EDITORS LETTER

As we push past two years manipulated by fear and grief, we travel into a poetic catharsis. We now bear the question, as we collectively manoeuvre through the grooves and crevasses of our newfound normality: how shall we shape our infant normality in a way that it can be nurtured into something we look upon with a fond smile, and not a regretful, inverted one? Something to ruminate, indeed.

Being students of UniSA, we know you hunger for knowledge. A curiosity lives behind your eyes, and we urge you to reach forth and take that curiosity outside of its foam-cushioned boundaries. We encourage our cherished readership and dedicated contributors to be formidable in your accounts; be sharp, contoured and unapologetic in the skin that houses your spirit. Never silence your inner noise or mask your displeasure, because it is with the vibrations of our words that we accelerate change.

Inside the 44^th edition of Verse you’ll find the dichotomy between poetic nature and raw realism strung together by an array of emotionally wrenching, multi-layered pieces that explore all forms and themes, from undiluted love, quirky observation to woeful self-deprecation.

Surging heedlessly forth, let us stop, pause, disown and cast off our hesitancy into the shadows, and step onward with an impenetrable gravity. Let us cultivate a community that accommodates love, embraces unity and rejects the ideals and ideations that segregate us. Let us celebrate life and its joyous trivialities.

I believe our purest forms of justice are all poetic in nature—and where goes poetry if not to paper? The pleasure of reading your texts and beholding your virtuosities is a privilege—place your submissions this year!

I send you the best of luck for 2022—this is your year.

Shania.