Dear Reader,
Standing on the brink of Brexit – with great change afoot elsewhere in the world – it can be hard to get a handle on the events and aftershocks that rile our closest communities. Friends and neighbours seem equally unsettled, equally at sea. At times like this, when comfort seems scarce, where can we find meaning or solidarity?
Our returning contributor Faith Christine Lai offers an answer in her poem A Ghazal for England. In brief encounters and connections, she suggests, some sense of shared humanity reasserts itself: ‘I have found friends here from every continent’, she writes. ‘In their own languages, they call me sister’.
Taking her lead, we’ve gathered for this issue an even more diverse cohort of poets and poems than ever, from Shun Hei Sin‘s Hebrew odes to Euginia Tan‘s Singaporean breakfasts. They are complemented with reviews of Sohini Basak‘s award-winning debut, as well as a fine anthology of new poetry from young migrant and refugee poets at the Oxford Spires Academy.
Another returning contributor, Lavinia Singer (now Assistant Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber) joins us in conversation to demystify the editorial process, and share her own stories from the world of publishing. As always, we’re thrilled – and very lucky – to feature them all.
Happy reading!
Theo & Tash
Editors, The Kindling
Poetry
Jodie Hollander | Paul Stephenson | Tom Bailey | Alisdair Hodgson | May Huang
Faith Christine Lai | Emma Lee | Finn Manders | Anurak Saelaow
Shun Hei Sin | Euginia Tan | Inez Tan | Ashley Williams
Prose
Interview – Lavinia Singer
Review – Sohini Basak
Review – England: Poems from a School
The Kindling 