Oh our days, it’s a certified banger! We asked, and you delivered in surplus.
As the submissions poured in, we were initially daunted by the task ahead. An apprehension that quickly transmuted into fervent excitement as we were gifted with the pleasure of living among your words.
Byung-Chul Han speaks to ritual as an antidote capable of making our fleeting time feel habitable. For us, this process has been such a ritual—anchoring us at the altar of voice.
Through the editorial process, we developed our own internal THRUM, one scored by the vibrations of every submission. Like writing, reading can often be solitary. Working through these poems collaboratively meant we were able to create and experience a new language, bespoke to this edition, and in conversation with all the work.
Our regular curatorial practice is steeped in alchemising the organic (and exchanged in a series of GIFs). We allow chaos room to breathe within the parameters of order.
We often discuss the societal function of poetry. While a definitive answer would negate the exploration, the conversation always seems to orbit the value of art in general, as salve, archive, and the purest expression of what it means to be human—and as devotion.
These poems compose a symphony of experience and emotion. From melancholic to abstract to unbridled joy, essential to our times. Earthquakes, correspondence across spacetime, tongues, prophets, marine life, mastications of the spirit… Selfishly, they are an ode to what we love—writing that makes our neck hairs stand, and our hearts skip beats.
The problem of any choice is that something must go unchosen. Arguably, our most difficult decision lay in what not to include. The breadth of formal mastery, raw emotive power and experimental fortitude was astounding to read, and reaffirmed that poetry is still very much alive and thrumming.
To the writers—thank you for your vulnerability, grace and talent.
To you, dear readers—may these selected works thrum in your soul.
G & T
