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Monthly Dispatch #15 — July 2024
A letter from the editor[s]
See you in September …
The Editor[s]
Words as Vibrant Objects — Vivian Darroch-Lozowski
“In this past winter, I was walking early morning through willow bushes as high as my shoulder and head, bushes with individuated particles of ice on all their branches, twigs, and twiglets. Light of the rising sun was glistening through them. There were millions of minute bits of ice clinging to the branches. Such beauty …”
Vivian Darroch-Lozowski has authored several books. Her writings and visual works cover different genres. Her recent book (2023) is Searchlights in People’s Hands. She continues create various other traces and markings in her efforts to understand human nature. She is Professor Emerita of the University of Toronto and lives in Moose Jaw, Treaty 4 Territory, Saskatchewan.
Bed & Board — hiromi suzuki
“In the drowsy sunlight, the focus of time appears blurred. I guess the psychological term for this phenomenon that sneaks into my life is dissociation …”
hiromi suzuki is a poet, writer, artist living in Tokyo. Her writing has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, RIC journal, Berfrois, Minor Literature[s] and various literary journals on-line. Twitter: @HRMsuzuki
Martín Feito’s First Night — Xaime Martínez (tr. Robin Munby)
“On his first night at the house in Chaneces, Martín Feito had a dream …”
Xaime Martínez is a writer, musician and translator. His poetry collections include Fuego cruzado (Hiperión, 2014), Hibernia (Saltadera, 2017) and Cuerpos perdidos en las morgues. Una novela de detectives (2019). The Force, or the Four Epiphanies of Martín Feito is his first novel. Twitter: @fatalmartinez
Robin Munby is a writer and translator. His translations from Spanish, Russian and Asturian have appeared in Wasafiri, Subtropics, The Glasgow Review of Books and The Spanish Riveter. His short story ‘A New Vocabulary of Translation’ appeared in the spring 2023 edition of Asymptote. Twitter: @RobMunb
Ocho, Parada, Barrida — Martin Jackson
“Three days ago, on a Zoom call from her book-lined office in Kensington, agent Su suggested, as she’d first suggested 11 years ago, when I was sat in the mid-century Danish armchair of that book-lined office in Kensington, and has suggested several times since that reupholstered day, that I should write more about all my years in advertising …”
Martin Jackson is a UK-born, Germany-based writer of poetry, fiction, and art texts. His short fiction can be found in Stand [forthcoming, 2024], The Lincoln Review, The London Magazine, Hotel, and as part of the Unreal Estates project.
Seymour Cassel — Z.H. Gill
“Dad was on a first name basis with the inimitable character actor Seymour Cassel, who lived next door to my grandmother in a one-bedroom apartment on the 11th floor of the Santa Monica Shores apartment complex’s northern tower …”
Z.H. Gill lives in Hollywood, CA, with his cat Hans. Twitter: @BurialMagazine
Ice Upon Lita —DJP
“Lita drags the tip of her finger across sticky wood, shards of cedar protruding from the aged picnic table. Her pointer finger dodges the slivers then doubles back, hovering over a splinter and waiting for her arm to grow tired, for her hand to fall into it, her flesh to be punctured and made scarlet with irritation …”
DJP is a Midwestern bookseller and artist with fiction featured in bodyfluids magazine, Back Patio Press, and Mouthfeel Fiction. Twitter: @especiallymidd
Labour of Listening — Haytham el-Wardany
“The dead. They have a plan. And their plan is simple. It is called Sumoud صمود. To stand fast and start all over again. The dead. They direct us to the open graves, desecrated by bulldozers. A severed hand. A mutilated tongue. A stained truth, beside a suitcase of books. The dead. They are hungry, and they have a plan …”
Haytham el-Wardany is a writer and translator. He lives and works in Berlin. His latest book, Jackals and The Missing Letters (Al-Karma 2023), considers forgotten expressions of hope within Arabic fables, where animals speak and humans listen, in a moment of post “Arab Spring” speechlessness.
