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continue the voice Letters 28/02/21
Issue
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A Note From The Head Editor W
ell, February has been a month not full of much change for us in the Continue The Voice team. We are still having many Zoom and Facebook calls and living on our Google Drive during what feels like a never-ending lockdown. On the plus side, some of Scotland has had some snow which has been lovely and I have been able to spend more time writing letters again which is one of my favourite pastimes. This issue is in fact all about letters and it might actually be one of my favourite issues to date. I particularly love Ed Ahern’s poem: ‘An Elegy for Silent Letters’ and Lori Samuels’ personal essay: ‘The Palmer Method’. As we are in lockdown once again, we decided to give you not one, but three artists in this month’s gallery, and when you read it you will discover one of my favourite art forms! So grab a beverage of your choice, cosy on up and enjoy reading! Kirsty Taylor She /Her
Front cover photography by Sophie Freestone Magazine Design by Anna McFarlane
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CONTENTS
Snail
Mari
Happ
Lette
Poet
Fai R
Poet
The P
Dear
Pobo Pari
Inter
The G
The H
Touc
Shor
Lette
Emily
Thing
Playl
Susta
Make
Resta
Smal
Coor
What
What
Subm
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l Mail - 6
ion Jochman’s Photography - 7
py Mail - 8
ers to my Father - 9
try Corner 1 - 10
Rose’s Photography - 13
try Corner 2 - 14
Palmer Method - 16
r Editor - 17
ody’s Nerfect - 18 Singh’s Photography - 19
rview with an Author - 20
Gallery: Calligraphy - 22
Hat Box - 28
ching Piece - 29
rt Story - 30
ers From My Sister - 32
y Darrer’s Photography - 33
gs We’re Loving - 34
list - 36
ainable Art: Pepper Peach Illustrations - 38
e-up Looks - 40
aurant Highlight - 42
ll Business Spotlight: Folkways Press - 44
rie Moments - 46
t Do Letters Mean To You? - 48
t’s Coming Next Time - 50
mission Opportunity -51 5
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Snail mail
n a world full of Zoom calls, WhatsApp group chats and Facebook messages, it can be hard to remember the excitement of receiving correspondence from someone else. Technology has made us more connected which can be great, but sometimes can be too much. There is an inability to turn off, and you never really have to chat with your friends as you know what they have been up to just by scrolling their Instagram feed. But here’s the thing, do you actually know much about your friends if you only watch their life through a curated lens? In a world of information overload, a letter is the purest rarity there is. Keeping in touch with friends who live abroad via a letter is a priceless pastime. The moment when a handwritten letter arrives at your door is a feeling that any technology app is yet to replicate. You can write loads in a letter or just a little, you can keep it plain or make it aesthetic. You can even recycle a letter or a card. My parents give each other the same anniversary card every year and sign their name again each year so this card becomes a historical relic in time. My dad also does this with a friend from university with a Christmas card and they have been doing it for over 30 years. On that folded up printed piece of paper is ‘Charlie’, ‘Louise and Charlie’, ‘Louise, Charlie and Bump’, ‘Louise, Charlie and Kirsty’, ‘Louise, Charlie, Kirsty and Bump’, ‘Louise, Charlie, Kirsty and Rory’: a true history of our little family. They have a card each and they just go back and forth every year because the thing with letters and cards is that if you look after them they survive and become treasures. Any card with my late great-aunt’s handwriting makes me feel close to her again, and letters serve not just as a history of your life, but of your friendship and remind you how loved you are. To write a letter takes time and energy, and you can even make a new friend through writing letters. That is why to me, snail mail will always be the ultimate form of communication.
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By Kirsty Taylor
Marion Jochman’s Photography By Marion Jochmans. You can find more of Marion’s photography on her Instagram.
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Happy mail This venture was born at the beginning of quarantine, 2020. Stuck at home, recently out of a job and surrounded by people whose joy and freedom seemed to have been sucked out of their lives, I knew I wanted to do something to help break folks out of frustration, loneliness and heartache.
It is a subscription service aimed at bringing the joy of snail mailing into homes on a monthly basis, with a new literary topic every time! You can learn more here. By Sarah Moore
Happy Mail seemed like the answer. It combines a meditative letter that will whisk you away from real life for a few joyous minutes, along with a small collection of simple, well-curated art items: a print to hang or pin to a board, a decal to decorate a loved item or gift to a friend, a ‘scrappy packet’ of crafting and snail mailing supplies lent to a later creative effort.
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Letters to my Father collages By Malgorzata Marta Zych. Malgorzata was born in Świdnica, Poland and now lives and works in London. She has a BA from Wroclaw College of Art and Design. She has been part of many exhibitions and workshops throughout her career so far. You can find her work on her website or instagram.
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Poetry Corner 1 Last Letters Gone are those hours on the patio with pen and pastel stationery, printed with a border with faux embroidery and matching envelopes, pens with ink drawn up from a bottle in navy or indigo, words flowing full of mixed feelings across miles to reach Diana in New York from my apartment in Florida. Gone are the shoeboxes of refolded letters tied and saved with ribbon or strip of scrap fabric preserving detailed tales of discos and dinner dates with men I never saw again, encounters delivered with suspense, revelation when you turned the page – He was a priest! – chronicles of the crazy supervisor who insisted I sing with him, and a shrink who told me secrets of his other patients because I was special. Letters with the day and date, names of impending hurricanes, lists of books read and fish caught, what I’d cooked for dinner for ten or gulped alone in front of the TV. I saved letters written by the boy who would be my husband, his boyish scrawl from summer ‘65, when he lived in Utica with family, and I was at the summer bungalow with Mother, where I wrote on my lap, on stone steps still warm from the day, letters filled with love and longing, something to hold onto. By Joan Mazza. Joan has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia. Her website is here.
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Letter to Mother, During the Pandemic of 2020 Dear Mother, the story I most often heard of your early days was how your toddlerhood was toppled by the flu pandemic, how you lay in a vegetative state for weeks, had to start learning to walk and talk all over again. I miss you so much, but I’m glad you are not stuck in a nursing home, bored and feeling abandoned, playing game after game of solitaire, reading the front page of The Tribune over and over. Forbidden daily visits from family. Forbidden to hug or be hugged. No jigsaw puzzles, no games of Scrabble, no worship services or guitar concerts in the common room. No racing your electric wheelchair down the hall to find a friend (No nurse threatening to take away your driver’s license). No meals in the dining hall with other residents, your smiles and conversation a balm to someone’s loneliness, as you added three sugar packets to your mashed potatoes. How often in your last years nursing assistants came to see you after someone yelled at them, knowing you would offer a hug and tell them you loved them. What would you think about this time when touching others is forbidden, no kindly tap on the shoulder, no kiss on the cheek? Not even a squeezed hand. I’m sure you would be like a toddler, unable to resist the temptation to reach out your arms.
By Wilda Morris. Wilda is a Workshop Chair for Poets and Patrons of Chicago, and past President of the Illinois State Poetry Society, she has published poems in numerous anthologies, webzines, and print publications. She is happiest when playing with her grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Her poetry blog at wildamorris.blogspot.com features a monthly poetry contest.
