When we sent out the call for remixes, we were expecting poems that were joyous, musical, and strangely familiar. The poems that we received far exceeded our expectations: afters, concrete work, re-imaginings of myth, ekphrasis — the work that we have had the privilege of reading astounded, challenged, and delighted us. Our ‘inspired by’ poet, Taylor Byas, Ph. D, draws inspiration from Wanda Coleman’s work and transmutes themes from that work into poems that are incisive and timely. While poems from Courtney Conrad, Kaycee Hill, and Thea Smiley all explore music and its associations from a range of perspectives.

Poems from around the world have found their way onto these pages, from right here in the UK to India and even Australia. Covering topics from war-torn classrooms to forests where echoes cannot sound, we have been privy to poems that have reshaped our understanding of what we thought we knew already and pushed the boundaries of our imaginings of what is possible in this craft.

To remix is to take something existing and make it new. To peer through the same weary eyes, and imagine a different, radical version of what we have been so used to seeing before. We’ve tried to weave this ethos throughout the issue, not just in the poems, but in the prose features as well.

In his essay, ‘More Than A Remix’, James Charles Morris explores the idea of remixing the self, and how keeping an open mind with your art can lead you to transforming how you work. Today we are bombarded with the rise of AI – it is something that is slowly becoming integrated within the everyday objects that we use – making it harder and harder to separate ourselves from it. As artists, it looms as a dangerous shadow, one that threatens to encroach upon our spaces. However Morris’s perspective challenges this idea both in his essay and his art. Through the use of digital collage, he reimagines work in exciting and interesting ways that prompt us as readers and viewers to look more deeply at what and how we consume. Morris challenges our fear of the unknown, instead encouraging us to lean into it and trust our own intuitive creativity within the digital spaces we inhabit.

Malika Booker and Dante Micheaux’s insightful conversation on how to create, or perhaps, curate a remix shines in a similar way. The interview beautifully expresses the idea of proximity and distance, and how, by moving ‘further away from the shore’ of a thing, we can make something new from its essence. Dante’s response poem to Malika remixes an old world, transporting us back to an inverted version of Malika’s story. Malika’s response poem, on the other hand, subverts the tone of Dante’s Apples – instead offering us a new voice of empowerment through Lilith.

As you begin your journey with this issue, we encourage you to pay attention to wherever it is these remixes may take you. How far your mind is able to traverse, and where you end up. Perhaps the shore you wash up upon will invite you to create something new of your own.

 

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From Magma 94

 

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