As loneliness seeps into my quarantine,
I just want to see. Anything. Anything at all.

I cannot bear an empty Times Square.
Shuttered Paris. Paralyzed Rome.

So I settle on Galway. Shop Street
is as sad as the others, but at least

a breeze is blowing colorful flags above the lane,
cold spring sun stretches across bricks.

Wrapped in flannel, I sip on bitter tea
and watch a trickle of humanity

walk around and away from one another
or in pairs, stagger careful distance, suspicious.

I put on a sorrowful soundtrack,
cannot stop watching.

A boy on a red bicycle weaves with abandon around
a dangerous gaggle of girls who cannot smell pox in the air.

A man in a black cap walks backwards
as if he can unwind time.

Oliver Wendell Holmes comes to mind,
“I claim the Christian Pagan’s line,

Humani nihil,—even so,—
And is not human life divine?”

I watch the man go in reverse, on and on
across my screen, into shadows, disappear.

Gina Williams

Helen Victoria Anderson has an MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Teesside University. She is fascinated by the therapeutic power of writing. Helen won first prize in the People Not Borders Short Story Competition 2017 and the InkTears Flash Fiction Contest 2015. Her poetry pamphlet Way Out was published by the Black Light Engine Press. Author of ‘Piece by Piece: Remembering Georgina: A Mother’s Memoir’ (Slipway, 2015), she is a bereaved parent and a widow.

Bob Beagrie is a poet, playwright and senior lecturer in creative writing at Teesside University. He has performed at numerous festivals and venues nationally and internationally. As well as collaborating with musicians, he has also worked closely with visual artists on public artworks and with theatre company Three Over Eden. He is co-director of Ek Zuban Press, an independent publishing house which produces Kenaz magazine, and bi-lingual poetry editions drawn from international exchange projects. Ek zuban also delivers creative writing, reminiscence and local history projects with community and education groups across the North of England, often culminating in performances and/or publication of participants work.

Francis Bede is an Australian who lives in Tasmania. His first book, Bad Clergy, was recently published by Niche Press and his poems appear in Terror House Magazine, Oddville Press, Literary Heist and Whimperbang.

Charlie Brice is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), and An Accident of Blood (2019), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Sunlight Press, Chiron Review, Plainsongs, I-70 Review, Mudfish 12, The Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Miki Byrne has had two poetry collections and a pamphlet published, plus over 500 poems included in poetry magazines/anthologies. She was a finalist for Gloucestershire’s Poet Laureate and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Miki has read on TV and on radio many times. She also ran a poetry writing group at The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury. She has read at many festivals and venues. Miki is disabled and now lives near Tewkesbury. Gloucestershire, UK.

Linda M. Crate’s works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She’s also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). Recently she has published two full-length poetry collections Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming, February 2020) and The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit, February 2020).

Maria Castro Dominguez is the author of A Face in The Crowd, her 2016 Erbacce-press prize winning collection. Winner of the third prize in Brittle Star’s Poetry Competition 2018, finalist in the 2019 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry contest, her poems have appeared in Orbis, Obsessed With Pipework, Sarvasti, Apogee, The Long-Islander Huntington Journal NY, Popshot and London Grip.

Julie Easley is a working-class poet from Saltburn who has performed widely, both nationally and internationally. She has collaborated with musicians and, as part of the poetry collective ‘Words on Skin,’ and has been commissioned twice by Apples and Snakes as a ‘Deranged Poetess.’ An active member of Tees Women Poets, and events organiser/host for ‘DiVerse,’ Julie uses writing to be seen.

Fran Edwards has been short-listed for the Sid Chaplin short-story competition and has won a Scholastic Press children’s poetry competition. Recently she was a runner up in the Lost Words competition and has had a poem published in Tree Poetry, an anthology produced by Iron Press. She lives in the seaside town of Redcar in the North East of England

Joachim Frank is a German-born scientist and writer living in New York City and now, during lockdown, in Great Barrington, MA. He has published a number of short stories and prose poems in, among other magazines, Offcourse, Conium Review, StepAway Magazine, and Wasafiri. Frank is a recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His first novel, “Aan Zee,” has been published by University Press of the South. Frank’s website franxfiction.com carries links to all his literary publications.

