Issue 16: Editors' Note

Cover painting: Sunny Watermelons (2024), by Alai Ganuza.

We’ve been celebrating at Dust Towers over the past couple of weeks. Not only are we incredibly proud to showcase an immense wealth of talent across the pages of this new issue, but we are also delighted that Olya K-Mehri has been longlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Written) for ‘Forest Fire’, which was published in Issue 15 of Dust Poetry. Congratulations, Olya! We’re very pleased to feature a new poem by Olya in this issue.

Writing this editorial in the middle of a heatwave, this truly feels like a summer issue! It’s no surprise, then, that we were drawn to Alai Ganuza’s gorgeous painting of slices of cooling watermelon for our cover image. We love the striking red of the fruit against the vibrant blue background, which seems to reflect the many contrasts and turns found in this issue’s poems. Here you will find nostalgia and the optimism of youth set against the realities and responsibilities of adulthood, from Ann Cuthbert’s glorious assertion that ‘I’ll waft and wander but I’ll know where I am going // when I am young’ to Rowan Lyster’s den in which friends can once again eat melting Ben and Jerry’s and shriek with laughter, all while set against the backdrop of a future son who ‘will be well this time, I promise’. There are also poems, however, that highlight the confidence that can grow in later years. When reading for the issue, we were very taken with Anne Ryland’s ‘A young woman on a mission!’, in which a woman of sixty-two years of age finds that ‘I’ve further to travel’. We think it’s the perfect closing poem.

Dust 16 feels like an issue with an accompanying playlist, with so many of the poems featuring dancing and music. Charlotte Murray’s ‘Portrait in Which I Don’t Recognise My Mother’ conjures up images of the ‘blaring’ miniskirts and ‘blurring’ of limbs of 1980s Blackpool nightclubs (while Tess of the D’Urbervilles sits ominously on the bookshelf, unread). In Kate Hewett’s ‘Honestly the song Hold On by Wilson Phillips’, a pop song ‘Snags in the memory like a thread on a sweater’, while it’s ‘some haunt- / ing song that spins and drifts and / twists’ in Scott Elder’s ‘Strange What Keeps You Afloat’ that leaves us ‘limp and without design’.

This is also an issue in which you’ll find numerous ghosts, from the spectral ‘I’ in Seth Crook’s powerful ‘SPEC ES’ to the devastating impact of the generational repetition of violence in Rachel Thanassoulis’s ‘The Pink Skirt Suit’. Erica Hesketh’s ‘Four’ is haunted by the separation of mother and child, while Maria Taylor delights in the ‘harmless ghost’ of a gecko that connects the speaker to a grandmother they barely remember in ‘Mişaron’. In James McDermott’s ‘Ghost Town’, the dereliction of a seaside resort symbolises a son’s personal loss as he remembers his father amongst racks of postcards that scream ‘I WISH YOU WERE HERE’.

Whether you’re reading this on your holidays in a far-flung corner of the world or settling down to enjoy these poems at home, we hope that you love the issue as much as we do!

Catherine and Tara

Contents

1.      Mişaron by Maria Taylor

2.      Four by Erica Hesketh

3.      When I am young, say seventeen or eighteen by Ann Cuthbert

4.      Mealtimes by Sue Burge

5.      Strange What Keeps You Afloat by Scott Elder

6.      For Mary by Eve Chancellor

7.      Txakoli by Julie Irigaray

8.      Join me in the den by Rowan Lyster

9.      Inherited Soil by Olya K-Mehri

10.  Fledging by Genevieve Beech

11.  SPEC ES by Seth Crook

12.  Saint Brigid’s Womb-Healing by Christina Hennemann

13.  Condolences by Thea Smiley

14.  Already Elsewhere by Shikha Lamba

15.  Portrait in Which I Don’t Recognise My Mother by Charlotte Murray

16.  Ghost Town by James McDermott

17.  Things I have learned from Fairy Tales by Sophie Anderson

18.  A bad day by Stewart Carswell

19.  The Pink Skirt Suit by Rachel Thanassoulis

20.  Honestly the song Hold On by Wilson Phillips by Kate Hewett

21.  Night Tourists, Bratislava by Matt Gilbert

22.  One Hour from Forever by Gabrielle Munslow23.  May 1^st by William Snelling

24.  A young woman on a mission! by Anne Ryland

A note of reading: If you are reading this issue on a phone you may find that switching to desktop view restores the intended structure and line breaks of the broader poems.

Issue 16 Cover Artist: Alai Ganuza

"Alai” means “happy” in Basque, and that’s what I want my paintings to carry. I work with bold color, visible brushstrokes, and everyday light, an expressive painting practice that tries to hold a feeling more than a scene." - Alai Ganuza

We are thrilled to feature the vivid and expressive painting of Alai Ganuza in Dust Poetry.  Alai is a painter and educator based in the Basque Country, Spain. After initially studying physics, she followed her lifelong passion for art, earning a Fine Arts degree from the University of the Basque Country. Rejecting strict photorealism in favour of vibrant colour and expressive brushwork, she developed a distinctive style inspired by everyday objects and moments. Today, Alai works as a full-time artist, teaches internationally through workshops and online courses, and shares her creative process with a global community. Her work celebrates experimentation, curiosity, and the belief that art flourishes through generosity and connection.

You can find out more about Alai's work on her website, or on her Instagram here .

You can also buy prints of her work here.