GEMBUN ANTHOS - the cherita

G E M B U N A N T H O L O G Y I N F O
and submission guidelines
updated august 2024

silk brocade
in a shop window
night must fall

for me to dream

ai li
from the old gembun anthology 6

i read more than once the entire mail strewn with such beautiful works . There is a marvelousness that seizes, strikes, and inflicts sensations .
(i think even the imperfections––play a role in this shock appeal).

Vijay Prasad

Yes!
Gembun terbalik is addictive!

Kala Ramesh

I am going through the Gembun in the anthology ‘evening’. It’s a beautiful collection of poems.

Thank you

Regards,
R. Suresh babu

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to you for beautiful and evergreen creative endeavours and support. I am honoured and humbled to receive the Gembun award and hope to keep contributing my writing efforts to the creative world.

Richa Sharma

Submission Guidelines

This is an open invitation for lovers of short form genres to submit Gembun/Gembun Terbalik for the proposed Gembun Anthology. All submissions will be selected, collated and edited by ai li, creator of gembun, cherita and dua, and the anthology will be published by the 1-2-3 Press which publishes the cherita.

We invite you to submit your best Gembun/Gembun Terbalik for the Gembun Anthology.

Please submit up to 30 Gembun [to include gembun terbalik or inverted gembun] to the editor for each anthology in the body of a single email.

There are no deadlines. Submissions are ongoing.

Please send me your Gembun/Gembun Terbalik gems on Life, Love, Loss and Renewal.

Meanwhile, do please keep sending in your wonderful gembun stories but be aware that I do not read simultaneous submissions. Please do not send in work you have submitted elsewhere.

Please note that we do not accept AI generated submissions.

They can cover births, deaths, anniversaries, betrayals, disappointments, abortions, bankruptcies, joblessness, vendettas, suicides et al; and also about travel, work, hobbies, light and dark passions, eating disorders, night shifts, cross dressing, the erotic, mindfulness and any other subject matter that I may have missed or forgotten. The list is endless.

Please do not send run-of-the-mill, conveyor belt, journal entries, religious or angry, political poems. There is always a place for these but they are not for these anthologies.

Careful collating and editing are crucial for each anthology, for it to be a timeless work of short stories in the gembun format.

Your words are allowed to breath in all that space
and enables the reader to slow right down to be in the quiet to fully appreciate
the timeless of your stories, and to be in the moment.

The copyright of all submissions to the cherita has to belong to the submitter, and the poem or poems have to be created by the submitter and not generated by AI [artificial intelligence].

Send your Gembun/Gembun Terbalik submissions to ai li at aili@thecherita.com

Please double click and use the standard submission email above. Thanks.

Please do not copy and paste this link elsewhere to use as this will not work.

*All submissions must be in the Arial 11 font size, left justified and not in italics.*

You may send your submissions in at any time and you must be at least 18 years old to submit.

For collaborations, please include the email addresses of all involved poets. Thanks.

All poems must be the author’s original work. We prefer previously unpublished poems. We will consider previously published Gembun/Gembun Terbalik from print or online journals, Facebook, twitter, blogs, social networking sites, personal websites, etc., only if you include appropriate acknowledgments and credits with these submissions.

We will disqualify all previously unpublished submissions which are under consideration elsewhere, or entered into competitions.

B A C K G R O U N D

Gembun was created and conceived by ai li on Friday 12 June 1997 and now accompanies Cherita and Dua on their storytelling journey. These are two other genres by ai li which poets and writers have now deemed iconic, and which are both instantly recognisable by their unique and distinctive formats.

Gembun is the sibling to Cherita and Dua with its very own unique 4 or 5 line storytelling format.

Cherita, Gembun and Dua are now a trinity of short form storytelling genres by ai li, along with nineteen other linked forms which were all created by ai li.

This new genre invites you to tell a timeless and minimal story within its few lines. Your words, though brief, should captivate.

There are now 13 Gembun Anthologies available for reading or research into the genre on Amazon in paperback and kindle, with gembun selected and edited by ai li. Each Anthology showcases 92 timeless virgin Gembun.

The plural for GEMBUN is GEMBUN.

GEMIGA [gem-eager] is for Gembun with Art, and GEMROSE is for Gembun with Prose.

If a Gembun is titled, then it is rogue and not to be considered a Gembun.

