we recommend holding your phone horizontally while reading to experience the poems in their intended layout
ISSUE ONE POETS
The landscape of Nine Lives Issue One is the reeds by the river that sing and play, red ochre undergrounds, winter bleeding into spring. In this first issue, our poets have extended a hand into their own internal worlds, playing host to us as we home in the warm spaces between the full stop and the next line. For them, the alphabet is a playground and we are joining them in hide and seek - searching secret sunlight and revealing written rituals:
The cornfields are rustling
The windows are wide open to an empty space
I want you to know about the black cat (loves the lap)
Come home every weekend and dance to sweet tunes.
Seawater running across every last fibre
This journal was built upon the grace and support of Aotearoa’s creative community.
We are grateful to all those who submitted poetry in our very first submission window. It takes a lot of faith to welcome a stranger's eyes upon your writing, and even more to trust that this budding journal of ours would flower into something worthy of your words. We feel honoured that you trusted us so fully.
To the nine brilliant lives of Issue One: we feel blessed to have built the hearth from which your flames stretch up into the stars. Thank you to Aroha Matchitt-Millar, Rune Benzon, Alexandra Cherian, Charles Ross, o(l[i]ve)(*) (bly(th)), Lauren Mae, Whaitiri Tua-Warbrick, Tara Leckie and Frankie David Nui Matchitt-Millar.
Thank you to our talented cover artist Cerys Wiles for creating the landscape these poems reside within. Thank you to our brand designer SOONBOMB for providing the stars that watch over these pages.
Finally we extend a huge mihi to Enjoy Contemporary Art Space for hosting our inaugural launch party.
With love,
Holly, Kieran and Mauatua