Editor’s Note

Every summer until this one, I looked forward to summer in Alabama in my dad’s backyard garden. Summer meant the end of the regular school year, the beginning of days spent watching vegetables and flowers grow, to smelling watermelons (which I don’t eat—my parents do that all on their own) halved in the kitchen, to the slow spill of sunset over Birmingham.

That renewal each year also included poetry—readings, books checked out from the library, the bubbling thrill of planning for new semesters filled with writing classes. Summer in Birmingham could find me in the audience of a local literary event, on stage at a reading, or just laughing with a poet-friend at a park. This year is different, of course, and although things are opening and moving toward what some folks call “normal,” it isn’t that way for me.

This summer, I will live my first harvest without my dad, who passed away in April. I will edge very carefully out into the world with my mask intact—it’s still early for me and my cautious heart. But poetry is still here—in fact, the necessity of poetry has made itself clearer than ever before in my thirty years on earth. I have always known poetry to be a mirror, a magnifying glass, a balm, but now it’s beating louder for me as those things.

This issue, the last of my three, is a celebration. It’s summer—vibrant, full of flowering fruit. There are poems like Crystal Simone Smith’s astounding erasures chronicling Black life and the violences that pursue us, Donna Aza Weir-Soley’s long-form poem in ode to George Floyd (check out her audio online, too), and Xandria Phillips’s piece, which considers television and pop culture. And there are two features in this issue. The first is one I hope will continue beyond my tenure—a series of essays and poems by poets laureate from across the country, which will have an accompanying blog post with links to projects and initiatives happening in each laureate’s state. The second is called “A Quilt of Alabama Poets,” where I sought to showcase poets from my home state. These pieces, which are sprinkled throughout the issue, are varied in style, medium, topics, and they are just a taste of the dynamic and astounding literary landscape here in Alabama.

I wanted this final offering to feel like summer—joyful, truthful, full and bright and full of history like the Gee’s Bend quilts which inspired Jade Pilgrom’s gorgeous cover art. I wanted to say thank you to the communities which help make me possible, and I hope this issue expresses that gratitude. I hope you’ve all enjoyed these three issues, and I look forward to all the ways in which poetry will continue to bloom in my life and yours.