all), so many of you are awake at night, where do the contested spaces of Insomnia take you?

What and where are the possibilities within fragmented thinking and the impossibility of sleep for the pursuit of more than a singular desire to sleep?  In the night, memory, forgetting, mourning, and grief can run in parallel with longing and desire.

We are looking for texts that take Insomnia as a source, inspiration, obsession, or flirtation. Submissions can be any form of writing including creative non-fiction, poetry, and essays.  Accepted pieces will be published online at the Snake House VT website and in limited print edition.

To submit please compile a PDF document that includes:

• Your name and contact information
• Brief bio/statement
  
• For Creative nonfiction submission: one double-spaced piece up to 5,000 words
  
• For Poetry submission: no more than 3 single-spaced poems, with a maximum of 6 pages

Email PDFs to snakehousevt at gmail.com
Please include “Do not disturb” in the subject heading. Contact snakehousevt at gmail.com with any questions.


Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, October 15, 2024

* Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature. Trans. Ann Smock