I review the superb Ina Cariño’s latest poetic offering ‘Reverse Requiem’ by Alice James Books in the Winter 2026 issue of Life and Legends Magazine.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Ina Cariño’s work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine and the Paris Review Daily. She was the winner of the 2022 Whiting Award, a Kundiman fellow and winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for her debut Feast. Cariño has also founded a poetry reading series called Indigena Collective. For the full review go to: http://lifeandlegends.com/reverse-requiem/
If you hear that squeaking sound, it is me with my cart, my donkey died. I am hawking my wares (a debut novel) and it’s heavy going uphill as you can imagine, with the Big Five publishers able to place their tenderizing wares in glittering bookstore windows for Xmas, I have only the rag-n-bone cart and my own throat of moths.
This is a good novel. If you know me, you know my saying this is no small thing. I have put a lot of work into it. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s a hard-hitting, unflinching psychological thriller based upon true events. Nevertheless it’s well written, and every single sale, every single review on Amazon or GoodReads goes a LONG way for a small indie author like myself.
I tend to spend most of my time promoting and helping others, with their output, so it is a strange place to be on the other side of the coin. I am selling signed copies and accepting Vemno, Paypal and checks. Otherwise you can purchase The Cruelty through most vendors, including asking for it at your local bookstore. Every single sale helps me enormously and I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received.
“Unhoused – Yearning for Home” is an anthology, open for submissions, that explores the feeling of being unhoused, both literally and figuratively, through poetry and creative writing. The anthology, published by Prolific Pulse Press LLC, aims to give voice to those who experience displacement, insecurity, and a longing for belonging. It welcomes submissions from a diverse range of perspectives, including those who are unhoused, immigrants, those on insecure visas, and those experiencing other forms of displacement or sense of isolation and not belonging / not safe where they live / insecure housing / temporary accommodation or poverty causing dangerous living conditions. It can also relate to not being at home because of war, famine, poverty, exile, politics or anything similar. Pieces can be written past-tense or fictionally if you feel strongly about the subject and have first-hand exposure to these kinds of experiences.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
What it is: The anthology, edited by Carrie Yang and Candice Louisa Daquin, focuses on the theme of “yearning for home” in the context of being unhoused. Publishing by the excellent Prolific Pulse Press in early 2026.
Who it’s for: It welcomes submissions from a wide range of individuals, including those who are unhoused, immigrants, those on insecure visas, the working poor, and those experiencing other forms of displacement.
Content: The anthology will feature poetry and creative writing, including flash fiction, and accompanying artwork.
Purpose: The editors aim to create a platform for underrepresented voices and to challenge common perceptions of homelessness, focusing on the human experience and social challenges associated with displacement, not belonging, insecurity, unsafety and houselessness in some form.
Submission Details: Submissions are open and can be made through Duotrope. The anthology is non-paying but does not charge for submissions and will donate any money make to homeless charities. Its goal is highlighting how many people experience this in one form or another
I’m working on this anthology as co-editor and we’d love to see your submissions. The concept of being ‘unhoused’ can include being a Dreamer, on a migrant visa, a refugee, immigrant illegal or legal, living abroad, speaking a different language to the host country, anything that makes you feel you are yearning for home because of your current or past situation, or that you do not feel you are safe in your home or it is fragile and temporary. Please click here to submit: https://duotrope.com/anthology/unhoused-yearning-for-home-39057
Prolific Pulse Press announces an anthology call for submissions: UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home
Prolific Pulse Press’s background in publishing social justice anthologies, continues with Unhoused – Yearning for Home – an anthology of poetry and flash-writing on the current epidemic of unhoused, homeless, stateless, and country-less people and how this lack of safety affects generations. We seek to highlight the writer’s resiliance and determination to survive and thrive whilst sharing their truth and experience(s).
This project shines a light on: Migration, asylum-seeking, illegal-and-legal-immigration, and other factors resulting in being without a home, national-identity, country, or security net. Whether you have immigrated and found yourself isolated and unable to fit into your adopted country’s identity, or lost status in a country you identify with, been out-of-status, living-below-the-radar, a Dreamer or undocumented, or forced to flee your homeland because of discrimination, war or other destabilizing forces, this is your opportunity to share your experiences on the hardships and often invisible struggles so many endure
The statistics in this section are compiled from submission reports sent to us through our submission tracker. They are not provided by the publication’s editors/staff or by Duotrope’s admins. Information in this section is updated a few times per day. Learn more about the statistics.
