welcome

A winter issue arriving in spring is perhaps an opportunity to speak about the dissolving of divisions; seasonal, temporal, historical. This year, blooms arrived early only to be scythed by a late, sudden frost. Winter was too warm. Hedgehogs crept out from their hibernation early and had nothing to eat. The seasons, and what they mean to us, are becoming unsteady. The change is irreversible, at least in our lifetimes. Boundaries will continue to blur, shift, collapse.

The pieces in this issue were drawn together over the long quiet of the winter months, and all in their way interrogate the edges, divisions, and boundaries between things and people. Featured artist Andy Wiener’s work maps the brevity of human life onto the deep continuities of the natural world; Claire Siebers’ fiction exhorts us towards a transcendent kind of blurring, while Arthur Mandal’s restrained coming-of-age tale sensitively explores the moment where childhood wonder tips irrevocably into knowing. Ash Marinaccio speaks with Palestinian multidisciplinary artist Emilé Saba about creating work that blurs the edges of traditional forms while negotiating internal and external political divisions in Palestine, while Nancy Campbell’s poetry both collapses and expands sensory boundaries, embracing nature’s ambiguities with careful awe.

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Enjoy.

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The Editors, March 26th 2023