Editor,
The Seedling is Hope’s only literary journal. It aims to sharpen the cutting edge of community life by providing a platform for hidden Hopian voices to articulate their experience and create a crack in the membrane between inner and outer worlds, shedding light on both.
What good is freedom of speech if no one practices it—if we become too worried about offending people or saying the wrong thing to express what’s on our minds? Life is only as exciting or as edgy as we make it. This includes the life of a community or town—which is made up of hundreds of separate lives, overlapping and intersecting in countless ways. This is (roughly) what The Seedling was created to explore. It’s been running for ten months now and has attracted some talented writers with unique perspectives on living in Hope.
The only thing is, almost all of us writing for The Seedling have gray hairs, achy joints, and curmudgeonly perspectives. This tends to reinforce the idea that Hope is a place for old people to retire to. There’s a growing gulf in the world between young and old—among other gulfs—and it’s just such abysses that The Seedling was created to span.
As a writer, I like to think I can match anyone, whatever age, when it comes to all-engulfing edginess. Even so, The Seedling could benefit from some young blood—and ink—injected into it. Stories, poems, memoirs, rants, laments, howls of rage or joy, whatever the soul aches to express The Seedling is here to deliver to the community—anonymously if need be—and let the chips fall where they may. We aim to give voice to the voiceless, and embrace alienation in all its forms.
If daring to say what we actually think and feel has become a radical act in today’s dystopian society, then saying the “unsayable”—and discovering we don’t get our heads chopped off—frees up space for necessary expression. Community means communication: not just “please” and “thank you,” “how are you,” “have a good one,” texts and “likes” and automated Google responses (“Ha ha, that’s amazing!!”). Communication and community means sharing our personal experience of the terror and the wonder of being alive. It takes both guts and creativity.
If you think you have enough of either, contact TheSeedling@protonmail.com.
The Seedling can be picked up for free at the library, Bakers’ Books, New2Yew thrift store, and other local venues.
Jasun Horsley
