editorial

newleaf 25 cover

A silver bullet, silver tongued

This might be a silver number for us, but we are far from going grey. While this issue starts out with the portrait of a kind of stagnation not unlike the political and social undercurrent of these days, our authors are restless and seeking out the tantalisation of new beginnings. Waking and walking, they display an adventurous energy, belying the notion of a paralysed culture. In reminiscence of the day in the life of one Leopold Bloom, we can follow several beginnings in this newleaf – we have not yet had so many people waking up or getting out of or into bed before, starting the day on the move, creating and naming, acknowledging scenes of destruction and the undercurrent of a resistance against the norm.

Silence may be golden, but newleaf still has a lot of silver speech: the new Issue includes contributions from the Solway Coast in Scotland, New York State, Indiana, Dublin, London, East Sussex, Edinburgh and Melbourne-via-Belfast – and, of course, four of the usual local suspects from Bremen are there as well.

Keeping an independent literary magazine alive for twenty-five issues is not possible without backup. And while we have been very blessed with an ever­ growing team over the years, we would not be where we are now if we had been working in a void. So this one is for all of you who have given us their tales and verses, who have followed us, supported us, read us and spread the word, and to all of you who may now be encountering newleaf for the first time and who might stay with us –

Thank you.

The wind may be coming from the front, but we will still be writing.

Julia Boll, Simon Makhali and Ian Watson, January 2009

‘He who has little silver in his pouch must have the more silk on his tongue’
(Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, 1803-1873)

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