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The Collected Letters of My Daughter No Hi, Dad, w’sup? but a texted TTYL. This is the way she holds me off. Never privy to her late-night whereabouts, all I want is: When is she coming home? Instead she writes L8R, by which she means there’ll be a blue moon in the black sky before I find out. Then I make my plea: Come on. Not fair. I gotta know. but all I get is STBY, and indeed it sucks to be me, but WTF, this is all I’ve got, till I try TMIRLAGOITES, because she used to be such a curious child-and I do get a WDYM? I write: The moon is rising like a giant orange in the eastern sky – thinking how we used to like to look at it together as it faded to lemon the higher it got, then eggshell white no larger than a child’s thumb held back and forth to her eye in the black and blue of the early night. And she writes, WKEWL,OM, which means she’s not at all impressed, but I ask, OM? because I’m desperate for any letters she can spare for me. Old Man, she replies, full length, after making me wait, and then, a moment later, LMAO. I’m happy she’s happy, though it’s a shame an ass might come so easily off when I’d prefer hers intact, laughing, and right here next to me.
By Alan Walowitz. This poem was originally published in Glow Truth Serum Vol. 6 by Truth Serum Press. Alan is from Great Neck, NY, is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Forthcoming from Arroyo Seco Press is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written trans-continentally with Betsy Mars.
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Photograph Fai Rose find her on Instagram.
Photograph by Fai Rose Find her work on Instagram
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An Elegy for Silent Letters 14
Logically, if a letter’s in a word Succumbing to silence isn’t an option. Obscene elisions should never occur Edges or middle, stressed or soft Love of aspiration should be taught. Champagne poured for enunciation. Ghost letters, however, abound. Business coddles brevity. Knives are taken to sounds. Folk refuse stutter steps. Damn it all, let’s be precise.
Font I never type in Arial, whose letters traded graceful curves for lines unsexed, calligraphy caught in the standard fetters of thin-lipped, snobby anorexic text. By Ed Ahern. Ed resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over three hundred stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works on the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.
I never knew how Ariel could gaze upon the man who prospered by her chains, sans-seraphed but with hopeful heart ablaze, she dreamed of staying trapped despite the pain. I never could be aerial, bereft of wings and fins, a loss we cannot mend and cannot fight. Such evolutionary theft will cost us all our serifs in the end. To protest the truth of this foul omen all I do is type, in Times New Roman.
Poetry Poetry will save my ass beyond the freckles of times and its indecorous arrogance will colour the endless prairies of every fuck-up I buried along concealed locations like a dog leaving its bone to reinstate its love, whatever it’s left one day, some point, somehow poetry will disseminate tears inaugurating new oceans of fight roaring waves sounding like strings cuddling like a mother at the edge of her cliff at the beginning of life it will bite the heaven out of me in a butterfly-like kiss I won’t even try, to resist
By Sarah Bricault. Sarah has a PhD in neurobiology and currently works as a postdoc in that field. Her fascination with the mind and how it processes information often finds itself in her poetry, as do themes related to mental health. Sarah’s work can be found in Brown Bag Online, Beyond Words, Serotonin Poetry, High Shelf Press, and elsewhere. For more information on Sarah, check out SarahBricault.com.
By Aldo Quagliotti. Aldo is an italian poet living in London, UK. He’s the author of Japanese Tosa (London Poetry Books) and Confessions Of A Pregnant Man (AllienBuddha Press). His poems have been rewarded in Italy, Brazil, USA, Canada, Ireland and in the UK. He has been included in many anthologies, several webzines and magazines have also published his work. In October 2020, he was chosen to represent the Poetry Corner at the London Chelsea + Kensington Art Week.
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The Palmer Method ‘No one appreciates beautiful handwriting anymore,’ I’ve heard several people – usually over 60 – bemoaning today’s preference for keyboarding and block lettering. At the risk of sounding like a Baby Boomer longing for the past, I’m still a lover of cursive handwriting. Also known as script, writing in cursive with pen to paper is a conduit for the senses. Is the pen mightier than the sword? I think so. My first drafts power their way to creation, written in script, before they become editable Word docs. The Palmer method, developed by Austin Palmer in the late 19th century, employed big swings, loops on the capital B’s and D’s like cloverleafs on a highway, and the healthy tilt toward the right, each letter ending and connecting to the next with an upward swing. I remember learning the Palmer method in Catholic elementary school. Penmanship was a line-item subject on the report card, deserving a grade for the quality of your handwriting. In class, the alphabet cards stared down at us, fastened to the wall above the black board. I stared back, studying those beautiful symbols. A means for me to be exact, neat, perfect. And to get an A! I’d sit mesmerised watching Sr. Francis Xavier write homework assignments on the board, perfection flowing in chalk before my eyes. So, I’d practice slowly, meticulously, with a fine-point fountain pen, crafting the shapely alphabet forms in between the protective borders of the blue-lined paper. My father must have learned cursive writing the same way. He possessed the most beautiful
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handwriting, as beautiful as those alphabet letters I studied in school. Dad’s signature might have impressed Mr. Palmer himself. Large and bold. The R in Robert orbiting in a wide ellipse on top; and the lower leg flowing smoothly into the o; and the b tilted just right, with the little tail blending smoothly into the e; and the r in the shape of a v connecting to the final t. In honour of his father, Dad’s signature included the Jr. long after his father had died. Robert Samuels, Jr. The capital S almost like a musical clef and the lowercase letters traveling in waves to the l and the final s that rose up like the tide. But there was so much more to his handwriting than its appearance. Whatever Dad felt, he couldn’t say with his writing. Like many of us, he relied on Hallmark to express the tender feelings in his heart. He once sent me a Valentine with factory-printed words like proud of you, good daughter, always in my heart, things he could never utter. But he signed his card Love, Dad in that artistic handwriting, his expression of love reserved, safe from vulnerability. When I told him how much the card meant to me, he revealed the amount of time he had spent in the store, reading dozens of cards on the rack, until he had found just the right one. It took many years for me to grasp the depth of my father’s love. As a child, his gruffness at times and especially his remoteness, made me believe he didn’t love me at all. As a young adult, I didn’t recognise his attempts to protect me from my naive flirtations with a world he considered dangerous. When I, at last, matured and took a nuanced look at the man himself,
his r altho love do it Whe hear me w Whe prot were one I eve Dad ties, spea out a Satu As m the i in Sa verle Dad style oped with Rob
reticence and his actions, I learned that ough it wasn’t my chosen way of being ed, it was the only way he knew how to t. en I remember his Love, Dad now, I r his concern, the times he’d say, ‘call when you get home.’ en I reminisce, his Love, Dad is full of tectiveness, when he said, ‘I wish you en’t living alone, so you’d have someto take care of you.’ en learned to understand his Love, d of anger when I was in my early twen, still living at home, and he refused to ak to me for three days after I’d stayed all night Friday and came back at 6AM urday! my signature also matured over time, initial cap L in Lorraine and initial cap S amuels began to carry that same cloeaf pattern with a wide swing, just like d’s. Shaping these letters in the Palmer e revealed the confidence I’d develd in the power of my pen. And along h it, my deepening connections to bert Samuels, Jr. By Lorraine Rose Samuels. Lori is an essay writer and published poet who teaches English as a Second Language. Her themes include extolling the wonders of nature, the transitions in life we journey through, and the imperfections and beauty of human attachment. Lorraine is currently crafting a book of essays and poetry. She lives in Brewster, NY with her four geriatric cats!
