Featured Poets
John Glenday
Marjorie Lotfi Gill
Charles Lauder, Jr
David Coldwell
Rebecca Gethin
Ken Evans
John Foggin
Suzannah V. Evans
Pippa Little
Pauline Rowe
Stephanie Conn
Paul Stephenson
Finola Scott
Breda Wall Ryan
Martin Bewick
Robin Houghton
Malcolm Terry
Mary Noonan
Frank Dullaghan
Jeffa Kay
Editorial
After all limited edition copies of Issue 1 sold within a week, we decided to double the number of hand-stitched journals for Issue 2. There were days when this seemed more than a little daunting but now they’re completed in their limited palette to reflect winter, we hope you’ll feel that you’re holding an art object and a journal of carefully selected poetry. The ideas for our journal were sown in our collaborative writing when we both started drafting poems together at the Walker Art Gallery in 2014, so it feels good that the two aspects are strong in the journal we’ve created.
It’s been challenging and exciting to make selections for this second issue for which we received almost four hundred poems. This edition contains the maximum of twenty we’ve planned for a journal. The poems not only bring together work from poets from Cork to Liverpool to Northumberland; from Co. Antrim to the Scottish Highlands to Essex to Dubai, but also represent work from poets publishing their first poems to those who who’ve published many collections.
It was a delight and privilege to receive a poem from John Glenday who, within the ten lines of his short poem, gives so much to ponder about significance, insignificance, and beauty. Although there was no theme for this issue, the poems have come together to explore ideas perhaps uppermost in our minds at this time of the year, about what loss or apparent loss means, and how it may be a source of transformation or even new life despite a sense of the opposite.
An enormous thank you to those who sent us work, have ordered copies, and those who made their way to this beautiful city of Liverpool for the winter launch. Special thanks to the staff at The Open Eye Gallery for their warm welcome. It’s been wonderful to launch our journal here.
We hope you enjoy, read and re-read these poems, and perhaps look up the poets to further encounter their work better.
For now – all good wishes for a healthy, happy, and creative New Year 2018,
Maria and Michael
December 2017