By Kent Grant

I made a decision while thinking on how I would ask for work from contributors for first edition of Ambidextrous. It crossed my mind that the word submission, as in a “Call for Submission,” carried baggage for me. I would like to see a sea change in the way language is “unintentionally” used to frame supposed innocuously clothed  concepts that are essentially based in bigotry and domination.

This is a systemic phenomenon and can be seen playing out in virtually every aspect of society in regards to power relationships.

I began noticing instances of this fantastic  language playing out in technical computer jargon where there are “master devices” and “slave devices.”

Patronage in the arts, as elsewhere in society, transpires through the notion of submission or acquiescence to a hierarchical affiliation. By nature, it is a relationship that  dampens  the freedom explored by an artist pursuing an artistic endeavor. Creating art is not the problem; selling it often is.

In the film and book publishing arena, examples of this are the typical cattle call where performers are procured en masse to audition for roles they have little chance of securing or the situation where the writer following convention sends out reams of manuscripts to publishers who will barely, if ever, read them. This power dynamic is critical in establishing hierarchy and ranking and the process reinforces its dominance by enforcing the element of exclusionary competition.

My choice at nuance isn’t expected to change our language but to make a point. Language is an ever evolving phenomenon and may one day have a greater capacity to express love.

This is not to say that competition is not a valuable strategy, but in its machination people become pawns subordinate to the exploitative process. Evolving past the conventional corporate paradigm and towards co-operative models, in this case publishing, would seem to provide opportunities for independence.

If as above, so below is true, then everybody is a star. And we are innumerably incarnate. Our approach to power-relationships in the dynamics of community based solutions are exemplified in the models of co-operative enterprise.

A Call for Submissions, I submit, is changed to Call for Work: Let one hand wash the other. Ambidextrous. Let there be equity in the relationship. In a Call for Work, the specific genre can substitute for the word work, e.g., Call for Poetry.

I would be honored to receive work (5000 words or less) from writers from all genres, work from visual artists, painters and videographers —work that speaks to truth and authenticity, and that informs readers on issues that matter concerning the environment and social justice.

In Ambidextrous, diverse strains of reality take form through a medley of prose and poetics. Aside from hate speech or other forms of injurious  language, there are no subjects that cannot be broached while staying abreast with the stories of our world. At Ambidextrous, one’s artistic idiosyncrasies may run amok.