Dear Editor Poem I received a cookie-cutter form letter of rejection from the editor for someone else’s poem in my SASE. That someone else sent me the acceptance letter she received for my poem in her SASE. My poetic response: this seventeen syllable ‘precursory curse’ villanelle. Dear Editor, I appreciate the time you took to send this rejection letter about your decision not to publish me or put my work in print, but I think, indeed, you really need to do your rejections better. With your fine job title I felt you’d be the writing standard setter ‘til you rejected me in an SASE someone else had sent. Should I appreciate the time you took on this rejection letter? My intent is not to anger or put my future chance in fetter, nor is the matter of this patter solely to chastise you or vent, yet I think, indeed, you really need to make your rejections better. Some of my best saved rejections have never fed a paper shredder; that’s how I detect, in retrospect, rhyme and reason to circumvent the monumental task you took to construct this rejection letter. Try to get the right writer’s name in your rejection letter header or you may wonder where the submissions for your next edition went. So I think, indeed, you really need to sort your rejections better. In closing, I’ll just make this point I surely hope you will consider: Always remember you cannot edit what we writers never sent. Though I appreciate the time you took on your rejection letter, still I think, indeed, you really need to check your rejections better. Yours Truly, Carl ‘Papa’ Palmer ~ writer By Carl ‘Papa’ Palmer. Carl is originally from Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, and now lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is enjoying life as ‘Papa’ to his grand-descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer. PAPA’s MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever!
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Pobody’s Nerfect! Dear readers, I’m writing to you today to ask you to forgive us editors. Despite most people’s assumptions, we are, in fact, only human, and despite being highly trained and experienced in noticing these types of things, we do sometimes miss them. I’m speaking about typos. Everybody’s done it. You’re enjoying your new book, becoming immersed in the story, and then suddenly! A typo. A spelling mistake. A missing word where one should be. We understand it’s a pet-hate of many. We also understand that it can turn people off a book. Us too! For many, it’s the reason we get into editing and publishing. We want to make a change, and publish books in the best way possible.
“Turning off things like ‘brain skip’, which is when your brain fills in the gaps because it knows what somthing ‘should’ say.”
But, despite what many ‘90s rom-coms told us, (because EVERYONE worked in publishing in those!) editors don’t just sit around reading all day. In fact, we have many other tasks to do on a daily basis, and there is very little time for sitting and leisurely reading.
We work on multiple books at once – all at different stages of their manuscript journey, and we have to remember which manuscript is at which stage. We also liaise with authors – either sending the next round of corrections and edits back, or following up when the changes that need to be made are late back. We then have calls with authors to explain all the suggested changes – especially if they’re contentious to the author. And if the author is late in sending back these changes, there is then immense pressure to get the book to the next stage as quickly as possible. So we may work through the night to get the chapters read and checked. And it’s well understood that working non-stop without breaks is not great for your brain working at its maximum capacity. Editors are generally expected to provide the copy for the blurbs of the books – and okay all the cover art, typesetting and other design. We’re also expected to be speaking to higher-ups in the company to understand and stay ahead of the trends – both in what people are buying and what authors are creating. We must understand and know our company’s list inside and out, and be on top of the ‘next big thing’
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in our field. Publishing is a business, first and foremost, and so we must prove that every single book we’re working on is a great business fit within the company’s list. On top of that, editing a book takes a lot more time than simply reading it. There will be multiple rounds of reading and corrections, which are all looking at something different. If it is a developmental edit, you’re looking for big changes to the order of the plot, the chapters or even changes in tone or point of view. If it’s a line edit, then you’re reading every single word to work out if it should be there, and in what order. What a book is like when it is first written and what it is like when it’s published can be two totally different things. When these changes are implemented, it can cause problems – duplicated text, or even leftover words in paragraphs or at the ends of sentences. It’s a huge job to check the book at every stage. And for every edit, we must try to look at the book as if it is the first time we’ve seen it. Turning off things like ‘brain skip’, which is when your brain fills in the gaps because it knows what somthing ‘should’ say, or even spotting things that aren’t the norm – form instead of from, marginalizing instead of marginalising (dependent on the style guide). We’re looking for spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes at every turn, and cannot allow ourselves to be pulled into the narrative, but must read and consider the use of every single word. Doing this takes a lot of brain power – much more than just reading for pleasure. Try it – read every single word and piece of punctuation in this article, and consider what it means, why it’s there and is there a better way to say it still in the author’s voice, all within five minutes? It’s difficult. We editors are only human. To err is to be human. Sometimes, things slip through our net. Sometimes we notice the mistake in the text, but too late – the book has been sent to press. Sometimes not quite perfect is good enough. My request to you, dear readers, is when you next spot a mistake in a book you’re reading, don’t get angry, but smile, and know, this is a mark of humanity; of humility; of acceptance. It’s a mark of the human condition. Creating art through words will never be perfect, as language isn’t perfect, and we must accept it as such. Yours Sincerely, An Editor By Grace Balfour-Harle
Photograph by Pari Singh’s Pari is a 17-year-old girl from India, who is very passionate about photography. Besides photography, she also enjoys reading and art. You can check out her photography page on Instagram here.
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INTERview with aN AUthor
How did you get into writing? I was a big reader as a child; my Mum taught at my primary school and often after my lessons were over she would have paperwork to finish, and so I would wait in the school library and work my way through the shelves. I have also always kept diaries, and written things down as a way of experiencing them – or trying to pin down a feeling or a memory. During my undergraduate degree in English, I participated in NaNoWriMo, which I saw you had an article about in a previous issue of Continue The Voice – it was a major catalyst for me to feel writing a long form story is an achievable goal. After that I moved to Edinburgh to do a Masters in Creative Writing, and one of the most valuable things about that was making connections with other writers, and feeling like I was really committing to my writing. What inspired the idea to write ‘Amphibian’? A story so full of wit, excitement and yet also banalities of the everyday workplace in a way that is done so poignantly. Thank you, that’s so nice to hear about your reading experience! The idea came from something my flatmate said one summer’s day in 2014: she pointed out the reflection of the blue sky in a glassy high-rise building and said, ‘that looks like they’ve filled the building with water.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about that, and I asked her whether I could try to write a story around that idea, and she said yes. I also started from a feeling of wanting the water to feel… ordinary and real, not a metaphor. I kept returning to the opening sequence of the children’s cartoon, ‘Norman Normal’, which goes something like ‘the day the microwave exploded I was in my room reading comics, now my family are superheroes and I’m just… normal’. My first draft of ‘Amphibian’ starts like this: ‘The day the office flooded we had a big meeting. So you can imagine that the flood came as a massive inconvenience.’ The way you play on words and use irony such as the idea of ‘going under’ in business leading to literally going under water, and Rose looking for jobs on a boat in her past Google searches. Have you always been amused or intrigued by playing on words and irony? That’s such a good question! I have always really enjoyed playing with language. In German, my first language, one thing I love doing in my writing is to make a noun into a verb (‘they were autumning’) or otherwise play with grammatical categories. When I first moved to Edinburgh nearly eight years ago I found, like many second language speakers, that my personality is very different in English; I found it quite hard to be funny or to have quick responses to things, so it’s been a big learning experience. I think my delight about playing with words comes from that perspective of being a learner.
