“When I assemble the photos, I note how they’re drawn toward each other in an almost unconscious way — almost like a coincidence.” -JC Alfier

I think there can be something wonderful in encountering a voice without its typical guards, even if you can’t quite understand what it’s all about.

Writing about the how’s and why’s of the shadows cast on my ceiling felt like a cleansing and mind-drawer re-arranging that I’d needed to let go in order to reclaim rest. And that’s just what happened. I love when writing does this for me—resolving things so I can let them go and move on.

Poetry gives me a place to be a little more honest. On the inside, I grind and grind and grind.

Like the narrator’s map reading in ‘At Batemans Mill’, some navigation might be helpful.

“I discover new ways of working and new ideas with every strip of tape, paper, or drop of glue.” - Shane Allison

“I am slowly learning that maybe real creativity doesn’t come from living a life that is so interesting that inspiration will come and that interesting creative ideas will be given to me.” - Nick Ferraro

If you travel along the minor roads of Andalusia, Spain, you’ll pass through a number of rural towns and villages. And if you happen to stop in one of these towns and wander the streets, you’ll find yourself being observed by the locals with a mixture of interest and suspicion. This scenario—the arrival of a stranger in unfamiliar territory—was the basic germ for “El Inglés.”

My creative momentum—whether writing fiction, essay, or poetry, or even working with musical practice or composition—evaporates when I figure out the draft too early.

Poets must apply a critical lens to fledgling poems. We must prod ourselves to see that the speakers of our poems can (and often should) divorce themselves from what Real Thing may have happened to the poet that was the genesis of the poem, and be open to what the poem itself needs to say.

Like many still drawn to the analog ways, I find the unforgiving roll of film to be a gentle constraint to play within. I slow down. I watch closer. I find something that matters to me. In this way, my practice of film photography is kindred to a contemplative practice, sharing a language of pure presence and devotion to Being.

To the sparrows who think they run the yard, please

consult the website All About Birds where we learn

house sparrows survive only in the immediate vicinity

of people.

For every place I have lived, I can point to a tree that inspired me.

“I know this may seem contradictory or oxymoronic,” writes poet Kevin Clark, “but I hope that my reader senses a union of both spirit and idea in my words.”

this month, our editors chatted with susan mccourt about her piece “Oh, Sineady,” a creative nonfiction memoir about the writer’s decades-long appreciation of sinead o’connor.