New Lit Mag Alert: Feral, A Journal Of Poetry And Art

By The Editors

We had a very safe, socially distanced email interview with poet Beth Gordon, managing editor of Feral to learn more about this new art and literary journal. Issue 1 came out on April 1st—yes, during a pandemic!–and poetry submissions just closed for Issue 3 (art submissions remain open). Here's what Beth has to say about this wild darling:
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How would you encapsulate what Feral is? ​

Feral is an online and print journal of poetry and art. Our mission is to publish emotionally engaging and well-crafted work from an eclectic group of poets and artists at all stages of their artistic journeys.

What's Feral’s origin story? 

Feral is the literary journal of Animal Heart Press. AHP was founded in late 2018/early 2019 by Elisabeth Horan with Amanda McLeod quickly joining her team. Elisabeth wanted to start an independent press that put its writers first. They published my first book in May of 2019 and it was an amazing experience – they took such care with my work and were very patient with me as I had no idea about the process of publishing a book. In late 2019, they asked me to join the press as an Assistant Editor. I always laugh because the real reason they asked me to join was because I was really efficient about shipping my own books and they asked me to do that for the press. It’s honestly one of my favorite things to do…sending poetry out into the world. One of the things I love about AHP and our team is we are international (US, Australia, and Nigeria) and diverse. I had always wanted to run a literary journal, but after being Poetry Editor of Gone Lawn for 18 months, I knew how much work happened “behind the scenes” and I know nothing about websites, etc.  So, in late 2019, I was thrilled when Eli and Amanda came to me with their idea of starting a journal under the AHP banner and asked me to be the Managing Editor. We then pulled together the team from existing AHP staff with Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau as a Reader, Amanda McLeod as our Art Editor/Reader/Designer and one of our  interns at AHP, Kolawole Samuel Adebayo, as another Reader.

Why the name? (It is intriguing.) 

We wanted to pick a name that was related to the press name that has animal in the title. Honestly, the whole team brainstormed via WhatsApp. One of the funnier moments was when our Australian and Nigerian team members landed on the idea of Wild Wings and we had to explain to them that there is a restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings and it means something very different. During that process we landed on the name Feral because it’s related to “animal” and also to our initial ideas about the journal – being wild and not bound to a lot of rules. 

How do you choose your themes? 

I have to give Amanda credit for wanting to have themed issues. I was very resistant to the idea.  Our first issue was un-themed and as much as I loved seeing what the contributors brought to us, I realized that if we were going to continue to run the journal without a lot of rules about who/what we published, we were going to need some kind of structure to help guide us in making decisions. Issue 1 was published on April 1st at the time when we all had started staying at home (depending on where you lived or how tuned in you were – anywhere from 2-4 weeks) and our reality was changing rapidly. So the theme of Transformation seemed very relevant. For both Issue 1 and Issue 2, we received a number of poems related to the theme of Body, so that became the theme for Issue 3. Journey (for Issue 4) was my personal choice because I really miss traveling.
 
How did the team shape the first issue?  

It’s amazing to me that we pulled off that first issue because we had no idea what we were going to get in terms of submissions. Honestly, I was worried whether we would get enough submissions to create the first issue…but that was not a problem with the poetry.  We received about 200 poetry subs for that first issue. We can’t afford Submittable so I had to scramble and create a shared spreadsheet for us. Our decision making for that first issue was two-step. The team voted on submissions that they read blind. When we were all in agreement, it was an easy "Yes" or "No." Of course, most of our votes were a combination of "Yes," "No," and "Maybes." That’s when I would start looking at who the poet was, i.e. deliberately ensuring that we were bringing forward a diverse set of voices from underrepresented/marginalized communities, as well as publishing emerging poets/artists. The final step was sending all the poetry and art to Amanda who built the website and then decided she wanted to create a print issue. In addition to being a writer, she is an artist and has a great eye for pairing the poetry with the art. Feral wouldn’t exist without her.

What did you learn curating and creating the second issue? 

We loved Issue 1 so much and I was worried we couldn’t replicate that success. Early on, I figured out that the theme of Transformation applied to the journal itself. We had to let Issue 2 be different than Issue 1. The first  “ah-ha” moment I had was when an artist sent us a series of five photographs (the milkweed cycle) and said “I know your guidelines say only submit three pieces, but….” And I loved the series of photographs and how it fit into the theme and realized I was being too rigid. So we decided to publish it. Later, I changed our submission guidelines and added a statement that if you have something that doesn’t fit our guidelines just ask…we might like it. This felt like the natural thing to do because when we started we told contributors – tell us what this journal should be. 

The other thing I continued to learn was related to our selection process. I’ve done a lot of research on the idea of “reading blind” and how we bring our own biases and experiences which may inadvertently lead us to publishing only work that is “familiar” to us and our sensibility. In my case as a middle-aged, middle-class, white, heterosexual cis female from the United States, I could read blind and still end up only publishing work that safely fits into my aesthetic. I’ve come to believe that you cannot separate the poetry/art from the poet/artist. And I’m determined to push us outside our own comfort zones because every reader at Feral brings their own unconscious bias to the process and we have to constantly challenge ourselves if we are going to stay committed to our mission. That led me to make another change in our submission guidelines asking contributors to tell us a little bit about themselves and their work (many already did this but now it’s part of our process).

What's your hope for the current theme, Body?  

My hope is that when this issue is published people will say – OMG, what is Feral doing now? As  you might imagine with the theme of Body, we have received some very provocative work, both poetry and art. We have also received a lot of very personal, painful work that discusses trauma, body image, illness, etc. We always take great care with our contributors and their work but I feel an even greater responsibility with some of the pieces in this issue. I can also tell you that both the quantity and quality of submissions we are receiving has increased, so our decision-making has become more difficult. My team doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to add another layer to our process because of the number of “Yes” votes we have…in order to narrow it down further. Either that or Issue 3 is going to be our largest issue yet.  That’s the fun of Feral – we are making the rules up as we go.