Welcome to WordCity Literary Journal’s September 2021 issue.
For this month’s theme, we joined the 100 Thousand Poets for Change movement, and sought works to shine light into dark places.
As ever, more brilliant writers and poets than we ever expect, came together with their poems and stories that, as a collection, make up an astonishing depth of insight. Even beyond the individual themes and accomplishments of these works, together they have become more than the sum of each individual, wonderfully crafted part.
What follows in these various offerings, brought to us from around the world by artists of both gift and grit, is a collection that plumbs the depth of human experience. It draws attention to our place in a world brought to various brinks: environmentally, as in Bhuwan Thapoliya’s poem, Sloshing sound of a flowing river, or in the poetic prayer for Afghans and Afghanistan in Mansour Noorbakhsh’s The Torch That We Never Saw.
There is also raw and transformational beauty, as in Sherzod Artikov’s Father’s pigeons, where a lost father is found again in what he had once so dearly loved and lovingly recorded.
All together, the editors of WordCity Literary Journal cannot thank both our writers and our readers enough, for the work of creating, and the work of reading and understanding, of letting words lead to a change in understanding, in heart or in mind.
This month, we have undergone a change of our own, and said goodbye to Jane Spokenword, our brilliant podcaster. Jane, who has brought us interviews with luminaries and activists each issue until now, is already dearly missed. Having gone on to focus on other work, we wish her every good thing with love, knowing that her voice is one that is needed in the world as we continue to work, to hope, for change.
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