I love the use of emails and text messages throughout this novella and like to think they are modern day letters. What made you decide to include them in your narrative? Novels told in letters are some of my very favourite things, for example ‘Love, Rosie’ by Cecelia Ahern (which I read at 16 and have re-read a bunch of times since then), and the German book ‘Gut gegen Nordwind’ by Daniel Glattauer, which is about two people who accidentally start emailing each other. They inspired me to try to be really ‘in the moment’ with Rose in ‘Amphibian’, through seeing her compose emails and thinking about her word choice, and to receive information at the time that she’s receiving it; when she gets emails from her boss, that’s also when we get the information. What was your favourite part of writing this novella (if you had to choose)? I think my favourite part was the boozy lunch that Rose has with her friends! But I also really enjoyed writing Rose and Siobhan and their relationship at the office, and how that changes throughout the book. For me those moments of connection is where the tension in the book comes from, from what you can and can’t tell people in your life, what is left unsaid, and how you allow other people to be there for you. What is something you’d like to continue the voice on? It’s LGBTQ+ History Month in February. I would like to lend my support to trans youth by highlighting the organisations LGBT Youth Scotland, Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids. I also want to shout about the work of the Bi/Pan Library, who host an archive of bisexual, pansexual and fluid books and other media. You can find them on Instagram. Also: Category is Books in Glasgow is a brilliant queer bookshop, and Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh is fantastic and queer-owned, and both bookshops do home delivery! The theme of this month’s issue is letters, so what do letters mean to you? I love writing them and receiving them, I think there’s something really moving about knowing that that person has touched that piece of paper, if that makes sense! In the past year particularly I’ve exchanged a lot of letters with friends who live near and far, it’s just a different way of spending time with each other. Where can our readers find you and what’s next for your writing? I’m on Instagram (although I don’t post much at the moment, but when I do you’ll see it there!) and my website. I’m working on a PhD thesis on gender equality in contemporary Scottish writing and publishing, and I’m also working on a novel at the moment (and have been for seven years – it’s going okay! I am trying to be patient). By Kirsty Taylor
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THE GALLERY
This month on The Gallery we are treating you by featuring 3 different calligraphy artists.
Zuzanna Lukiewska
Zuzanna Lukiewska is a polish calligraphy artist and self-confessed stationery addict, you can find her work on Instagram.
Foroozan Eydivandi
Foroozan Eydivandi is a persian calligraphy artist who enjoys sharing her work on Instagram.
Suhani Madaan
Sushani Madaan is a new calligraphy artist and you can find her work on Instagram.
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Zuzanna Lukiewska
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Foroozan Eydivandi
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Suhani Madaan
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The Hat Box
A Personal Essay The hat box sits on the top shelf of my dead brother’s walk-in-closet. It has been there for the 30 years my brother lived here, given to him after our mother died and our father remarried. When I lift the box from the shelf, it is like holding my mother in my hands. Her hatbox sat on a shelf in my parents’ closets in all four of our childhood apartments. David and I were forbidden to open the box. ‘It’s private,’ my mother always said. ‘You heard your mother,’ my father always said. The box’s grey background is sprinkled with single roses with faded green stems and leaves. A narrow deep rose-colored velvet ribbon circles the lid. It is now coated with dust. I wipe off the dust, climb down from the step-stool, and sit on the floor in David’s bedroom. I remember the many times we took the hatbox down from our parents’ closet when they were not home. We were brave enough to open the box, but never enough to take any of the hundreds of letters out. Now, as I open it all these years later, my mother speaks to me, ‘They’re private.’ This time I answer, ‘Why are they still here, if no-one can read them?’ No response. I don’t take any letters out, then, but I put the hatbox in my car and bring it home with me to Maine. Now, I look at the hatbox every day. It sits not in a closet, but on a chair in my kitchen. Today, I open the box and sort through the letters. As I put them in chronological order, I picture my mother in 1943, 22-years-old, and my father, 21, a private first-class in the Army Air Force, stationed in Kentucky. I see them exactly as they looked then from their wedding picture, taken the day after they eloped during my mother’s first visit to the base. They are young, handsome, and smiling. They could not know how their lives would unfold, the challenges and joys they would share. They could not know that my mother’s life would be too short or that one day their 72-yearold daughter would lug their letters from Connecticut to Maine and debate for months whether to read them. I convince myself that there is a reason my parents kept those letters, that my father passed them on to my brother, that they sat on that shelf in David’s closet all those years. Those letters were waiting for me. I begin. I remove the thin sheets of paper from their airmail envelopes with trembling fingers. I am a young child again, fearful that I will be caught spying on my parents. After reading a few, the fear recedes and my young, newlywed parents appear before me. The letters speak of almost nothing but their love for each other, their longing to be together, their dreams for the future. They give only a few clues that the country is at war. Will this change when my father is ordered to the South Pacific? I read faster, skipping pages of declarations of undying love. Even knowing how their story ends, I want to know all the steps in between, before my brother was born, my mother on her own after his birth, my father at war. I know the story of my father’s homecoming. He arrives home three or four days early on Thanksgiving day, 1945. My mother is bathing at her parents’ apartment, where she and my infant brother live while my father is at war. I always believed that this is the night I was conceived, an idea my mother never discouraged. I return to the letters, but my questions will never be answered. The last letter in the hatbox is dated February 10, 1944. My parents know my mother is pregnant. They choose names, David for a boy, Jackie for a girl. My father waits in Kentucky for his orders; my mother experiences morning sickness nearly every day. Then, no more letters. There must have been more, at least the letters from my father, even if he could not keep those sent to him after arriving in the South Pacific. I am wracked with guilt. Were those letters in another container? One of the many boxes of papers in my brother’s closet? I had rifled through those boxes hurriedly, emptying David’s condo after his death. They contained his old sermons, newspaper clippings related to his career, diplomas, letters back and forth between David and our parents, between David and me. Did I toss out the rest of the love letters? I speak out loud, ‘Where are they, Mom? I know there were more.’ My mother answers, ‘They’re private, Jackie.’
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By Jacquelyn Jacquelyn is a social worker began writing retiring and to Maine. Sh participated i ing workshops several accom Maine authors the auspices o the Maine and Publishe ance or the Senior Colleg work. She writ ative nonfictio personal essay
n Lowe. a former r, who g after moving he has in writs led by mplished s under of either Writers ers AlliMaine ge Nettes creon and ys.
Touching Piece This piece of work is oil on paper, with the Hebrew letters sewn using wool. In this way the letters, which have always been used as a reference detached from reality, return to the tactile, come out of their two-dimensional representation thanks to the thickness of the seam on the paper. The Hebrew word means ‘to touch’, and at the very moment in which it indicates this gesture, it can also be touched: it is an invitation to give life to the letters. The Hebrew language is chosen for its still current symbolic and demiurgic value.
