Edition Five: Myth
Introduction
Some entries in this edition have audio available
Welcome to ‘Myth’, the fifth issue of Pomegranate magazine. As editors we were pleased to see that the broad theme got a lot of you thinking down a wide variety alleyways branching off from that slightly vague word, and some of the poetic paths you were led down bore fantastic fruit.
Our title itself conjures up Greek tales, and our old friend Persephone certainly makes an appearance here in Saeed Jones’s sparky ventriloquism. Ariadne also crops up as the title of Rees Arnott-Davies’s regretful travelogue, and Apollo inspires a finely-tuned sonnet from Laura Marsh – but it’s not all Greek to us.
The modern myths of television also put in an appearance, in John Clegg’s frankly freaking weird – but brilliant – review of Leontia Flynn’s ‘Drives’ though the personae of the ‘Desperate Housewives Book Club’. Editor Emily Tesh uses her classical smarts to put forward an intriguing argument about the nature of myth itself in the modern world, and rounding off this article-rich issue is another feisty response by Rebecca Varley-Winter to Charlotte Geater’s dissection of the ‘myth’ that there exists such a thing as the ‘poetic’ pop lyric. I wax lyrical about Facebook in my own article, and two poems by Ahren Warner give different slants on modern ephemera.
As usual, we also have plenty of poems that have nothing to do with our theme, and though they make it harder for me to write snappy segues, we assure you that they’re no less wonderful. Whether or not you want to use it, the theme for our next issue will be ‘Noise’, and we’re currently sorting out a plan to have some audio content (not just because it’s ‘Noise’, but it’s fitting, isn’t it?) courtesy of the lovely Alex Pryce, the brain behind Poetcasting and a woman surely just as qualified as rap group Flobots to lead a nation with a microphone.
Don’t worry about the audio element for now – we’re not expecting any technical wizardry from you guys, your words are more than enough! However, if we decide to use one of your poems, we might be in touch about this exciting new venture. (That sounds like it’s a pyramid scheme. I promise it’s not a pyramid scheme.)
‘Noise’ can be anything you want it to be, and different people have different conceptions of what constitutes it – a theme partially explored by Ahren Warner in this issue, in fact. Music, drills, musical drills, and anything else you can think of. Hearing the muses yet? Then all that remains for me to do is present this issue, dispelling one of our main cultural myths – that what young people say isn’t worth hearing – and cordially invite you both to make some noise, and bring the aforesaid. (I don’t think that was in the Public Enemy original, but I wish it was.)
Artwork Credit
All art in this issue is taken from flickr using a Creative Commons licence.
Unicorn by Alana Jones on Flickr
work by anaughty @ flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.