Since May I have been editing a small word-of-mouth online magazine called Five Poetry Journal. Issue 4 was released today (see: http://fivepoetryjournal.tumblr.com).
The aim of Five Poetry Journal is to showcase five poets five times a year. I wanted the journal to remain free of ‘bells and whistles’ so that the poems could speak for themselves. Another objective was to include poetry from poets of diverse backgrounds and experience. Ideally this meant sharing poetry from both hemispheres and in the first four issues work from Australia, Ireland, England, Scotland and the US have been included. I aim to cover more ground as each issue unfolds.
For those interested in submitting work for consideration please check the Submission Guidelines at http://fivepoetryjournal.tumblr.com/guidelines.
Issue 4 includes the work of Michael H Brownstein (USA), Mick Corrigan (Ireland and Crete), Adam Crothers (Northern Ireland and England), Judith R Robinson (USA) and Jessica Raschke (Australia), and is loosely framed around the notion of Oíche Samhna and Día de los Muertos, of commemoration and keeping an open dialogue with (and about) the mysteries.
Some people enjoy this time of year and have a lot of fun with Halloween while others consider it a bit of a con. Needless to say we live with the knowledge of the past and present every day of our lives. Because of this I will leave you with a quote from one of Scotland's finest poets:
A guest is as good as a ghost at this time,
at the hinge of the year when the gap
between the shades and the shadowed is just
slow air.
-- Robin Robertson (from Samhain)