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Colony Issue 1

Colony is one of a flurry of recently-established Ireland-based journals interested in a break from a traditional-institutional understanding of literature (or at least, as Colony's first editorial statement puts it, in an area of "healthy tension" between the traditional and the avant garde). A group of exciting writers and artists make up its editorial team. It's to appear online three times a year, with a fourth, print issue including the best of the online material plus new work set to be published annually.

Colony's inaugural issue presents work that "exemplifies [a] spirit of playfulness, glee, and anarchic invention" by "some of the best writers and most gifted artists and thinkers in Ireland (and beyond)." I'm delighted to be contributing two poems to it: 'xxxxx' and '16 X 16' are concerned with ideas of appropriation, re-framing, constraint and process, while extending a sideways glance at the issue's theme of Counterfeits/Fakes/Hoaxes. My thanks to poetry editor Kimberly Campanello for taking a chance on them. And also for embedding into the issue the sound file of my speaking of '16 X 16'.

Across its various sections, Colony's inaugural issue also features Billy Ramsell, Giles Goodland, Dimitra Xidous, Mia Gallagher, Raymond Deane, Dave Lordan, Kit Fryatt, Robert Sheppard, Alan Titley and Bernard Clarke among several others. Well worth a read, watch & listen in its tumultuous entirety, and a very welcome addition to Ireland's artistic/literary scene.

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