By Guido Nosari. Guido works between Milan and Berlin, using different materials, including textiles, painting, photography and installation, to explore the relationship between body and clothing, in different ways. Guido is featured in multiple exhibitions, the installation at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, had a solo show at the Shang Yuan Modern Art Museum of Beijing, and has won numerous international residences and prizes, such as the ten-year anniversary of the Modena Photography Foundation.
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SHORT STORY
Sultan, Pretty and Me Part 1
This is part one of our first ever three-part story, stay tuned for the next two issues to find out what happens next.
I sat, quiet, on the worn couch of my youth, struck full by the simple and extreme beauty of my cat. Sprawled in sloppy grace, white fur glowing in the slanting light of the setting sun, she, Pretty, efficiently washed her downy tum. Unwilling but forced by the moment of perfection, I fell to pondering the undeniable allurement of life. I wanted to deny the thoughts of breath and warmth that her lithe elegance brought. The relaxation – even in such a tendon-popping stretch – reminded me that nature had a lot to offer, that life held more attraction for the simplicity of a cat. I shifted my gaze to the unadorned wall across from the couch. Tired, I had, a moment before, been ruminating on Death’s stark loveliness. So clear as to be in the same room. Not corruption, was Death, but sterile, cold purity; an efficient housekeeper, devoid of emotion. I do not perceive Pretty’s innocence with the same eyes that looked upon only emptiness. For a pair of seconds, neither pet nor perimeter existed. The wall swam into focus. It showed old care by the neatly spackled and painted-over screw holes. Bookshelves had hung there, taken down when we’d sold our books to get through one particularly rough winter. Rising from the couch, its springs popping and creaking in ancient rhythm with my joints and bones, I shuffled to the center of the room on fuzzy-slippered feet and turned slowly in a circle. A room so familiar that it was strange: wooden floor, still showing the faint glow of (once) regularly applied polish, had lost its deep lustre; heavy, brown door with its shiny locks; huge, leaded window opening east onto the quiet street below (the main reason for our having picked this apartment); colourful area rug a few feet out from the window; ash-filled fireplace, with the unviewable pictures of a loving past on its plain, wood mantel; couch, the fabric in the front panel showing the shreds and threads of active claws. In the afternoon light, the cheap coffee table (plywood and plastic), empty but for the latest issue of ‘Home and Garden’, looked as out of place as it was. It could hardly replace its predecessor, a glorious antique oak, garage-sale treasure that had lost a leg for no reason I could ascertain. Perhaps it had given up out of despair. The small throw before the door was unhappy from many washings. It bore a few mud stains that shouted constant reminders of my own carelessness. The umbrella stand looked forlorn with only the one navy-blue umbrella to keep it company. A doorway to a small kitchen, once a warm and inviting place full of light and smells and cheery words, broke the expanse of wall behind the couch. Adjacent, the already-mentioned front door and beside it, the entry into the bedroom – which stood about six feet to the right of the front window. There was a TV that saw altogether too much use. I – we – had never been able to afford cable – forget Netflix: this was a TV, not a glorified computer monitor – and the images on Channel 2 looked fuzzy, but I – not we – found it a welcome electronic mental pabulum that filled my mind and crowded out the memories. I plodded to the bedroom, scuffing my thin leather soles on the floor, there to take up the never-ending inventorying once again. A single glance took it all in. Walls that used to be a light grey, but now were the colour of dust, the colour of soaked-in memories, enclosed me. Faded wallpaper clothed the south wall, showing a few bubbles and more signs of age: water stains in one corner and peeling edges where the ancient glue had released its hold. I remembered going to the showroom and picking out the paper with my new wife. I had wanted wild: a dozen colours 30
splashed on at random; she had insisted on sensible: an open, boxy pattern of plain off-white with alternating grey and gold lines. With time, I had come to appreciate her quieter choice. Now, I wondered if perhaps I shouldn’t have been more forceful: the room felt drab and too quiet. I forced myself to look at, to see, the too-soft double bed, with its matching dents, the right of which captured my every sleep. Next to the bed, the wood and magenta-velvet chair, one arm cracked from when Leticia and I had dropped it coming up the stairs to this, our honeymoon apartment. (Is that laughter I hear? Or a faulty memory filled with the echoes of old ghosts?) An antique crystal reading lamp – another of Leticia’s few and careful purchases in our budgeted life – outshone the generic appurtenances: dresser, bathroom door, overhead light with one burned-out bulb needing changing. I breathed in deeply. The scents of two lifetimes choked the air; swirling and golden motes of dust reflected a thousand pinpoints of light. The mirror over the small dresser was flecked with three-dimensional spots where some of the silver backing had chipped away. I could still see myself clearly but wished that the picture it showed might be a funhouse trick of distorted glass and light. Clicking claws approached. Seeming to feel some of my distress, she rubbed against my legs. I picked her up, scratched absently behind her ears until she began to purr. Still I stared at the worn visage before me. Wondering where it could have come from. The fur ball wriggled with annoyance when I stopped skritching, and I returned her to the freedom of the floor. She scampered out, chasing hallucinations or dust balls or flickers of light. The glass. Age lines are romanticised in books and movies. His creased face reflected a wisdom and nobility far beyond his years, and Old, yes, she was, but the lines enhanced extant beauty. No. The irregular pits and valleys in my face had always been – would always be – billboards promoting the empty end. I knew that Death and its powerful public relations firm put these and other markers up as advertisements for another reality. Eternityland. The last amusement park. Grey hair is distinguished; white, only pitiful. White and wispy, scattered across the steps of spotted, discolored scalp. More reminders of a life long gone: the crooked, stained teeth of poor hygiene, from inhaling that special death of the nervous and would-be sophisticated. And not enough visits to the dentist. Such teeth as to give a mortal dentist pause. For the first time, I realised my chin was what I would have called an ‘old man’s chin,’ years ago, when immortality seemed a given. My sparse, prickly beard grew through over-large pores. When I swallowed, soft wattles of skin flapped, and my prominent Adam’s apple ran up my neck and back down again, reminding me of cartoon gophers throwing up humps of earth as they tunneled. My eyes skittered away from the sight of life’s irrevocable finitude. By Bob Ritchie. Hailing from California, Bob Ritchie now lives on the lovely island of Puerto Rico, where he discovered, among other things, that wet heat is better than dry. Bob (as he calls himself) is a writer of stories and has penned several things that he believes are good. His work has appeared in Unlikely 2.0, Small Print Magazine, Triangle Writers Magazine, and others; two of his stories were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Neither won. Oh well. Go well. Background Image by Chen Yi Wen
