Issue 1: RISE

EDITOR’S FOREWORD

As we write this editors’ note the mercury continues to climb in Singapore. It’s been a hot month – a hot year, in fact – and scarier than the heat itself is the palpable sense that things might never go back to the way they were.

In the same way our inaugural issue’s theme of RISE is fraught with tension and a slow – almost buoyant – sense of inevitability. David Qamar’s “before, above” turns on the image of a hamster spinning his wheel as a prelude to our own “tracks … of never-ending light”, while Euginia Tan’s “soursop” details deliberate, visceral consumption (“a straw, a stoma”) until “time is downed”.

Curating a selection like this has been difficult given the volume of submissions and distinctive voices we’ve received. We as editors (Anurak, Laura Jane, Theodorus) can only attempt to do justice to the poetry, prose, and art that has floated our way – and look forward to future submissions by anyone who might have slipped through the process this time.

Until then, we hope the issue speaks to the same shifts of perspective – the rising camera angle, the peeking out over the ledge, the bird’s eye view – for you that it did for us.

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