We were three editors coming together, bringing our wide variety of cultural influences, creative backgrounds and literary tastes, seeking to foster dialogues across struggles, generations, centuries, continents and artforms.
Poems
| Cal O’Reilly | New Year’s Swim |
|---|---|
| Gemma Strang | You as escaped balloon |
| Suji Kwock Kim | Love Under Occupation |
| David Odiase | Cloth-reading |
| Alice S Yousef | What I Will Never Hold |
| Melissa McKinstry | I’m Not Pushing a Wheelchair Anymore or Bathing Any Body Except My Own |
Articles
| Editorial: Magma 93 | When we started the editorial process, we wondered what words could do in the face of atrocity. Poetry cannot replace direct action, but it can redirect our attention amidst information overload and fatigue. To read and write a poem is to practice deep listening, to recall what we have always known. Small moments can elucidate… |
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| Errata of Memory: a tribute to Anson Gonzalez and the power of spoken word | As I approach my twentieth year as a performer and activist, I have cause to reflect on spoken word in Trinidad and Tobago. I am thinking about the labour taken on by many people, in and out of the “movement”, who have created space for writers and performers. The great orators of our region do… |
| Reclaiming Lost Stories | I have Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to thank for inspiring my poem Hollywood Africans, an ekphrastic, prose love poem in The New Carthagians (2025), a book that centres on a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat, a Black Icarus and me, the Poet. Ultimately, Hollywood Africans – both the 1983 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat and my poem of the… |
Issue information
Liberation — Table of Contents 
Supported by Arts Council England