It’s difficult for us to think of ourselves as a New England periodical. Aside from the fact that the editors live here, Radius exists in sort of a nether zone, both everywhere and nowhere. Our regular contributors are scattered around the country. The poets we publish are from all over the world. New England, for us, is often just the place we hang our hat.
So with that in mind, it was an interesting exercise for us to spend some time thinking of ourselves — in choosing poems to submit to Best Indie Lit New England — as a New England literary journal. Certainly, we’re involved in local poetry scenes, and we’ve published a lot of poets who were born here, or who’ve lived, worked or gone to school here.
Although BILiNE doesn’t insist the submitted poems be by New England writers, it was interesting for us to try to find the New England accent in our own journal’s voice. And we found many beautiful poems that we’ve published over the past couple years that had that particular spark, and which also spoke to our mission of illustrating how disparate poets and schools of poetic thought connect, and how poetry connects to the real world. These poems, to our mind, do all of that and more. These are poems we feel connect New England to the world, and we’re honored to have published them, and pleased to nominate them for the first BILiNE anthology:
- “Induction” by Corrina Bain
- “Loa” by McKendy Fils-Aimes
- “What Is Poetry?” by Tony Brown
- “Two Poles and a Suicide” by Leslie McGrath
- ‘We Too, The Foundation” by Truth Thomas
- “Holding,” by Dorinda Wegener
To all our nominees, good luck, and to all our reader, please take a second to visit the BILiNE Project’s Kickstarter campaign, and lend some support to this grass-roots project by preordering a copy. Thanks!
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