Isabelle Baafi, Guest Editor for Issue 8, sets out what she’s looking for in your submissions
Our window is open till midnight on 6th June
As the world holds its breath and eases itself towards the end of lockdown, I’m looking for poems that illuminate the murky path between one state and another. I’m looking for poems that find the seam, the bridge, or the gulf between two or more extremes, and can zoom in, or hold them up to the light, or probe them from every angle. I’m talking about TRANSITIONS... All kinds. For this issue,
show me your transformations: your mutations, evolutions, shapeshifting, radicalisations; your neighbourhood gentrifications; your makeovers, pregnancies, and pubescence; your disappearing accents, your menopausal shifts, your gender transitions; your stubble between shaves, your roots between touch ups, your tanning skin, your half-grown-out fringe;
invite me on your voyages: your pilgrimages and underground rides, your odysseys of moving house, changing city, or crossing borders;
take me to your middle grounds (or even Middle Earth – why not): the moral grey areas; the partings of your hair; the isthmus between continents; the neutral waters, purgatories, ocean crossings, and birth canals; the thresholds over which brides are carried; the airport doorways where cool air clashes with tropical heat;
walk me through your conduits: your gullets, pipelines, tunnels, hoses, intestines, burrows, canals, alleys, blood vessels, drinking straws;
give me your in-between moments: your school breaks, gap years, rites of passage; your separations, and handover shifts; your edging, your brinks, your Zodiac cusps; the barrier between the past and present; that pink hour before morning erupts; that moment before the beat drops; that second after you’ve dropped your phone, before it smashes on the ground!
Tell me whatever transition means to you. Submissions can be linguistic, or visual, or anywhere in between. I’m particularly keen to read work from writers of colour, women, and working class, ESL, disabled, and LGBTQ+ writers.
Follow the link here for more details on how to submit.