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has two collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) and Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press).  A new chapbook of surreal work, The Covalence of Equanimity, a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize, is now available from SurVision Books. Two new collections are forthcoming later this year.

Caroline Hardaker lives in the north east of England. Her poetry has been published worldwide, most recently in Magma, Shoreline of Infinity, and by The Emma Press. Her first poetry collection, Bone Ovation, was published by Valley Press in October 2017, and her second, Little Quakes Every Day will be published in November 2020. You can follow what she’s up to here.

Julie Hogg is published in many literary journals including Abridged, Black Light Engine Room, Butcher’s Dog, Corrugated Wave, Honest Ulsterman, Irisi, Poethead, PB7, Proletarian Poetry, StepAway, Well Versed and Words for the Wild. Featured in anthologies by Litmus, Zoomorphic and Seren, her debut pamphlet Majuba Road is available from Vane Women Press

Jayant Kashyap’s poetry appears in Rigorous Magazine, Event Horizon Magazine (June 2018), The International Poetry Digest, and several other national and international anthologies, and has appeared on several local and international websites. One of his poems has recently been featured in the Healing Words Awards Ceremony. His interests include reading extensively, delving into old forms of poetry, writing letters, lexicography, playing with dogs, listening to music and a lot more. You can see more of his work here.

Tom Kelly is a Jarrow-born poet, playwright, lyricist and short story writer, ‘Tom Kelly has Jarrow in his bones and his poems are shaped by the past.’ (Ambit). This Small Patch, his ninth collection, was recently published by Red Squirrel Press. The collection looks at Jarrow’s history as he tries to make sense of the past, his life and times. His website can be found here.

Rayon Lennon was born in rural Jamaica; he moved to New Haven County, CT, when he was 13. He currently resides in New Haven. He holds a B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Southern Connecticut State University. He holds a master’s degree in Social Work and works as an Adolescent Psychotherapist. His work has been published widely in various literary magazines, including, The Main Street Rag, StepAway Magazine, Folio, The Connecticut River Review, The African American Review, Noctua Review, Indianapolis Review, The Connecticut Review, Callaloo, Columbia Journal, and Rattle. His poems have won numerous poetry awards, including the 2017 Rattle Poetry Prize contest for his poem “Heard”; his poem, “Heaven Tree,” was nominated for Best of the Net anthology by The Indianapolis Review in 2018. He won the Folio Poetry Contest for three consecutive years–2007, 2008, and 2009. He won the Noctua Review Poetry Contest in 2014 and 2015. He also won Rattle’s Poets Respond contest in 2015 and 2019. His first book of poems, Barrel Children, was released in March, 2016, by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Barrel Children was a finalist for the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for best poetry book.

Ilona Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. She is an editor, poet, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2021). Writes in journals, anthologies, and six chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Artistic director of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award.

Eva Michely lives in the German border region of the Saarland, where she works in marketing and PR. Eva is currently completing her PhD in Irish Literature. Her poems have appeared in Nothing Substantial, StepAway and Aurora: The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology.

Ruth Nyimba writes social observation and reflectory pieces. She is inspired by every day life and is motivated by the strength found in the hour of desperation.

Stevie Ronnie is a writer and artist based in Northumberland, UK. He was a contributor to the Northern Wanderer issue of StepAway Magazine and you can find out more about his work here.

Gerard Smyth has published ten collections of poetry, the most recent of which are The Sundays of Eternity and A Song of Elsewhere (both Dedalus Press). The Yellow River (with artwork by Seán McSweeney) was published by Solstice Arts Centre in County Meath. He was co-editor, with Pat Boran, of If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press).