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Letters from my Sister I have been reading the letters my sister Daun and I wrote to each other from 1968, when I headed off to college, to 2002, when she died at age 49 of cancer. Her voice comes through so clearly, more clearly really than in the few recordings we have of her, and she had a gorgeous voice. As I read, she makes me laugh all over again, as she does in this one, at age 17, reporting on being called into the high school principal’s office along with her friend over a national protest against the Vietnam War that they had planned to launch on their homeroom radio show that fall of 1969: Tom and I spent an hour there while he [the principal] censored our program and asked questions. If he could only stay on track! Would you believe that while talking about the moratorium, he went everywhere from candy sales to prostitutes. The program is cancelled, and I am sending it to you – don’t lose it ‘cause we only got one copy. The attached script is a very trenchant statement for that time and place. It’s a shame the student body didn’t get to hear it. Each paragraph of that twelve-page, pencil-written letter from Daun brings back a million details. Twelve pages was nothing unusual for a letter circulating in my family. ‘You people write notes to each other the length of books,’ a friend once said to me, bewildered at the note I left on the kitchen table for the Kendig clan. There’s a homemade Valentine I sent to her, a red heart-shaped doily, with these lines in black in the centre: And we can love by letters so and gifts, And thoughts and dreams. – John Donne So it must be from the winter of 1971, when I was taking a Donne course. There are many cards, actually, and she suggests that I finish my master’s thesis because she has purchased the perfect card to send me to celebrate its completion. She could stand at card counters for ages, elbowing strangers there and handing them a card. ‘Read this one,’ she’d say. ‘It’s hilarious.’ 32
“I have been thinking of handwriting, too, how much I did then, how very little I do now. Recent brain research seems to be telling us that nothing registers in the brain like a handwritten note.” *** I actually perused the letters today because I woke at 4 a.m., thinking of Daun and my whole family, how distant we have become with both Daun and my mother dead, and we three the main letter writers of us six. My mother actually wrote me a letter every weekday my first year in college, when I was nearly dying of homesickness. I have been thinking of handwriting, too, how much I did then, how very little I do now. Recent brain research seems to be telling us that nothing registers in the brain like a handwritten note. I have to say that none of the many, many, many emails I have written this week can hold a candle that burns at both ends to any one of my handwritten letters to my sister, but while our first letters to each other were handwritten, I see how they then became typed on typewriters, then word processed. Several folders I opened and stuffed right back in the file, one with notes and pictures from her five-year-old daughter during the last two years of her life, pages and pages and pages between her and her first husband during their long wrenching break-up and divorce. The hundreds of emails she wrote to friends during her illness. Too much. I just carried up and out and read the ones between her and me. Some of them. They’d all take
another lifetime. Our letters were written with a wink to a sister. She’s been winking at me and twinkling to herself all this afternoon, as have I, showing off our reading lists and our dogs’ antics, wondering about our parents, arguing about money, describing menus and performances, griping against wars and injustice. They go on and on, as emails do not. They contain pressed flowers and cartoons from The Far Side, and Doonesbury. They go on as later, when we had adult paychecks, we used to talk on the phone for hours and hours on Saturdays, then hang up and call back for the one thing we’d forgotten to tell, still sending letters during the week. So many of the letters end with P.S.s and P.P.Ss, as though we couldn’t bear to let the correspondence close. Sometimes the P.S.s were as
Emily Darrer’s photograph You can find more of her photography on Instagram.
long as the letters that began, ‘This is a short note until we talk Saturday…’ Our P.S.s could be letters in and of themselves. A one-liner of a P.S. just leapt out at me as was trying to leave the folder yesterday afternoon. At the end of a three-page, typed single-space letter, she had neatly half-written, half-printed this P.S. in bright green ink after the signature: There are lilac bushes all up and down the street and it’s all you can smell. Heaven. By Diane Kendig. Diane’s five poetry collections include Prison Terms (2017.) She has published prose and poetry in journals such as J Journal, Under the Sun, and Wordgathering. Find her online here.
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Things We’re Loving!
This month I fell in love with ‘It’s a Sin’ and bawled at it, and was so thrilled about the whole gay and queer cast telling their own narrative. I have also been loving ‘Superstore’ for moments where I need some comic relief. I have finally caught up with the rest of the world and started ‘I May Destroy You’, and honestly all I have to say is snubbing it is one of the worst things the Golden Globes has done – and it’s done a lot of awful things. I also fell in love with Zendaya all over again in ‘Malcolm and Marie’.
W
e know how hard it can be in a world full of content to find anything good to watch, read or listen to and our whole team has definitely experienced the Netflix fatigue of scrolling through endless choices but not finding anything you are excited by. So, we have decided to start a new feature where a different team member each month tells you what they’ve been loving recently. Up first is our very own head editor: Kirsty Taylor. February for me has been full of the lockdown blues, but these are some things that have gotten me through. You can also flip to the next page for my lockdown blues playlist for when I just really need to be in my feels. Yes, I did just write that. Yes, this lockdown has been hard on me.
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m b Bo w ga w
Watc h
As a big Taylor Swift fan, I have been blasting ‘Champagne Problems’ non-stop since Evermore came out. I, like the rest of the world, have also been playing Olivia Rodrigro’s ‘Drivers License’ on repeat. I am also a big podcast fan and have been loving ‘Thick and Thin’ by Katy Belotte, and ‘Bias Bender’ by Kayla Stokes
I go through phases with reading, and due to doing my undergraduate in English literature and film I had a long phase post-graduation of not reading but I’m finally back at it! This month I fell in love with ‘Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig, became obsessed with Erin olens ‘Alternate Endings’, rekindled my love with ‘Amphibian’ by Christina Neuwirth and ave Stephen King’s ‘The Institute’ a try and was quickly reminded that horror just isn’t for me. I also recently began my love affair with Lauren Martin’s ‘The Book of Moods’ and am all in so far.
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PLAY Champagne ProblemsTaylor Swift
Drive
Olivia
Someone You LoveLewis Capaldi
Book
Charl
ITCLEloise
Nove
Gabri
Before I DoBarbra Lica
Worry
Issac Le
So SimpleThea
Cold Nina
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Listen o
n Spoti
fy
YLIST
ers License-
a Rodrigo
kstore Girl-
lie Burg
ember-
iel Kahane
y-
ewis
der-
Nesbitt
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Sustainable Art: Pepper Peach Illustrations This month we are featuring one of my favourite stationery shops, and it is also Edinburgh based! Pepper Peach Illustrations uniquely designed items, match perfectly with their aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed, and is run by talented Edinburgh blogger: Emmy Rosam (whose Instagram feed is also well worth a scroll). Why did you decide to start Pepper Peach Illustrations? It started before I graduated university. UK Greetings are one of the largest greeting card companies in the UK and I was lucky enough to win a competition they had with YCN/New Now. This project at Uni fuelled my love for card design and illustration. After that collection I posted about it on social media and received such amazing feedback I decided to do it for real and Pepper Peach was born. How do you ensure your products are sustainable? All our cards are printed on recycled paper. We are hopefully aiming to have 100% recycled/biodegradable packaging soon too. We reuse all our supplies and only print a limited amount at a time/on demand for wholesale to ensure that we are only putting out there what is needed. What is your favourite product you’ve made so far? Any dachshund-themed card we’ve put out there (we’ve had a few!). Who are some of your favourite sustainable artists or small businesses? BloomByGraceUK & Sonder are my favourites at the moment. Both amazing girls running small businesses and using sustainable practices. Why do you think sustainability is so important? When I studied Graphic Design at University, we learnt that we only have ten years left of the planet in its current state before the world essentially ends due to the lack of sustainability and climate change. We really need to make better actions and think better for our own future. So many people think they won’t be around to see the effects but it has already begun. I don’t expect anyone to be 100% sustainable but thinking about it and doing a little bit can go a long way.
