Description
I didn’t set out with any sort of theme in mind for this issue—all I wanted was to gather together pieces that diverged from current trends, and which were brave enough to be their own thing. I wanted to read things which were unflinchingly honest, which made me sit up and pay attention, which showed me new ways of seeing and held my face toward the light and said “look, here, this is what really matters”. I think all of the poets in this issue do that in their own ways. I hope you feel the same. Some strong common threads have emerged, as they tend to do. Places, ideas of belonging, the natural world and our relationships with it all feature heavily in this issue—maybe these are just the things I’ve been enjoying reading lately, but I suspect it also reflects a growing eco-consciousness, or climate-anxiety. 2023 was the hottest year since records began, and 2024 is already on track to leave it in the dust. The environment is changing rapidly due to our destructive influence and hyperconsumption, and we are living in a time of flux to a degree that few other generations have experienced. Little wonder, then, that so many poets are thinking, in their own ways, about our place in the world.
It’s been a joy and a privilege to steer this issue of Minarets. Long may she ride (sea-levels permitting).
—Niamh Hollis-Locke
AIMEE-JANE ANDERSON-O’CONNOR has words in the periodicals Starling, Mayhem, Brief, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Turbine, Mimicry, Minarets, Sweet Mammalian, Sport and Verge, and the anthologies No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2022) and Visible Cities (Cuba Press, 2023). She is a keen zinester and collage maker. You can find her on Instagram: @ajaocmakesthings
GABRIEL CURTIN is an artist, writer and editor living as an uninvited guest on unceded Arrernte Country. His work broadly considers poetry’s ability to locate and enact relations unencumbered by policy. Some of his work can be found in Rabbit, Cordite, Un Magazine, Infrastructural Inequalities, Unusual Work, Borderlands, Vre Books and Art + Australia. He was a finalist for the 2021 NT Literary Awards (poetry) and was highly commended in the 2017 W.B Years poetry prize.
EARTHA DAVIS wishes to live gently, kindly, & most certainly by a river. She placed second in the 2022 Global Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section & has been nominated for Best of the Net, with work published or forthcoming in Wildness, Frozen Sea, South Florida Poetry Journal, JMWW, Arboreal Magazine, The Stirling Review, Sour Cherry Magazine, Revolute, & Eunoia Review, among others. She is a poetry editor at three journals & dreams of birds.
RONIA IBRAHIM is a writer and artist living in Naarm. Her poetry and non fiction has been published in Starling, Overland, Turbine|Kapohau, The Pantograph Punch, and Newsroom. She is interested in writing at the intersections of diaspora, appetite, faith and coming of age.
LORETTA RIACH is a twenty-three year old artist and writer living in Te Whanganuia-Tara, who likes geology, swimming in rivers, and telling stories. Their writing can be found in Minarets 13, as well as issues of Starling, Sweet Mammalian, Mayhem, Takahē, and Poetry Yearbook NZ. They are a facilitator at play_station artist run space.
RUBEN MITA is a writer, musician and ecology postgrad student in Pōneke. He has been published in journals such as Landfall, Takahē, Starling and Sweet Mammalian. He loves fungi, some sounds, and trying to write poetry that plays with overlapping realities.
MARGO MONTES DE OCA lives and writes in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She hails from both Mexico and Aotearoa and likes to swim in the sea that connects them. Her poetry has been published in Starling, Sweet Mammalian, and Bad Apple.
MARK PRISCO —has been published in BlazeVox (USA); Mayhem; PNZ; and Minarets. He was guest editor for Mayhem in 2021, and has had book reviews published in PNZ in 2022 and in 2023. He sometimes writes prose.
EVANGELINE RIDDIFORD GRAHAM s author of the poetry chapbooks La belle dame avecs les mains vertes (Compound Press) and Ginesthoi (hard press). Her writing can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Art News Aotearoa, The Spinoff, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City, where she hosts the poetry podcast Multi-Verse.
ELIZABETH WELSH is a poet and papermaker from Titirangi. Her poetry collection Over there a mountain was published by Mākaro Press. She is currently researching and writing about wetlands and silence/noise.
NIAMH HOLLIS-LOCKE decided she wanted to be a writer at age 9, and hasn’t ever stopped to figure out whether that was actually a good idea. She holds a BA(Hons) in English Literature from VUW, and is currently working towards a Masters in Creative Writing at Massey University. Her work can be found in Starling, Rat World, and in the pile of notebooks taking over her room which she’ll never let anyone read.