We have not received any submission reports for this listing in the past 12 months.
Your Submissions
This section is available to subscribers only. Join today!
Before Submitting
We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is correct. It is not unusual for publications to evolve or close without notice. We do our best to keep up, but it isn’t always possible. Duotrope listings do not imply endorsement or recommendation of the project being listed. Before submitting, you should use your own judgment to determine whether the project meets your standards.
Always read the full guidelines provided by the publisher.
Try to read at least one previous publication to get a better idea of what the editor would like to see.
Unless the publisher’s guidelines state otherwise, always use industry standard manuscript formatting.
I do not own a cat anymore. He died and since I couldn’t reincarnate him, there seemed little point. For some of us, there is only one.
I used to possess a fine drawer of expensive underwear I didn’t buy. I was an inverted snob. I could wear jog-pants and a ratty-t but I’d always have La Perla underneath. It gave me a little posh lift.
You should know I delete all correspondence except letters, those I keep. Emails weren’t invented for returning to. Even those professing to be urgent, are in my trash file which I empty weekly. Consequently I appear to have a bad memory, which is inaccurate. I just can’t look things up and prove it when you’re wrong, but I know more than I let on.
I still read too many books, although there’s no such thing as too many books. I put most of them outside in a Little Free Library, which was recently ransacked by vandals, although they must not know, books do not sell for anything anymore. You can earn more collecting cans and that is sad and telling. I think I keep myself light because I’m always preparing to jump ship.
Once I cut myself so badly on purpose that I left a bad scar, I dare you to find it.
You’d think coming to my house, I have green thumbs, but quite the reverse is true. I have no patience for plants or dogs. But give me a glass of Elderflower and I will nurse it for hours.
Long ago I was a dry alcoholic. That means I knew if I drank I wouldn’t want to stop so I didn’t. To me that meant I had difficulty with addiction, even as I wasn’t addicted. A girl I spoke to on a bus once, is the only other person who got that, so I bequeathed her the 6 poems I’ve written about it and let her know if I made it into the DSM VI (which is taking its sweet time) I’d name it after her: “Branwen: Dry Drunk. A compulsion to drink to excess, a feeling of addiction to drinking and alcohol whilst able to abstain.”
Now I am less a dry alcoholic since finding gummies, which I read in the translated Berlingske newspaper, is also responsible for heart-disease, despite not being smoked. This was a study of 200 million users, and I think the study has holes, because statistics can be as malleable as hosiery and we all know how tights can hide a multitude of sins. I’m living proof that you can be functional and work 10 hour days even as you go to bed stoned and singing The Electric Prunes.
Speaking of hose, quite frankly I miss it more than sex. I was once the proud owner of almost every hue imaginable. My legs have always been atrocious, or simply put, ‘piernas blancas’ as they say in Tex-Mex. But it’s far too hot to wear hose here, so consequently my outrageous collection languished until it caught moths, and with them, the girl that once dashed through rain in glaucous, indigo, coquelicot, heliotrope and zaffre. Mary Quant, watch out.
A man once wrote on a ‘I’ve seen you’ column in Time Out magazine Amsterdam, about a stranger he wanted to talk to: “Saw you dashing through puddles in red tights, was thunderstruck. You: beret, glasses, long black hair. Me: smitten. “ That post is the only reason I’ve ever considered saying yes when a man asked me out. Would any woman notice those things? And they say women are the more observant, but I have my doubts about motivation.
Simply put; lonely heart, looking to stop aching. Cliched, I know. Perhaps I should write the recipe to my grandmother’s raspberry Bavarois, that would hook you, it did me.
The truth is I’m crap at this. I only did it because it was free this month for LGBTQi+ (and I”m sure I left some of us off). It’d be pretty fantastic if you read minds and liked maudlin, people who hate themselves but are still capable of loving, I’ll leave it at that.
If I find my place, I may own a cat again, or they may own me. The cat would be male and have longish fur. I might cycle in Amsterdam in tyrian purple hose, a collection of Cécile Sauvage’s poetry under my right arm, a black cat in the basket, checking for suitors or Sheba. The seafood one of course, cats never ate cows and neither do I. But I’ll share a vegetarian Thali with you (I get the Palakchi Bhaji, no argument there) under some wisteria if you find me…
United States
thiskeptache 