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What inspires your work? So many different things! Friends, family, current events, other amazing talented illustrators and designers. It has taken me a few years to find my style and my voice. What do you want to continue the voice on right now? Mental health is a big one. Reminding friends and family that you are there for them even if you can’t be around them. Talking and staying connected is needed now more than ever. The theme of this month’s issue is letters, what do letters mean to you? We are all about letters – both in the form of alphabet/words and actual letters. Our brand was based and created during the idea that you should be able to write to loved ones in a time where you feel so disconnected from the world. Do you have a favourite letter (from the alphabet) and/or a favourite letter you’ve received in the mail? We are biased to the letter P (lol)! Our favourite letter in the mail is always the surprise letters from family/friends who have spontaneously decided to write to you. It means so much to know someone out there is thinking of you and it always comes when you need it most. Where can our readers find you? Over on Instagram or facebook @pepperpeachillustrations or our website. Interview by Kirsty Taylor
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By Naomi Howell. Naomi occupies most of her time creating content for her social media platforms, which you can follow here. She manages the make-up department at a popular alternative clothing store in London, as well as doing freelance work in the education sector. On top of this Naomi loves to sing, dance, cook and co-hosts not one but two podcasts which you can find here and here.
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Make-up Looks
If you look closely enough at the symbol on my cheek you should be able to identify every letter of the alphabet and every number from 0–9. Within this shape is everything I have ever thought, ever said or ever will say and is a reminder of the power of language; to always be mindful of the energy that I not only put out, but also absorb, through the medium of spoken word. Once something is said, it cannot be unsaid and that is not something to be taken for granted.
This makeup look draws on two of the most well known letters in the world, Alpha and Omega. Alpha is represented by the shades of red and the alpha symbol. Omega by the shades of blue and its symbol. The colours used in this look contrast and compliment each other nicely being unified in the gold glitter.
By Alexa Gordon. Lex Gordon is an Aries and also a Canadian university student. She grew up near the city but on a farm. This means that her personality is a wonderful mix of pretentious city slicker and down-to-earth farm girl. The best description she has ever heard for who she is was from Dolly Parton, a Backwoods Barbie. She is obsessed with the art of makeup as it provides a new and fun medium to create and tell stories with. You can find more of her work on her Instagram.
“This makeup look draws on two of the most well known letters in the world” These words now have connotations in our society, one of power and leadership the other of nurturing and discipline. I wanted to use both letters because I think elements of both of their implied meanings are used and needed in everyday life.
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Resturant Highlight: The Home Kitchen The All-Purpose Family Ham
INGRedients
PASSED DOWN RECIPES A
1 Gammon Joint 2 Onions (halved) 2 Chillies (de-seeded if wishing to reduce the heat) 5 Large Garlic Cloves 3 Sprigs of Thyme 1 Handful of Full Peppercorns
s months go on, and lockdowns elongate and multiply, it seems harder to write about experiences in an industry that is simply not suited to the way of life we are slowly growing accustomed to. A way of life that is not changing quickly. It took a while of thinking and some unsuccessful attempts to get a spotlight together for you. Until one day, not unlike many others – I was scrolling through social media. There was a joke, and I wish I could find and credit the original joke to the original author, that correlated various lockdowns with trends of what people were creating. I mean, who didn’t make a lockdown sourdough starter, or a banana bread of their own invention. Why then, I thought, would I spotlight somewhere we couldn’t go visit? Why would I taunt readers with what they couldn’t do? Why not spotlight a constant institution that has faultlessly earned praise for excellent atmosphere and good cooking? So, reader, let me proudly spotlight: The home kitchen. Whether you are a chef superior in your personal restaurant or find the kitchen slightly more intimidating – let me share a recipe, fool-proof and with limited skill required, that will feed hearty meals, light lunches, and everything in between. The home cooked ham. This recipe cultivated by generations and perfected by my partner has gotten me through plenty of sunny afternoons and snowy evenings. The glaze can be tailored to personal taste and the ham can be eaten how you prefer - ham and eggs, with mash and gravy, in bagels and burgers. The possibilities are endless. Due to the time it takes to cook however, this is recommended to be a lazy Sunday recipe.
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For the Glaze: 3 Tablespoons of Clear Honey 1 Tablespoon of Dijon Mustard 2 Small Garlic Cloves Minced 2 Teaspoons of All-Spice Mix
METHOD 1
2
Take your ham and rest to come up to room temperature. Once at room temperature, use a small sharp knife and remove the rind from the fat ever so gently. This is the part of the recipe that demands the most attention, so just take your time and be very gentle The rind is the tough skin covering of the fat, you’ll want to keep the fat on. When the rind is removed, carefully score the fat in a criss-cross pattern.
Place the ham joint in a large pan and fully cover with water. Allow to come up to a simmer and skim any white proteins that rise from the water. Once the ham has simmered for roughly hal an hour, or as long as it takes for the white foam to desist from rising, add the onions, chilli, garlic and herbs (or whatever aromatics you favour).
3
4
5 6
Let the ham simmer for 3 hours adding more water as required to keep the ham covered. Preheat the oven to 180*C. Remove the ham from the water (which has now become stock) and place in a large enough oven-friendly dish (I use a large casserole dish). Take the stock off the heat and baste the ham with it, cover with a lid if you have one, if not kitchen foil will do (though make sure to not let the foil come into contact with the ham). During the first 20 minutes of cooking, prepare your marinade. Mix honey, mustard, garlic, and ground spices as you desire into a bowl to make a sticky thick glaze that will cover your ham. The amount I recommend is specified in the ingredients list, but as with the stock you can play around to make the glaze to your taste, and to the amount needed to cover your ham. If you want it sweeter, you can add cola or brown sugar, if you want it spicier, you can add powdered chilli flakes and ginger. Allow the ham to cook in the oven for an hour, removing every 20 minutes to baste further with stock. For the final 20 minutes of cooking remove the kitchen foil (or lid) and brush the ham with the glaze (generously). Return the ham to the oven uncovered for the final 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the ham rest on a cutting board (10 minutes for every lb of meat), carve and serve!
r e
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e lf
By Manon Marrum-Sauvageot
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Small Business Spotlight: Folkways Press T
his month, we spoke to Hannah Fields, up and speaking out about inequality, political founder of Folkways Press about their debut issues, and the realities of their everyday lives, anthology, ‘We Are Not Shadows’. many still go unheard. So I wanted to take these issues and give women from all ages and Folkways Press is an independent publishing backgrounds a platform to speak about their company dedicated to giving a voice to the own experiences or observations. The anthology unconventional, the extraordinary, and the covers issues of race, gender, sexuality, trauma, voices who’ve been too long unheard. adversity, disability, and more. It is my hope that readers are both inspired and moved by the Why did you start Folkways Press? words within and feel empowered to speak up about their own experiences. The path to Folkways Press is complicated when I really dig into it. The idea to start my own What are your future plans for Folkways publishing company was put into my head by Press – are there other books you’re in the my mother. I’ve always loved books and one day process of publishing further down the line? she asked me, ‘Well, why not start a company Or has the pandemic put a halt on that at the and publish them?’ From there I pursued a MLitt moment? in Publishing at the University of Stirling and my resolve to start my own company grew, but I’m currently brainstorming new books from I wasn’t sure what ‘my’ company should look Folkways. The mission of the press is to like. After a lot of thought about what I’d like to represent all people, especially those who have change in publishing through my contributions been treated unjustly for decades. Their lives as a publisher, I decided that I wanted Folkways and backgrounds are important and should be Press to be a platform for those who go unheard. treated as so. I’d love to publish some poetry The industry overlooks marginalised voices and I collections along with essay and/or short story want to be a positive change within the industry, collections from solo authors, but that may even if my contribution is small. Folkways Press come later in the year. My goal is a series that will forever be dedicated to the unconventional, focuses on one topic per book, such as mental the extraordinary, and the voices of those who’ve health or race or folklore. These would also be been buried within the margins for far too long. anthologies, but that remains to be seen. My biggest challenge is funding. I work full-time and run Folkways in my free time. I’d love to get Despite living in a time where to the point where I’m focusing on Folkways fulltime, but I don’t see that happening any time more women are speaking soon, especially with this pandemic going on. up and speaking out about Despite that, I remain hopeful for the future of the press! inequality, political issues, and
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the realities of their everyday lives, many still go unheard.
