Welcome to the inaugural issue of Liminality! We founded the zine in spring, and we bring it to you in autumn: liminal seasons both, times of growth, decay, and, above all, change. We wanted the magazine to show change in all its possibilities and permutations. We were looking for poems of the mercurial and the elusive, new-minted myths, old stories we thought we knew. And we got them. There were so many good poems that we had to open the show with a double-sized issue. There wasn’t any other way. We’re delighted to bring them to you now.
We wanted a host of diverse voices, and we got those too. Here you’ll find new voices like Gabby Reed and Lev Mirov as well as established ones, among them Erik Amundsen and Sofia Samatar, whose novel A Stranger In Olondria recently won the British Fantasy Award. Our thanks to them – Liminality wouldn’t be possible without their beautiful, burning words. And our thanks to you for reading them.
Come with us to the in-between places: the shore and the desert and the interplanetary void. There’s so much life here. You’ll meet a tide-watching Gorgon and brothers in a maze of paper. Cup the hearts of saints and soldiers (though you may want to blow on your fingers afterward). There are love affairs with books, hauntings, green dreams, and gods of the abandoned. It’s autumn now; there are poems to be harvested among the fallen leaves. Read, and you may come away a little changed for the experience.
In fact, we very much hope for that. We are here to present these poems to you as living things. Interact with them. Comment, share, discuss, but more so than that: get inspired. We’d love to see art inspired by the works herein. Paint it, dance it, knit it – let these acorns germinate. Show us what you think; show us what you do. This is only the beginning of the conversation.
All our autumn thoughts,
Mat and Shira
Our mascots for this issue are Pop and Mason!
Pop Lepon-Spencer and Mason Spencer-Lepon were adopted from the City of Boston Animal Shelter in July 2009, and they have been inseparable ever since. Many people have difficulty telling them apart, but it’s not difficult once you know that Pop is the one who looks startled and Mason is the one who looks judgmental. Their favorite poet is T.S. Eliot because they appreciate his nuanced portrayal of cat life.
(Interested in having your pets as our mascots?)
Mat Joiner’s poems and short stories have appeared in the likes of Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, and Not One Of Us. His poem “And Deeper Than Did Ever Plummet Sound” won the 2014 Dwarf Stars Award. He loves ghosts, Green Men and old books, and thinks “canalpunk” should be a subgenre. He never owned cats, but has a fox running around his head. He lives in Birmingham, England.
Shira Lipkin is a writer, poet, and editor in Boston; in her spare time, she volunteers with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Clockwork Phoenix 4, Interfictions 2, and other marvelous places; her poem “The Library, After” won the 2012 Rhysling Award. She attends a lot of burlesque shows, but that’s not where the glitter comes from. Her cat is bigger than her dog.