Gina Williams is a journalist, photographer, former firefighter, and gardener. She’s a Pacific Northwest native and can often be found rambling in the Oregon Outback, volunteering at the community garden, or on assignment in a far-flung location. She lives and creates near Portland, Oregon. Williams is a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and founder of Plein Air Poetry Northwest, a nonprofit organization supporting literary arts and environmental activism. Her writing and visual art have been featured most recently by River Teeth, Okey-Panky, StepAway Magazine, Carve, The Sun, Fugue, Palooka, Boiler Journal, Whidbey Art Gallery, Black Box Gallery, and Great Weather for Media, among others. Her full-length poetry collection, An Unwavering Horizon published by Finishing Line Press, is now available for pre-order and will be distributed in May 2020.

RM Yager is a retired nurse who writes for those who have no voice, are marginalised or are at risk. She has been writing for over 50 years.

–Cino da Pistoia, friend of Dante*
1270-1336

City of bells, keeper of secrets,
cobblestoned passageways
leading back to forgotten centuries.

ꬸ

Walking from Convento di Giaccherino—
air feather soft,
gardens abloom,

Along the steep orchard path
on the Way of the Cross—
past fourteen tabernacles renewed in 1630.

This way, the altars call,
this way to heaven as chimes toll from towers below,
belfries on every corner of every block

Ring out the hours,
as I peer through rusted keyholes
revealing courtyards, labyrinths, frescoed vaults.

ꬸ

Church candles flicker
above ancient, echoing tiles—
prayers flutter skyward on swallow’s wings.

Hope and longing rise
above green-shuttered windows, red tiled roofs,
Romanesque Duomo.

City of artists, priests,
poets, princes, creators—
builders, planters, teachers.

From the convent hill,
Pistoia smiles—finer than Firenze
shimmering in the distance—

Fortressed, sun gilded
a tapestry
of the ages.

ꬸ

City of bells,
city of dreams.

Home.

*An anthology of Italian poems 13^th-19th century selected & translated by Lorna de Lucchi, 1922

Gina Williams

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, where he writes poetry and short fiction. He’s the author of a pamphlet, Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016) and a full collection, We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018). His next collection, Hi-Viz, will be published in 2020. He blogs and posts mixtapes here.

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer. His seventh collection, The End of the World, recently appeared from Dedalus Press.  He is the 2019 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award.  His best-selling memoir, The Hurley-Maker’s Son, published by Transworld, was shortlisted for the 2016 Irish Book of the Year Awards.

Berni Dwan’s poems have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Galway Review, Cránnog, Irish Times New Irish Writing, A New Ulster and StepAway Magazine among others. Her first collection, Frankly Baby, was published by Lapwing Poetry in 2018. She performed her one-woman show, Unrhymed Dublin, in the Smock Alley Theatre 2016 Scene and Heard Festival. In 2017, she won second prize in the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award. Her show The Seven Ages – Like It or Not will feature in the Smock Alley Theatre 2020 Scene + Heard Festival.

Richard W. Halperin has four poetry collections out via Salmon/Cliffs of Moher, and eleven chapbooks out via Lapwing/Belfast. The most recent are, respectively, Catch Me While You Have the Light (2018) and Sunday Visits (2019).  His work is part of University College Dublin’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She was Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Chapbook Competition (Spring, 2018) and won the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’. (August 2018). She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, in 2017 and is now developing practice as a creative writing facilitator with hard to reach groups. She believes everyone’s voice counts.

Dominic James lives in the South West and follows poetry meetings up and down the Thames River Valley. Recently published in Poetry Bus and The Journal his collection, Pilgrim Station, is available from SPM Publications. His website can be found here.

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa.  She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist’s Conference in Oslo, Norway.  Her recent poems appear in Pilgrimage, Potomac Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Harpur Palate, Ithacalit, Saint Katherine Review, Amethyst Review, Descant, Qwerty, and the anthology Vanguard: Exercises for the creative writing classroom.  Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication’s Firefly Farms, and a scholarship to attend the 2019 Sewanee Writers Conference.

