Present Tense Zine (PTZ) is our in house publishing project. It is primarily and audio-zine, but spans digital & printed works, live performance and other physical formats. Each edition gathers poetic submissions in sonic form, honouring the voices of poets in ways that amplify both their work and its context.

Edition 2 will be co-edited with our Artist in Residence Maite de Orbe, whose image-making practice creates poetic landscapes that move through identity, gender and queerness, belonging, migration, and community. Their recent exhibition A Moment Opposite to Blindness (titled from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red) explored surrender and suspended violence. Two works from that exhibition—both titled Crush, part of an ongoing series that signals Maite’s obsession with crashes and crushes—are currently on display at Present Tense during their residency.

For this edition, we invite poets and sound makers to respond to Maite’s images and to the theme Crush. Please also download the prompt PDF to see Maite’s images.

We want to hear your words in your voice. Submissions to PTZ are made with voice-note audio recording — please see the submissions form for details. Alongside your audio, include a text or image version of your work.

Selected participants will be featured in the digital and audio release of Edition 2, with a printed edition to follow. Accepted participants will also be invited to perform their pieces live at Present Tense in December 2025.

You can listen Edition 1 of PTZ or buy a copy of the printed edition via bandcamp.

We review the first 50 submissions each edition.

SUBMISSIONS OPEN > October 1-31