Handwriting brings a certain something to poetry that is lost when magazines publish a final, polished version in type. Handwritten facsimiles, especially, reveal in visual 'real time' the poet's struggle during germination—when the scaffolding of the first words are strung together. This issue embraces imperfect beginnings, undeveloped middles, and (un)finished ends.

 

What we want: Your written drafts, your notebook scrawls, your facsimiles, your late-night edits after a heavy round of midnight beer/prata. We want cursive script, neat prints, and your ugly, illegible hand. We want sketches, cancellations and scribbles, white- and black-outs, transcriptions. Leaking and fading pens, sharp 4B pencils, colour smudges. Substitutions and erasures, edits and insertions, crinkles and creases, the indulgent full-page slash.

 

Here are some examples of what we'd like to see in our inbox: Send us (large) images or photographs of your handwritten works

 

accompanied by a final typeset version of the piece, if you have indeed completed the work

 

alone (if illegibility is part of the art)

 

in ecstatic fragments

 

with heavy peer editing

 

adorned with smiley face stickers

 

and so on and so forth

 

whatever floats your boat really

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can find this issue here.