The conversation with Katrina Porteous invites reflection on how significant language is in articulating the identities and practices of particular cultures, and how the erosion or elimination of communities can cause a real loss of ‘voice’. She also encourages us to think anew about how poetry ‘speaks’ from beneath the radar – not just through conventional publication on a page (whether actual or digital) but through its function and context. Poems can shout from the side of buses; whisper from a well-worn bench; jostle the prayers and readings for a place in an order of service for a funeral. Is a mass-produced rhyming ditty in a greetings card a poem? Is a dedication on a tombstone? We close this issue with another highly relevant question: what does it feel like to BE a poem?
This emphasis on loss and endings may sound rather valedictory; perhaps the increasingly short days of the northern hemisphere have infected my thinking. In DC 51 we had a record number of poems ‘after’ some other poet/phenomenon/artwork etc. The submissions this time seemed to be more dominated by sombre content, perhaps reflecting the increasingly fractured and fractious world we inhabit. Here, we say goodbye to loved ones; to youth; perhaps even to planet earth as Mars beckons. Sinister events await investigation in the graveyard; ladybirds invade the inner sanctum. Children’s school days are punctuated by triage during warfare. Perhaps we are ‘all cried out’.
But, as always, the brown envelopes that flopped onto my doormat also contained wit and warmth and wackiness. God clearly needs an assistant to complete the job (though are there enough women around to apply the Bechdel test to the book of Genesis?). A three year old relishes the mouthfeel of a new word. Spring and autumn love warm the cockles of the most jaded heart. At least, ‘we very rarely eat our spouse’. We also flag up the successes of poets whose work was shared through previous issues of Dream Catcher – new books are published or forthcoming by (among others), Emily Zobel Marshall, Elaine Ewart, Sue Butler, Philip Burton, Gerald Killingworth, Clive Donovan, Christopher James, Clifford Liles.

This issue also features the art of Joseph Bucklow.