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Editor’s Note

What is poetry if it carries not an iota of poetic truthS? I must acknowledge that I owe the idea of truthS to Linda Hutcheon. When Charles Bukowski expresses the view that “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can,” I think he is making a significant statement about the quintessential nature of the poetic art. Poetry goes beyond the creative expression of the “representable” and the “normal”; it affords even the so-called “unrepresentable” and the “excluded” the luxury of representations in order to upset the norm and place it in perpetual crisis. Of course, this crisis is advantageous to the fertility of poetic imagination. Perhaps, that is the poetry that happens when nothing else can.

When the discourses of the Higher Order Disciplines (HOD) foster on us a Truth that denies the polyrhythm of our existence, poetry deconstructs the Truth and lays bare the sinews of the truthS of our nature. What characterizes these truthS is its openness to the multiplicity, and at the same time, the contextual specificity of our experiences. Thus, the capitalization of the plural marker signifies its allegiance to the plurality of un/realities. This stark expression of poetic truthS affords poetry its elasticity of representations. As Rose Mae has rightly claimed, “Art has no limits of expression when fortune favors the bold.”

In this issue, there are interesting poems by Tim Trimble, Paul Benton, Mahima Gupta, Basit Olatunji, Stephen Mead, ‘Deji W. Adesoye, David Schwartz, Kousik Adhikari, Gbenga Ogunleye, Robert James, Abiodun Soretire, JD DeHart, Goodness Olanrewaju, Anthony Ward, Aneesha Roy, Jonathan Doughty, Gabriel Bamgbose, Rose Mae, Wilson Hill, Adeleke Haamid, Glenn Fang, Ambrose Thompson, Abiola Abidemi, Ryan Johnson, and Odun Orimolade that would make us experience the different shades of truthS that shape our world.

Enjoy reading!

Gabriel Bamgbose