Gina Williams is a journalist, photographer, former firefighter, and gardener. She’s a Pacific Northwest native and can often be found rambling in the Oregon Outback, volunteering at the community garden, or on assignment in a far-flung location. She lives and creates near Portland, Oregon. Williams is a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and founder of Plein Air Poetry Northwest, a nonprofit organization supporting literary arts and environmental activism. Her writing and visual art have been featured most recently by River Teeth, Okey-Panky, StepAway Magazine, Carve, The Sun, Fugue, Palooka, Boiler Journal, Whidbey Art Gallery, Black Box Gallery, and Great Weather for Media, among others. Her full-length poetry collection, An Unwavering Horizon published by Finishing Line Press, is now available for pre-order and will be distributed in May 2020.

RM Yager is a retired nurse who writes for those who have no voice, are marginalized or are at risk. She has been writing for over 50 years.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to StepAway Magazine‘s seventeenth issue.

I’d first like to thank you all for voting for us in the Walk 21 Vienna Walking Visionaries Awards. We make it our duty to avoid bombarding our readers with weekly emails, however, on this occasion we bashfully requested that you participate in Walk 21′s online public vote. The response was overwhelming – so many of you took the time to support us. Your efforts are very much appreciated. I am delighted to report that StepAway Magazine won an award for Walking and the Arts. We’ll be thinking of you all when we receive the award in Vienna in October.

Issue seventeen opens with two extracts by Adam Ford. The first is taken from his book Mindfulness & the Art of Urban Living, which explores the activity of walking as an exercise for both body and mind. The second is from The Art of Mindful Walking where Mr. Ford takes the reader on a mindful journey through the city. Leaping Hare Press publish a set of engaging, beautifully bound titles on mindfulness.  However, I felt that these two particular volumes by Mr. Ford would most interest StepAway readers. I was particularly impressed by the author’s positive approach to walking – his enthusiasm is palpable throughout both of these titles. I was also captivated by his attention to the walker’s gaze. In each of these extracts he encourages us to look upwards and outwards, beyond our habitual field of vision when walking. Furthermore, the books are refreshingly jargon free and a pleasure to dip into.

This issue also includes some fantastic work from: Ben Banyard, J.D. Blair, Nancy Charley, Joachim Frank, Sarah Newfeld-Green, Sam Lewis, Luisa Lyons, Myron Michael, Derold Sligh, and Gina Williams.

Our cover art is courtesy of the London based artist John Gledhill. The image, a linocut, is reminiscent of the Elizabethan Street Scene from The Roxburghe Ballads. The pedestrians in Mr. Gledhill’s contemporary work may not be tending to livestock or dodging the contents of chamber pots poured from upper floor windows, yet they are united across the ages as faces of the urban crowd going about their daily business. A number of pieces from the artist’s impressive portfolio, such as “Communication II” pass comment on the interconnection and disconnection of those inhabiting urban space. I admire his intuitive flâneur’s eye view of the city and encourage you to explore his website further.

I hope that you enjoy reading this, our seventeenth issue.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Around the corner
a man on the sidewalk convulsed in his
sleeping bag. A puckered old woman
in polka dot pants
unlocked her suitcase from the bike rack
in front of the city library. A blond
boy with a begging sign played
his cello so fiercely the strings curled
and snapped in the wind like cables of a collapsing
rope bridge.

The heater was left on
and I sweltered in the night,
tossed in a sticky web of midnight
daydreams, took a pill,
dreamed at last of killer waves and angry relatives.

Now the morning news tells me a bomb went off
at a bus stop someplace in the far east.
Another plane plunged into the sea.
Those children in Syria are dying from the cold
before the bullets can kill them.

The bus was late. I forgot my lunch
on the counter at home. The coffee pot
at the office sparked and smoked.
I cut my finger on the staple remover. My
spine bends a little further to the left each day.
I’m unprepared for fire or weather.
I bought a sandwich,
carried it around, handed it to a man in rags
shivering on the corner,
flames licking at my boots
as I walked away.

Gina Williams

J.D. Blair developed a 30-year career in journalism and television production as a Writer/Producer and was nominated twice for Emmys. Since 2000 he has been writing plays, short fiction, essays and poetry and has had publishing success in each genre.

