Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press

Friends,

Thanks for getting this far!  To know if your work fits with moral injury as our theme, you need to know--if you don't already--what we mean by moral injury.

First, the experience of trauma, no matter how severe, does not necessarily (or even usually) lead to moral injury.

Moral injury occurs in two categories of circumstances. 

In the first, an individual engages in an act that is a transgression of that person’s own moral code and which has serious, even grave consequences. Or, the individual fails to do something when their moral code demanded they act with, again, serious consequences.  In the second category, a person is morally injured by seeing others engage in immoral behavior (with serious consequences). For example, combat military may have seen their colleagues or their superiors do egregious things.

In any case, moral injury occurs when the trauma causes a loss of faith or trust, or even hostility, toward authority, institutions, and even one’s perception of human morality. It has psychological, social,  and spiritual aspects.

The field of moral injury has been applied to combat veterans. Consider a Vietnam veteran who kills a noncombatant. Or who sees his or her own military leaders engage in incompetent, careless, reckless behavior that got people hurt or killed. That doesn’t just cause PTSD. It is an assault on the person’s moral faculties. 

Or consider a police officer whose line of work exposes him regularly to the worst kinds of conduct in human beings.

Another: Someone works for a government child protection office. They also see very bad human behavior, victimization of children, but also work in a system that doesn’t necessarily take good care of children and families.

Another: A driver engages in behavior in their car that distracts them and they cause an accident in which an innocent person is severely injured or killed. Subsequently, the driver realizes they had a moral duty to be attentive when driving and due to their negligence, terrible harm is done.

I have no length guidelines for poems. Previously published work will be considered, as long as we can quickly resolve any permission to reprint issues."  

Questions to me at dalewisely@gmail.com.

Thanks for submitting!  

Dale

We plan to publish a print anthology of poems on grief in 2025. This is a fundraiser for a non-profit on whose board I serve: Community Grief Support. https://www.communitygriefsupport.org/

I invite you to submit poems and creative nonfiction. 

Guidelines:

• Poems on loss, grief, mourning.
• Any form is acceptable. I continue to have a bit of an aversion to rhyme.
• Because I hope to get these out to readers who don’t normally read a lot of poetry, the poems would need to be more accessible than we tend to see in poetry journals. I don’t want to overstate this, because I still would hope to see poems that require focus and thought. I just don’t want readers to scratch their heads and say “huh?” TOO much.
• Creative Non-Fiction. Yeah. I don’t really know what it is either. So let’s say: First-person prose. Narrative.
• No more than 4 pieces.
• Deadline: March 1, 2025.
• Submit here: 

If your work is accepted--given this is a fundraiser in which ALL revenue will go to the non-profit, I will ask authors of accepted work to agree to purchase a copy. The price will not exceed $20. 

Thanks,

Dale