It is an honor and a delight to introduce the latest issue of Tupelo Quarterly. We are thrilled to bring you poetry and prose by such luminaries as Chelsea Dingman, Nicole Cooley, and Michael Martone, as well as translations of work by Lyudmyla Khersonska and Fabio Morábito that are as forward thinking as they are timely.
But first, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the editors who have joined TQ’s staff since the publication of our last issue. We thrilled to have 2017 Guggenheim Fellow Victoria Chang and noted author Simone Muench as Senior Poetry Editors. As Associate Editors, we are excited to welcome Erin Bertram, author of Alluvium (Dancing Girl Press) and twelve other limited edition collections; Tony Trigilio, author of Inside the Walls of My Own House and Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago; Letitia Trent, author of two novels and a volume of poetry; Brenda Iijima, editor of the Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and author of Remembering Animals (Nightboat Books, 2016). I look forward to the contributions that these new editors will make to Tupelo Quarterly‘s already accomplished offerings in poetry, prose, translation, and visual art.
Our Editorial Features showcase the range of perspectives and artistic influences that shape each of Tupelo Quarterly’s issues. Here, we are thrilled to bring you conversations with Joshua Clover, Denise Duhamel, Hope Wabuke, Adrienne Raphel, Tyler Crumrine, and more. Additionally, our editors have introduced several texts by emerging and established writers that are artistically important to them. I hope their critical introductions to this enlivening work offer a glimpse into our editorial process, as each issue is really the artifact of a community, its conversations, its confluences.
In addition to our finely crafted, and carefully curated, offerings poetry, prose, visual art, and translation, I’m heartened by the ways that this issue creates dialogue and exchange between these disciplines. Our Collaborative and Cross-Disciplinary Texts Section, which includes new work by Kate Greenstreet, Jill Magi, Kristy Bowen, and many other outstanding creative practitioners, explores the idea that all of art is collaborative, a dialogue between parts of the self or parts of consciousness. Indeed, these innovative text and image projects show us the infinite ways that a conversation – between temporal moments, between selves, between cultures, between genres and the ways of seeing and thinking that they represent – can unfold before us.
In the coming months, look for more reviews, as well as review-essays, small press features, and experiments in lyric criticism. Happy spring, and enjoy!