It is with absolute admiration and awe that I introduce the November issue centered around collaborative poetry and prose. Each and every piece not only cherishes collaboration but also highlights its power. Compiling this issue urged me to rethink what our writing can look like in relation to each other because collaboration requires hard work and vulnerability. I have learned so much from the writers here, and I hope you will too. These words are powerful, and the beauty of this issue is that it can model for us how we, too, can be collaborative.
I will never tire of saying that editorial work is people work. The work we do as readers, writers, and editors seems isolated and individual at times, but all of my greatest memories of being in the literary world come from working with other people.
In this spirit of collaboration, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about my own collaborative process with the team here. So I asked the team—Angela, Fred, Hannah, Holly, and Lindsay—four questions, and here is our collective response, as a cento of sorts.
What does collaboration mean to you and what does it remind you of? Is there a fond memory of collaboration? What is challenging about collaboration? What kind of collaboration do you hope for in the future?
Collaboration becomes communication without words or beyond words. I picture two hawks soaring, usually together, which makes me think of my best friend who can always walk out with me to Rumi’s proverbial field “beyond ideas of right and wrong.”
One time, a classmate of mine was shocked hearing my best friend and I speak to each other—we’d both be talking at the same time but registering what the other was saying and our speech kept blossoming.
There’s the fun that comes with creating a meal together, the way my brother and I would steal chocolate chips from the dough our mom was working on. Process turned into play, with intention and care.
I was a stage manager for the drama club which meant working together late into the night to create a final product that seemed so smooth (ideally) from the audience’s seats but was a mad dash of love and practice and organization and laughter behind the scenes.
There’s a balance between spontaneity and structure. Collaboration isn’t about the final product but the person I’m working with. It’s a challenge to relinquish control, letting go of coming up with the perfect answer or method.
I want to help each other love ourselves and other people without fear or competition. I wish to live in a place where everything we do—each moment in time—is understood in a collaborative, communal, cooperative spirit. Even nothing is something and part of everything.
I hope for many more friends in the new place I call home to collaborate with on climbs and hikes, and ultimately I hope for a partner to collaborate with on life in the largest sense—on how to construct our days and weeks. I guess I can just add that to my online dating profile now lol.
Five generations of my family have been a part of this American experiment—my grandparents grew up during segregation and went to segregated “Mexican-only” schools; my aunts and uncles were continuously redlined to the west side of town; my mother internalized the chaos in the form of alcohol and drugs—so the country hasn’t always felt like home. Especially not as a trans woman of color. I feel I’ve never committed to being “here”—I’ve always kept myself moving, disassociating, detaching. But I’ve learned that I have to risk it—risk the pain and the discrimination and the grief of loss and the dire reality that my country does not want me, in order to actually experience being alive. I’m building a home for myself, gathering resources and feeding myself well, making friends, and just generally taking what goes on here in the world seriously, and I think this is a type of collaboration, one I want to deepen with every moment.
Coming from a working class, Catholic household, my family and I were stuck in a space where getting your things done was prioritized—anything outside of that (emotional connection, bonding, asking for help) was put on the backburner and, over time, it evolved into feeling ashamed of those things. I hope to step fully out of that learned shell (it’s a long but important process) and step into a collaborative mode where mutual aid, support, and communication of needs is natural—with my chosen family, my city, and friends I have yet to meet.
There is too much love to name just one.
Reader, here we are, where we started and where we are still just beginning. As my tenure as guest editor comes to a close, I want to leave you with one final question. Where would we be without each other?
Su Cho is the author of The Symmetry of Fish (Penguin, 2022), a winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series. She has served as editor in chief of Indiana Review and Cream City Review and as a guest editor for Poetry magazine. Her work has been featured in Poetry, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Orion, the 2021 Best American Poetry and Best New Poets anthologies, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for...