ISSUE 3

From the editor: 

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Welcome, reader.

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The psychic flows of The Medway and The Thames mixed mud with The Darent and The Great Stour to stir words heavy with Kentish chalk exposed in the shape of dreams on hillsides that will not stay still long enough for any gawpers to take a selfie. There are no foreign lands here, only welcome refugees joining with marsh gas ghosts, the night terrors of those who ride when they should be sleeping.

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Poets call to one another in the dark as bats do with echoes only they understand, to be named is to be spoken of. Tales from creeks of slugs and starlings and dogs and cities that are not what they seem. Of futures and pasts and the people and loves that are forever trapped in them. They wander, shape-shifting, lost-and-found town becks looking for tosh to shine up and show us, picking names from the hat they happen to have on at the time. Fiddling while their rivers burn with illuminated bodies.

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And The Great Sad Wear that has shrugged off so much, finds some weights too much to bear to the sea. It shuffles forward silently as though Limpopo in remembrance of things and people. And somehow it smiles. I met a man there once, and we will not meet again. I chance to think he would have visited us one day. I would have liked that.

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Contributors this issue: 
Matt Chamberlain, Nancy Charley, Barry Fentiman Hall, Sam Hall, Mark Holihan, Shaun Philip Hutchings, Philip Kane, Bill Lewis, Daphne Margolys, Maria C. McCarthy, Katarina Rankovic, David Cramer Smith, Spreken, Jonathan Terranova, and Barrie West.

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Issue 3: February 2017. Illustrations by Maggie Drury.

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*Please note: where possible we have used the spelling and punctuation provided by the writer.

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Extras!

Video of Nancy Charley reading 'Corbyn and other conundrums'

Video of Katarina Rankovic reading an extract from 'The Stuntman'

Video of Matt Chamberlain reading 'Picasso’s Crystal Gems'

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