Hello, dear readers –
We have so much beauty for you in Tupelo Quarterly 2:
Here, you’ll find poetry that made us say “THAT. That is why poetry,” and interviews with poets opening up process and projection, the poet’s gaze and the reader’s, the subjectivity of “aboutness” and the means by which we make meaning.
Here, you’ll find the fantastically diverse results of our first Prose Open, which brought us wonderful creative nonfiction, fiction, and short work that walks the interstices between prose-poem and flash. Matt Bell, our final judge, has selected the winner and three runners-up based on our challenge to identify the work among the finalists that best achieves its own ends regardless of genre—and I have given an Editor’s Honorable Mention to an essay that makes brilliant meta of our entire endeavor.
Here, as featured cover artist Kevin Bubriski says on his website, you’ll find “documentary photography to create bridges of understanding between people and places,” and an ekphrastic invitation to engage the vivid movement of three painters via poetry of your own (follow TQ on Facebook to learn more!).
We welcome three new editors—Bronwyn Mills, Brandon Hopkins, and Karen Skolfield—as we continue to build the journal’s capacity and diversity of sensibilities, and we offer features and introductions to continue to give you a sense of who we are and what we love.
We’re all grateful to you for the beauty you make, and for joining us here.
Happy New Year, and come inside.
– Jessamyn Smyth