Gboyega Odubanjo reflects on editing the sixth issue
There is a global pandemic. There is more than one. This is obviously bad for all the reasons that you know, for all the reasons that I know, and for many more reasons that we are learning. And it has meant that, when reading the poems for the sixth issue of Tentacular, I have largely been unburdened by the noise I usually associate with poetry. Be that the noise of a tube rushing through the underground, of glasses being filled in a pub, or just of the general outside. Instead, when reading these poems from the shifting comfort and discomfort of my bed, I have been looking at—as Belinda Zhawi puts it—”The sunny streets outside deserted; with envy [I watched] the trees sway to themselves”.
In my call-out for this issue I chose, instead of words, to present a selection of images that spoke to me and that I hoped would speak to others. I’ve found, in lockdown, that “everyone’s talking about everything all the time” (Cai Draper). The noise that I would expect outside has morphed into something else: digital, traumatic, incessant. I hoped that rather than filling space with my own words I could leave space for others to realise themselves in, and realise they did. It has been a privilege working with Jonathan for this issue, and I want to thank all of the poets who submitted for trusting us with your words. There is a force of creation and spirit beyond this “world its dull prose its own poor form” (Andrew Nightingale), a world of “colonising & apologising” (Jessica Murrain), and I would like to believe that some of that force lives in these poems.
For the banner of this issue I have chosen a section of Lorna Simpson's 'Corridor (Phone)'. Both women in the painting are alone but, I would argue, never lonely. They stand firm in their desire for connection, for something beyond and after this. For me, there is hope in Lorna Simpsons’ work, a readiness to it, always moving. And even in the lowest moments of some of these poems there exists a similar sense that “we always ready” (Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa), that we move.