Nancy Charley‘s has had poems published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlet, This Woman, was published in 2011 by Conversation Paperpress. She has a forthcoming collection in 2017. She lives in urban Kent and works in the London metropolis, as an archivist, commuting 3 days a week to uncover the treasures of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Adam Ford was formerly Priest-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen at the Chapel Royal, and chaplain to a London school. He has an MA in Indian Religions and lectures on Buddhism, Hinduism and Astronomy. He is the author of The Art of Mindful Silence, Galileo & the Art of Ageing Mindfully and Mindfulness & The Art of Urban Living.

Joachim Frank, a German-born scientist and writer, moved in 1975 to Albany, New York and recently (2008) relocated to New York City.  He took writing classes with William Kennedy, Steven Millhauser, Eugene Garber, and Jayne Ann Philipps.  He wrote three novels, still unpublished.  He has published short stories and prose poems in Lost and Found Times, The Agent, Inkblot, Heidelberg Review, Groundswell, Peer Glass, Open Mic, elimae, 3711 Atlantic, Cezanne’s Carrot, Brilliant, Eclectica, Offcourse, The Noneuclidean Cafe, Ghoti Magazine, Duck and Herring Co. Pocket Field Guide, Hamilton Stone Review, Raving Dove, Bartleby Snopes, Red Ochre Lit, StepAway Magazine, Litbomb, Works in Progress, Black&White, Fiction Fix, Short, Fast and Deadly, TheNewer York!, and The New Poet. Some portfolios of his photographs are found here.  His website is franxfiction.com

Artist John Gledhill was born in Bolton, Lancashire but is currently based in London, where he has a studio in Notting Hill. He has experience with various mediums, among them drawings with charcoal and pencil. His work  focuses on London but also, perhaps more importantly, on its people and their daily routines while out and about in the city. Gledhill has studied at the University of Lancaster and the Royal Academy Schools in London and was awarded a doctorate by the University of York. He has collections in the U.S.A., South Africa, Australia, Ireland and UK and has exhibited extensively including often times at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. His website can be found here, and he is also on Facebook.

Sarah Newfeld-Green hails from Malvern, England. She moved to London in the late 1970s where she was an office worker. Her work has been published in The Mountain Astrologer, amongst others. She now lives on the Californian coast, where she writes poetry and flash fiction.

Sam Lewis studied English and Creative Writing at Baldwin Wallace University, where he earned his Bachelor’s of Arts. He is currently taking graduate courses through Cleveland State University, and is living in North Olmsted, OH. His work has been featured in Freshwater Poetry Journal, The Mill, and Northcoast Review.

Luisa Lyons is an actor and writer living in New York City. Her writings have been featured in the Buck’s Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp Cowbird blog, My Fair Lipstick, Wolverine Farm blog, and published in the Fort Collins Courier, Unsweetened, and Origins. Luisa has performed original works in Sydney and London. For more visit www.luisalyons.com

Myron Michael enjoys walking through both familiar and unfamiliar cities and is a 2015 Best New Poets and pushcart prize nominee.

Derold Sligh is currently a member of the English faculty at Daegu University in Daegu, South Korea. He received a BA and MA from Central Michigan University and an MFA from San Diego State University. He was the recipient of the J.L Carroll Arnett Creative Writing Award. His work has appeared in journals such as American Poetry Journal, Mythium, Chamber Four, Konundrum Engine, Saw Palm, PoetryMagazine.com, Asian Journal of General Education, Pudding House Press, Switchback Magazine, Central Review, Web del Sol, and Gemini Magazine. He has taught creative writing workshops for San Diego State University, Gear Up and King/Chavez/Parks and was also a guest poet at the Theodore Roethke Memorial where he ran a workshop for African American fathers and sons.

Gina Williams lives and creates near Portland, Oregon. Her writing and visual art have been featured most recently by Carve, The Sun, Fugue, Palooka, Boiler Journal, Whidbey Art Gallery, Black Box Gallery, and Great Weather for Media, among others. Learn more about her and her work here.