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‘We Are Not Shadows’ is your first book – what’s it all about? ‘We Are Not Shadows’ is a feminist anthology featuring poetry, prose, and essays from 34 women writers from around the globe. Despite living in a time where more women are speaking 44
What do you think is the biggest issue the publishing industry is facing today? It’s difficult to pick just one when the publishing industry has quite a few things to improve. Its inability to stop doing things the way they’ve always been done would be my first choice. You still have companies expecting publishing hopefuls to live in expensive cities for a salary that barely covers the cost of living. These are the same companies who only address diversity
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like a fad rather than institutional change. Letters have played such Sometimes it’s as if the industry still wants to a major role in our history, live in the days when you needed large bank accounts and connections to be considered especially their role in radical rather than opening its doors to new people changes in our society. who deserve to be considered for their skills and not who they’re connected to. both the nation’s religious leaders and more moderate-minded white Americans, castigating When you think of letters, what do you think? them for sitting on the sidelines while King and Letters make me think of two things: intimacy others risked everything agitating for change. and radical change. We write letters to another In this letter, King writes: ‘Injustice anywhere is person to tell them we’re thinking about them; a threat to justice everywhere.’ In 7,000 words, to express our love for someone; to update Dr. King dismantles his critics and stands up for someone about the goings-on in our lives; or his work to achieve justice, which is an example to just extend a small greeting for a holiday. of how powerful letters can be and how loudly There’s something special about opening a they can speak. It’s an example we can follow letter and having the words enclosed belong with books because they are our own letters for only to you and the sender. I wish letters were justice and so much more. still commonplace. However, letters have played such a major role in our history, especially their Find out more about Folkways Press on Twitter role in radical changes in our society. My mind (@FolkwaysPress), Instagram (@FolkwaysPress), goes directly to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter and their website. from Birmingham Jail. If you’re not familiar with this letter, Dr. King wrote it in the Birmingham Jail Interview by Grace Balfour-Harle in 1963 after being arrested, along with nearly 50 other protestors and civil rights leaders, for leading a Good Friday demonstration as part of the Birmingham Campaign, designed to bring national attention to the brutal, racist treatment suffered by Blacks in one of the most segregated cities in America: Birmingham, Alabama. In this letter, Dr. King addressed an open letter written by 8 local religious leaders which criticised both the demonstrations and King himself. In his letter, Dr. King turned the criticism back upon
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W hen
you work out the countdown conund ru m
Coorie M
As the world opens a little more, we want to life so we are including a monthly feature of and illustrated by our team’s illustrator. For a nition of Coorie: a Scots word meaning “to and positioned as a ‘lifestyle trend’, similar to involves ideas such as cosiness.
g about the life your grandparents lived be fore Learnin
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you e xisted through their postcards
ot u wr o y r ld e Discovering the lett a chi e r e w en you h w f l e s future
Re
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how incredible it is that symb
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for lly r g emeb in ering the word you were look
can f or m 46
r ou
n atio language and communic
Moments
remind you to appreciate the little things in Coorie moments written by our head editor anyone who may not know here, is the defisnuggle, nestle”. It has been appropriated o the Scandinavian concept of hygge, which
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from those loved and lost
Words by Kirsty Taylor & Illustrations by Sophie Freestone.
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WHAT DO LETTERS MEAN TO YOU? 48
‘Letters, handwritten, or on a printed page, or in an email, embody the human desire for connection, at once social, emotional, and psychic, whether transactional for business, or simply to express love. Sounds and their symbols are used with malevolent intent, as well, life with its mix of good and evil. Sound symbols hold unlimited power and influence to drive all human decision, innovation, and achievement.’ Lori Samuels
‘I used to wait for the mail each day hoping to get letters of love or wisdom or even regret. I’ve kept those in a box. Such letters are rarer these days, and take up less space, depending, of course, on the size of the font.’ Alan Walowitz
‘Letters constitute a big part of my personal history. My parents met through letters during WWII, and though none of their missives exist, I recall reading some of the letters my grandmother sent my dad, who was stationed in England, one of the four in the war out of her eight sons. As a child, I had pen pals and wrote to my best friend when she moved away at the end of sixth grade. I really feel that email wrecked all that. I tend to treat email like letters, write long ones filled with paragraphing. But I don’t save them. And they aren’t letters. But still, these days, I write few letters and receive fewer. We all expect things faster than the USPS, more decipherable than handwriting. I miss them.’ Diane Kendig
`For all the richness of it’s words, English has pedestrian letters. I blame this on the Roman empire. Bureaucratically functional, easily comprehensible, bland. Think of the Arabic scripts that decorate mosques, gorgeous swirls of meaning offered in praise. Or the Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, syllable forms with multiple meanings and shapes to rival modern art. All we get to do is put curlicues on our ‘A’s.’ Ed Ahern
‘I have always loved letters – hand-written with their immediacy and intimacy, how the handwriting changes with emotion and content, their quirky charm and the paper chosen. I love the idea of people saving letters for years and decades, and how one’s descendants might read them. I mourn the loss of this practice and the gift of receiving them now that we’ve all moved to digital.’ Joan Mazza
‘My desk drawers are stuffed with letters going back three generations. These letters are glimpses of the past – events, places, and people. More importantly for me, each letter represents the writer’s concern and respect for the recipient. When I take time to write a letter, it is because I value the person I am writing to. My hope is that the letter conveys my caring. When my motives are not so pure, I talk myself into shredding the letter, usually successfully!’ Jackie Lowe 49
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SUBMIT YOUR WORK! Continue The Voice presents Issue 6: Time
Continue The Voice presents Issue 7: Health How do you look after your own health? What does health mean to you? Do you value your health? Is health mental, physical, spiritual or all of them and more? Have you been through tough times with your health? Why is there a World Health Day? Share your thoughts and submit your art to Continue the Voice’s zine. Deadline: 7th March at Midnight. Head to the website for all the details or email us with your work/ proposal and a short ready-to-print bio. Maximum word counts for articles are 800 words, and 1500 words for short stories.. 51
Issue 5 Letters Follow Continue The Voice
