EPIPHANY

Dearest friends,

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Once again, we arrive at another closing of the year. The last I wrote to you at a year’s end, it was to celebrate the publication of our third issue, ‘Ensemble,’ which I must confess still has a very dear place in my heart. As a collection of work, I hoped ‘Ensemble’ would be an ode to connection –– a celebration of love and adoration, a memorialisation of personhood and identity. It superseded my every wish, and is still, I feel, one of the more tender, emotive, and vulnerable issues we have published. This issue, ‘Epiphany’, has become its sister in my mind, and it is a true honour and pleasure to introduce you all to its beauty.

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Whereas ‘Ensemble’ begged the consideration of the love we have for others, ‘Epiphany’ directs its reader to the examination of the self, a feat by no means easy to accomplish. Rather than the transcription of outward expression, ‘Epiphany’ asks its writers to put themselves first, to contemplate one’s own position in the world and the lived experience of such. In this volume, you will find work that is explosive and dynamic, introspective and thoughtful, bitter and angry. And after a difficult year of worry, stress, fear, and anxiety, ‘Epiphany’ asks, ultimately, the most of us all –– to be a bit selfish in the love we have for ourselves. ‘Epiphany’ is, at its heart, a celebration of rebirth, and in these poems that is what I believe we can offer you: comfort, recognition, and hope, if nothing else.

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Love, as always,

Helen and Tomás

Editors of The Madrigal

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