Philip Barlow is an artist who lives in Noordhoek Cape Town, South Africa. He has worked as a painter for most of his life, his career started at art school in South Africa in the eighties, he then painted for a number of years in Europe. Philip returned to South Africa in the mid nineties to resume mural painting as well as working on various commissions both public and private. He now works on bodies of work for solo shows and group exhibitions and has collectors both nationally and internationally. Philip is one of three brothers of whom all are successful artists, he is married and has two children. His work can be found here.

Bill Buege is the author of two chapbooks: Jill (Tamafyhr Mountain Press, 2007) and Imitations (Chiron Review Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Christian Century, Collages and Bricolages, Iris, The Laurel Review, Mid American Review, Phoebe, Riprap, River Styx, Sou’wester, The Madison Review, and the anthology Chick for a Day, as well as in many other periodicals. One of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Laura Glenn has a book of poems, I Can’t Say I’m Lost, published by FootHills Publishing. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Antioch Review, Boulevard, Cortland Review, Epoch, Green Mountains Review, Literal Latté, Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, Rattapallax, and the anthology, A Fragile Index of the World. She is the recipient of a CAP fellowship in poetry and a poetry grant from AE Ventures, and is working on a second book of poems. Also a visual artist, she lives in Ithaca, NY, where she works as a freelance editor.

Jen Marshall Lagedrost is a poet, translator, and runner. She comes from an organic vegetable farm in rural Ohio and resides in Southern California. Her work appears in Pleiades, Minerva Rising, Midwestern Gothic, Drafthorse, The Henniker Review, Poetry International, and the anthology Bearers of Distance from Eastern Point Lit House, among others.

Originally from England, Susi Lovell worked in Austria, South Africa, Colombia and Australia before settling in Canada. She started writing fiction after a lifetime of performing and teaching movement and physical theater, and a spell writing on dance for the Montreal Gazette. Her stories have appeared in carte blanche, Grain, Fiddlehead, Kudzu Review, and other literary journals. Susi can be reached at susilovell.com.

Myron Michael is a publisher, recording artist, and writing teacher. His poetry appears in Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009), Nanomajority, Fourteen Hills, Harvard Review Online, Toad Suck Review, The Blink, Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine, Beeswax, Reverie, The Revolving Door, Spillway, Tea Party Magazine, Cave Canem XII, Eleven Eleven, and Another&Another, respectively. In collaboration with Microclimate Collective, he has presented work at the openings of  Eidolon, Perfect Place/No Place, and X LIBRIS. He co-created “Vertical Horizon” as a participant in Broadside Attractions/Vanquished Terrains.  His chapbook Scatter Plot won the 2010 Willow Books Integral Music Chapbook Prize, and he is co-author of Hang Man (Move Or Die, 2010). He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Maria Pianelli is a former journalist, aspiring novelist and nacho aficionado. Born and raised in New York City, her work largely reflects on how emotional, societal and physical place have affected her self-perception. A recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz, her nonfiction has been published in The New Paltz Times and Staten Island Advance. When she’s not writing, Maria enjoys bonfires, hiking and pretending she lives in the 1970s.

Arturo Rubio is a writer from Tijuana, Mexico. He has been published in The Barcelona Review, Almiar, Strange Horizons and San Diego Reader. He currently lives in San Diego, California with his wife, three boys and two dogs.

Kathleen Saville lives and works in Cairo, Egypt where she teaches creative and academic writing at the American University in Cairo. Her work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Written River, Orion, Adventum Magazine, Draft, Lincoln Magazine and St. Katherine’s Review (forthcoming). When not teaching, she spends her summers in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Amy Schreibman Walter is an American poet living in London. Her poems have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and her debut chapbook, Coney Island and Other Places, was published last year by Lulu Press.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue Eight.

In the months which followed the publication of our previous issue, we witnessed the awesome and terrifying power of nature as Hurricane Sandy bore down on America’s eastern seaboard. As the superstorm made landfall we kept a close eye on Twitter. Hari Kunzru tweeted: “One by one, New York area sites are going dark – Gawker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post #sandy.” Minutes later Occupy Wall Street tweeted “the lights are flickering” followed by the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan tweet “#sandy lights out in Lower Manhattan”. And so, we watched from afar as a megacity was momentarily closed down. Trading stopped. Transport stopped. Even New York based internet sites went dark.

