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Monthly Dispatch #20 — January 2025
A letter from the editor[s]
Here comes the new year, same as the old year, except, you know, worse. Tant pis pour nous. As for what any of us can do faced with the rising tides of shit, there’s not much but to fall back on those old reliables: intransigence, tenacity and presence.
Fuck them, we are still here. Fuck them, we will keep going.
We have a few tasty projects in mind for the coming months, including the return of our ANONYMOUS series and a couple of impromptu happenings (limited to Paris for now, but always looking for ways to head further afield …): details soon. And, of course, we will have the usual array of new fiction, text-bending experiments, incisive essays, and insightful interviews. On y va.
Bloody-mindedly yours,
The Editor[s]
Chilsung Supermarket — Lee Sumyeong (tr. Colin Leemarshall)
“In my neighbourhood there is a convenience store named “Chilsung Supermarket.” To be more precise, this store is located by the apartment block directly adjacent to mine. To be more precise still, it is located just beyond that point …”
Lee Sumyeong is South Korean poet and critic. Just Like, her first book to be translated into English, was published by Black Ocean in spring 2024.
Colin Leemarshall runs the print-on-demand press Erotoplasty Editions, which sells innovative and idiosyncratic books of poetry at cost price.
Attendant — Selen Ozturk
“We were dying.
Not turbulence. Not when we shudder and think we’ll die then don’t.
We glided through invisible gravel then tipped nosedown and fell …”
Selen Ozturk is a San Francisco-based writer born in Istanbul. Her writing appears or will soon in Evergreen Review, Hobart, California Quarterly, San Francisco Chronicle, and SFGATE. She has received support from Bread Loaf and Grub Street. She holds a philosophy degree from UC Berkeley and works as a journalist. Find her work at freeverse.blog
from Chains — Jérémie Wenger
“makes me wonder how I keep from going underwent into a tailspin doctor atomic orbitulsa, oklahoma panhandle me the way I is anotherwise mentormentorture chamber music to my ears must be burning question-begging to difference and repetition …”
Jérémie Wenger is a writer and programmer based in London. His practice explores the intersection between literature, constraints and generative processes, as well as the consequences of the rise of Artificial Intelligence on literature and the self. His texts have been accepted for publication in the Irish journal ‘gorse’, as well as ‘Pamenar Online Magazine’, ‘ToCall’, ‘GRASS’ and ‘Strings’. @jchwenger / jeremiewenger.com
Colours in the Passageway — Vik Shirley
“Clara Parsons smokes vape.
Tobacco: violet.
Violet tobacco: Clara Parsons’ favourite flavour …”
Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor, and educator from Bristol now living in Edinburgh. Her books include Corpses (Sublunary Editions), Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions), Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), One by One (No Press), Poets (The Red Ceilings), Strangers Wave (zimZalla), The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN) and Cassette Poems, (above/ground press).
Yang Weiming — Daniel Holmes
“Imagine there was a city that was, in many ways, Melbourne, Australia, but that, in equally as many ways, was Mexico City, Mexico …”
Daniel Holmes is a writer currently living in Melbourne.
Joost — David C. Porter
“I see the rock. I read the legend. I see the rock and I read the legend. The rock with the imprint of the hoof. The legend on the sign beyond the bars. The iron bars. The bars between the sign and my sight. I see the bars. I see the sign …”
David C. Porter is a writer and photographer from the American northeast. His work has appeared in various places. His most recent book is an epistolary novella called Rat Beast. Twitter: @toomuchistrue
The Compliment — Caroline Clark
“The compliment came in swift and stayed with you your whole life. You in your blue sweater with the cowl neck. You with your dark hair. Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque: glass fronted, deeper and higher than wide. On the ground floor you’re walking to the conveyor belt for returning books. You’re a year away from having a baby and a few months married …”
Caroline Clark has published three books: a collection of poems titled Saying Yes in Russian (Agenda Editions, 2012); a collection of poem-stories and photographs titled Sovetica (2021) and a work of non-fiction titled Own Sweet Time (2022, both CB editions). Bluesky: @cclarklewes.bsky.social
The Known Southern Land — Gabriel de Foigny (tr. Dana J. Lupo)
“There are three things I should mention regarding the Australians’ opinions about life. The first has to do with its conception, the second with its preservation, and the third with its end …”
The Known Southern Land is available now from Spurl Editions. You can order a copy here.
Gabriel de Foigny was a French writer best known for The Known Southern Land. He was born around 1630 in Picardy, France, and began his adult life as a monk in a strict Franciscan order, from which he was expelled for loose morals. After further legal troubles and Foigny’s reconversion to Catholicism, he fled to a monastery in Savoy, where he died in 1692.
Dana J. Lupo is a writer and French translator. Lupo’s translation of Arthur’s Whims by Hervé Guibert was published by Spurl Editions in 2021.
“There is something powerful about a book about the most beautiful woman in the world, where her beauty is not the major through-line of the book”: An Interview with Maria Zoccola—Cristina Politano
Maria Zoccola is a Tennessee-based poet whose new publication reimagines the mythological Helen of Troy, resituating her in the American South in the 1990s. Zoccola’s text weaves Homeric myth with the objects, rituals, and landmarks of 90s Americana that ground her protagonist in a setting that is as unexpected as it is uncannily familiar. The narrative that emerges from this collection of poetry challenges traditional notions about Helen’s character and opens up new avenues for reenvisioning the legendary women of Homeric epic. I spoke with Maria Zoccola over Zoom about her debut collection, Helen of Troy, 1993.
Helen of Troy, 1993 is now available from Scribner.
Maria Zoccola is the author of Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner, 2025). She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University. Her work has previously appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Memphis. Learn more about her work at mariazoccola.com.
Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays and fiction appear in Identity Theory, The Dodge, and La Piccioletta Barca, among other places. Twitter/X and Instagram/BlueSky: @monalisavitti
As the Internet Jealously Watches You — Matthew Turner [17/01/19]
“All this amorphous imagery is the experience of the online world, that digital realm — ‘realm’ because it’s a space, a country, a continent, of its own — the stuffy, smoky bar in which we spend too much time, with regulars whom we know too much about …”
Matthew Turner is a writer living in London. He studied at University College London and is now working as writer and assistant editor for LOBBY magazine while also teaching at Chelsea College of Arts.
Coming in February …
Experimental work from Sarah Dawson, Michael L Sevy, and James Rodke; fiction from Ty Holter and Joel Gordon; extracts from books by Tyler Cain Lacy and Samuel M. Moss; an essay on love by Golan Haji, and more …