The Maynard
October 2013

Introduction

Every poem is a consciousness attempting to connect with another consciousness in a powerful and honest way. That's something that we reminded ourselves at times while working through the unexpectedly large pile of submissions we received over the summer. It can be tempting to complain about having to read through poem after poem that fails to move. But that would be dismissing the honour that comes with being an editor, or worse, ignoring the subtle gifts inside every piece. In reading there is always distortion; miscommunication, misunderstanding. But every so often a signal comes through, a clear and nerve-tingling melody that pulls the reader into the spell of the poem, into the richness of its distortion. That's what we were looking and listening for.

The poems we have selected for this fall 2013 issue of The Maynard show how varied and binding the voices, the forms, the spells, can be. We hope you enjoy this issue. Read the poems. Listen to the audio readings. It's been a joy to work on putting this issue together. We learned a lot about ourselves and our reading styles and tastes in the process. Special thanks to Jami Macarty for inviting us to take this on and seeing us through the last stages of this issue. And of course thank you to everyone who took the time to submit their poems. We are proud to be the amplifiers of such wonderful work.

Raoul Fernandes, Mark Hoadley, Ram Randhawa
editors, The Maynard
October 2013