In most instances the construct of the contemporary metropolis serves to shelter its inhabitants from all but the most powerful forces of nature. The wealthiest need rarely venture outdoors, making use of underground carports, chauffeurs and helipads. For the rest of us, when it rains we take a cab. Or we duck into the subway or the underground. As long as we have spare change in our pockets there is no need to bear the brunt of the weather. On a daily basis, it is perhaps only the homeless that live at the true mercy of urban nature. We look down from our apartments and admire the beauty of a frosted winter street, but for the destitute an unexpected drop in temperature is a potential brush with death.

As much as Sandy demonstrated New York’s ability to rally in a time of crisis, it also served to emphasize the ultimate fragility of our urban spaces. When we walk in cities, nature may recede from us and yet it is ever present in its beauty and in its threat.

The theme of urban nature – bloom and decay – is laced into the very fabric of issue eight. Our writers take us atop New York’s High Line and beneath the rusting tracks of an elevated railway, through the flora and fauna of west coast suburbia and down into the gutter where thistles push up through the asphalt.

Our cover is courtesy of Sherry Karver and is entitled: “Webcam at 45th & Broadway, Winter”. The scene is a New York winter as captured by the Earthcam.com streetcam. In her Surveillance Series the artist recognizes webcams as the “historians of our contemporary era” on account of the manner in which they “capture us in our everyday lives…usually unaware that we are being observed. Webcam captures form Ms. Karver’s creative starting point – all of her work in this series is a combination of photo images, oil paint and resin surface on wood panels. StepAway readers may wish to explore Ms. Karver’s portfolio, particularly her Urban City Series which ingeniously combines street level city views with superimposed flash fiction biography of her pedestrian subjects.

Issue eight opens on a festive note with Gina Williams’s poem “Silver Bells”, a wonderfully woozy, boozy wander through nocturnal New York. Phillip Dacey’s “With Apologies to Grant Wood” transposes an iconic image of 20th century art onto 21st century street level Manhattan. Tina Barry then takes an elevated wander through the Big Apple in her three linked prose poems “The High Line, New York City”.

Brenda Yates’s “Walking is the First Meditation” transports us to L.A., a city which she feels is best described by Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer in Annie Hall: “my feet haven’t touched the pavement since I reached Los Angeles”. Her poem is a quiet contemplation of the natural world whilst walking in suburbia. Meanwhile the industrial rhythm of James Scott’s “Metallic Heart” rings out like a mantra as he takes a walk beneath the elevated railway tracks.

The themes of urban decay and the reclamation of the city by nature are amplified in Carol Lavelle Snow’s “Ghost Town” and Tamara Sellman’s “While in Chicago”. We remain in The Windy City for George H. Northrup’s “Chicago: on the bus, off the bus” an anecdotal poem which examines the distance between urban commuters.

We then leap to Liberia where Althea Romeo-Mark examines visibility outsidership and threat in her creative non-fiction piece “A Morning at Waterside, Monrovia, Liberia”. Catherine Simpson’s “Caffé Trieste on San Pablo” then examines the act of seeing and being seen as the poet plays at being the flâneuse, while Jerry Ratch’s “The Bum and His Shopping Cart, Giving Up His Ways” observes homelessness on the city streets. We close this issue in the City of Light with Enid Becker Smith’s “Paris” – a painter and writer’s homage to the sensory pull of her favorite city.

And on that note, I think that it’s about time that I left you to explore our fantastic winter edition of StepAway. Shelter from the weather, have a warm and wonderful festive period – we look forward to catching up with you in the Spring.

A very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year from everyone here at StepAway Magazine!

Best wishes,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

PS. Ten of our local libraries are currently being threatened with closure. Please join me in signing this petition. Save Newcastle libraries.

Gina Williams