September 30, 2022
Welcome to Issue 14!
In a journal that celebrates wildness, our un-themed issues are always the wildest of all. But that also makes it difficult for me to explain what the poems in this issue have in common. Thankfully, our cover artist (unknowingly) gave me some help. He describes his “Impossible Island” series as a meditation on cultural insularity, isolation, continuity and discontinuity. A reminder that we all live on islands (continent-size or smaller). There’s a shocking pathos in the truth of our isolation – a pathos that is deepened every time we stare at each other across a screen instead of across a table.
And yet…here we are. And yet…poetry and art endure. More than endure. The creative animal inside every human howls for connection. And so, as you absorb the amazing words and images of Issue 14, I hope you can imagine our “impossible islands” colliding. I hope you will find a version of yourself in the wreckage of that beautiful and transformative collision.
Issue 14 includes the work of 50 contributors currently living in Australia, Canada, Croatia, England, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, and the United States. Of the 50 contributors 42 are new and 7 are returning. We always encourage people to resubmit and in that spirit I’m also happy to tell you that of our 42 new contributors, 8 believed us when we said, “please try again.”
Issue 14 is dedicated to our beloved Kari Flickinger – a stunningly talented poet, artist and musician who passed away suddenly this spring. Kari’s work can be found in multiple issues of Feral. Her debut collection, The Gull and the Bell Tower, was published by our sister press, Femme Salve Books. She was someone who I only ever saw across a screen, but her creative genius was so powerful that I will always feel that “collision” of souls – as will anyone who ever knew her. This stanza is from her “birthday” poem in Issue 4.
Plant one speckled candle. Light it
ablaze. Breathe myself a song.
Delve my arms to the elbows, and I will
paint myself into the sky.
For Kari,
Beth Gordon
Managing Editor