6 Gembun by ai li

looks like rain

bringing in
laundry
and dreams

ai li

dark night

let there
be lanterns
of fireflies

ai li

penny lane

will it ever
grow old
in song ?

ai li

swaying lanterns

those shanghai nights
when red was the colour
of a mouth

ai li

the skipping rope in a cul-de-sac

a child
who looks like me
becoming dusk

ai li

Midnight…

the ouija board
spelling out
shadow

ai li

6 Gembun Terbalik by ai li

porchlight
on
an autumn evening

moths are home

ai li

the
love letter
never sent

chanel no. 5

ai li

the storm
within
never heard

zazen

ai li

how
we have aged
come winter

how white the snow

ai li

petit fours
to sweeten the dark
of an urban cage

one songbird barely alive

ai li

a taste
of
borrowed honey

bee mine

ai li

More examples of virgin Gembun can be found in ai li’s two books on Gembun, the weight of rain and blank screen, as well as 13 Anthologies have now been published and they are snow clouds, evening, paper talisman, windswept rain, deepening night, the old, white flowers, coming home, bedtime story, rain song, ice storm, belonging, the water and dancing silhouette. These books are all available in paperback and kindle on Amazon, thanks to all your amazing enthusiasm and strong faith for, and in this genre. These fine books can be used for reference if you are new to the Gembun genre.

For more information and examples of Gembun, please visit www.aili.co.uk/gembun/

Fine examples by Larry Kimmel, Joanna Ashwell and myself can be found, along with Gembun’s original guidelines on my personal website www.aili.co.uk/gembun/

The Original and Official Guidelines
G E M B U N A N T H O L O G Y G U I D E L I N E S

G E M B U N [1-3 or 1-4] [pronounced Gem-Boon]

A Gembun is made up of either a one-word first link or anything up to one sentence, to be capped by a haiku of up to four lines.

The Gembun has to include an element of suggestion in either the opening sentence, the haiku or in both. It was created by ai li on the 12 June 1997, inspired by Larry Kimmel’s TIBUN.

G E M B U N T E R B A L I K [3-1 or 4-1] – inverted gembun [pronounced Gem-Boon Tur-Bar-Lake]

Gembun Terbalik now joins this minimal form and is an inverted Gembun. It is written with a haiku of 3 or 4 lines as its opening stanza and then capped by a one liner.

The Gembun and Gembun Terbalik have to include an element of suggestion in either the opening sentence or haiku, the haiku or opening sentence or in both. Gembun was created by ai li on the 12 June 1997, inspired by Larry Kimmel’s TIBUN. www.aili.co.uk/gembun/

Like most linked forms, Gembun and Gembun Terbalik can be written and used in a sequence if preferred but it remains at its most powerful as it was created – as 2 minimal stanzas that need no other distractions. After all, it is the older sibling of Cherita [only 10 days apart at birth] and they both share the same strong spirit of storytelling.

The Gembun, Cherita and Dua, in my opinion, embody the true essence of short form poetry which is saying more with fewer words.

ai li
creator of Gembun, Cherita and Dua
editor and publisher of the cherita

N.B.

The original guidelines for Gembun and Gembun Terbalik are as above and are the only official valid guidelines for the Gembun genre. There can be no variations to these guidelines without the permission, consent and approval of ai li, the creator of the genre. All rogue attempts to vary these guidelines remain rogue attempts and should be ignored when you write Gembun.

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT LIKE ITS SIBLING CHERITA, GEMBUN TOO, DO NOT HAVE TITLES.

G E N E R A L C O N D I T I O N S

Once we notify you that we have accepted your poems for publication, in the print, e-book, and/or online versions, please do not share or submit your work elsewhere until we have published your work, or the editor will withdraw your work from publication.

We also ask that you refrain from republishing your work in any medium [including facebook, instagram, twitter and blogs etc.] for 90 days from publication in the anthology.

the 1-2-3 press does not pay its contributors nor does it offer contributors’ copies, although they will be available for purchase. Copyright reverts to the author or artist upon publication.

the 1-2-3 press reserves the right to reprint contents from its publications on its website and in future print anthologies without having to seek further permission from its submitters, and all submissions to the cherita, the Gembun and Dua Anthologies and constitute acceptance of this condition.

the 1-2-3 press reserves the right to print online or in print journals and anthologies, in whole or in part, in its sole discretion, all letters and comments to the editor without having to seek further permission from the author, and submission of comments or letters to the editor of the cherita, the Gembun and Dua Anthologies constitute acceptance of this condition.

Published poets of cherita, gembun, dua in the cherita and all its publications, and other original genres created by ai li, will be informed if any of their poems are featured in any published and online essays, audio and visual interviews by ai li or featuring ai li.

G E M B U N A N T H O L O G Y I N F O and submission guidelines updated august 2024

G E N E R A L C O N D I T I O N S

G E M B U N A N T H O L O G Y I N F O
and submission guidelines
updated august 2024