The Imagination as God: Rimbaud, Theology & Christ [excerpt] — Paul Stubbs
“The poetical imagination is one thing, and the biblical imagination, inevitably, something else …”
Paul Stubbs is the author of several poetry collections, two long poems and books of poetical and philosophical essays. With Blandine Longre, Stubbs has translated texts by Victor Segalen, Arthur Rimbaud, Jos Roy, Pierre Cendors and Ernest Delahaye. He has also coedited the bilingual literary magazine The Black Herald. Twitter: @PRStubbs1
“What is the worst part about myself, and how can I express it and still be accepted?”: An interview with Graham Irvin — Cristina Politano
Graham Irvin is a Philadelphia-based writer whose recent publication, I Have a Gun, blends poetry and prose to target the topic of gun ownership in a tone that is at times satirical, and at other times deeply earnest. I sat down with him to discuss contemporary poetics, adolescent rebellion, the expectations and demands we place on our ever-changing notions of masculinity, and what it means to have a gun.
Graham Irvin is from North Carolina. He lives in Philadelphia. He is the author of Liver Mush (Back Patio Press) and I Have a Gun (Rejection Letters). Twitter: @grahamjirvin, Instagram: @_gram_irvin.
Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays and fiction appear in Return.Life, La Piccioletta Barca, and on her Substack. Instagram/Twitter: @monalisavitti.
“Sometimes not knowing what you’re doing is the whole meat of an essay. You’re supposed to be answering a question you don’t have an answer to”: An Interview with Andrew Bertaina — Cristina Politano
Andrew Bertaina is a Washington, D.C.-based essayist. His recent publication, The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place, unites a series of essays on relationships, parenting, mid-life, and divorce. I sat down with him to discuss the anatomy of an essay, balancing the writing life with the parenting life, and the debt he owes to Michel de Montaigne.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus Books), and the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, and The Best American Poetry. Twitter: @andrewbertaina; Instagram: @andrew_bertaina
The Morningside by Téa Obreht — Nick Hilden
“[I]n Obreht’s latest novel, the world seems to stagger under the burden of its own history. It’s a familiar reality not far from ours that is deep in the throes of climate change where even luxury is crumbling, in which refugees struggle to find a material and spiritual home, and where pretty much everyone seems to be mourning the loss of some antecedent state. Existence itself appears to be rusting and falling apart, and no one is quite sure what to do about it …”
Téa Obreht’s debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was an international bestseller. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she now lives in New York.
Nick Hilden writes about art and culture for the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, the Believer, the Millions, Al Jazeera, and more. You can follow his work and travels on Twitter or Instagram.
One Year’s Time by Angela Milne — Sarah Manvel
“The British Library Press is doing stellar work at reviving lost novels for a modern audience, and their Women Writers series especially has been bringing notice to authors whose works might have otherwise been utterly forgotten …”
Angela Milne (1909-1990) was the niece of A. A. Milne. She was a regular contributor to Punch magazine. One Year’s Time is her only novel, published in 1942.
Sarah Manvel is the author of the comic novelette YOU RUIN IT WHEN YOU TALK (Open Pen, 2020). In her spare time, she is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, primarily for criticsnotebook.com. She lives in London. Twitter: @typewritersarah
Better Shopping Through Living X: Subject Matters
“An entire industry of inspirational cure-alls in the vein of The Artist’s Way and other self-help manuals brimming with writing tips has sprung up over the past several decades to try to get writers motivated and moving, to become the writers they’re meant to be. There we can learn the secrets of Hemingway and Balzac. Which nightgown should one wear? Which pen to use? On which full moon? Standing or sitting? Coffee, alcohol? Opium, cocaine? Something stronger?”
Writer and translator Frank Garrett shops in Dallas, Texas, and is essays editor at Minor Literature[s]. His series Better Shopping Through Living will appear (mostly) monthly. He has cultivated insecurity.
Selected Illustrations — Sean [19/07/2022]
Sean lives in the Midwest and the Midwest lives in them; it’s mostly symbiotic.
Twitter: Somniferously
Coming up in September …
MINOR LI[S]T — an anti-cannon of works of minor literature — as well as fiction from Austin Adams, Claudia Durasanti interviewed by Cristina Politano, an extract from Léon-Paul Fargue’s High Solitude, Paris texts, and much more …