Issue 4 – Summer 2018

Editorial

Coast to Coast to Coast Journal was first envisaged a few years ago as an original art piece which would combine distinctive, one-off pieces with contemporary poetry from both established poets we admired and strong work from emerging and ‘beginning’ poets.  The name of our journal came from a conversation about journeys to and from Liverpool’s Mersey coast where it was established, but our journals have travelled further than we could have imagined. Over this first year, we’ve published poets from and sent journals all over the UK, Ireland and the rest of Europe, to Mexico, India and The Emirates. Establishing a real community through the project has been one of the loveliest aspects of Coast to Coast to Coast.

We hope you enjoy the range of work on these pages, all wonderful poems each with its own poetic focus, for example: the merging of two languages in Preseli, the use of rhythm and form in What you are made of; a different idea of form - fragmented like a broken sculpture in A Brilliant Angel, the precarious balance created in The Shapeshifter’s Courtship, and the wonderfully intense focus and associative writing escaping and returning to the origins of thoughts like a bird taking off and landing in Collins Gem. There is wonderfully memorable work too from the three runners-up mentioned as an Afterword to this selection of poems

 Thank you to our readers—as part of this community, you hold in your hand the result of many hours of intensive labour (every cover of the Journal is unique and numbered). Recently, several previous contributors have told us that they’re collecting every issue! Thank-you for letting us have your carefully created poems and for helping to create another wonderful Liverpool launch in Falkner Square.

Maria and Michael, Liverpool, August 2018