Spring 2023
Issue 29
Dear Readers and Writers:
Eight years ago we first constructed our website (thank you Sumy Designs!) and then we waited. The first submission that appeared in the inbox was a poem from a young writer in Indiana. Although we’ve received countless stories, essays, book reviews, photography, and travelogues since then, our poetry submissions outnumber all the others by about three to one.
It could be that British poet W.H. Auden was onto something when he said:
Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.
And while we’ve received poetry in many formats— sonnets, haikus, odes, and ghazals, we’re just as glad to see students abandon official structures, and explore their own creative forms.
The poems in our spring issue are all over the board, which is just how we like it.
Northwestern University student Maddie Kerr starts off her poem into congruence, with hair clippers in hand ‘buzzing a lullaby.’
Ivi Hua describes herself as an Asian-American writer/dreamer/ poet, and muses about life in all the things I tell myself.
The opening lines of Potential Potion for a Wildlife Brew (Peas in a pod are accustomed to company, but I am not) find writer Kamilah Valentin Diaz pondering a major life decision.
In our nonfiction section Addeline Struble uses poetic and poignant language to hold a lost sister close in past, present, future.
And in answer to the perennial question — do we ever publish the same students more than once? Yes— see The Physician from the prolific and talented Nigerian writer/poet Samuel Adeyemi.
When we accepted Pantoum for the Departed from A.R. Arthur he wrote in an email— “hey, thanks for homing my poem!” Which reminded us again of our main mission—to discover and bring all these gems of student writing first HOME to our site, and then out into the wide world.
Enjoy the spring issue!
Molly Hill
Editor