Editor’s Note
The titles of each issue of The Willowherb are often chosen on impulse—a word or phrase emerges that just seems to fit many of the pieces we’ve selected, whether consciously or not. This time around, once we’d whittled down near three hundred pieces to just sixteen, I kept thinking about land. Particular parcels of land, the kinds of places we circle back to—and the ways such lands give us meaning. The word “tracts” can refer to such a parcel, but might also remind us of texts: short, reflective, often religious works that teach us something of our world. It seemed the right word for this moment and these pieces.
In “Tamago” we journey through motherhood, place, and past possibilities; we consider ice, migration, and muscle memory in Stephanie Krzywonos’s “Glacial Erratic”; we cycle through death and rebirth in “goodbye house” by Samantha Cheh. Journeying through the power of naming the world and the meanings made by memorialisation, this issue asks in earnest how we might live with the nonhuman—and one another—more compassionately, roving from India to Alaska, Britain, Malaysia, Australia, and elsewhere. The pieces in this issue may come across as more reflective than others we’ve published in the past; I would venture that they are more self-conscious, more engaged with the work of writing and creating a better life than ever before.
It has been four years since The Willowherb launched, and in that time we have watched the writers who have graced its pages grow and thrive. Forgive a moment of gushing, heartfelt congratulations to so many of them: Nina Mingya Powles on the publication of Small Bodies of Water, which began as an essay in our first issue, and Michael Malay, whose Late Light will be published in 2023. Jennifer Neal’s first novel will be published next year, and Mya-Rose Craig’s book on BIPOC youth activists appeared this past summer. Melissa Fu’s Peach Blossom Spring will be published next February, while Zakiya McKenzie’s Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Vol. 1 was published earlier this year. A handful of contributors—Amanda Thomson, Kaliane Bradley, Michael, and Zakiya—appeared in the recent and incredible Gifts of Gravity and Light, and Amanda has recently become a Guardian Country Diarist and will have a new book out next year. If you’ve written for us and I’ve missed you on this list, let me know and I’ll add you. It’s become hard to keep track of our growing community. Which is really the best thing I could hope for.
Thanks as ever to Dasom Yang, Isabel Galleymore, and Nicole Jashapara for their work on this issue. Lastly, I want to extend my thanks to the support of Arts Council England through a National Lottery project grant for supporting the publication of this issue and the next. Seeing the journal grow from its tiny crowd-funded seed to a fully-funded organisation has been a source of immense pride for me. I cannot wait to see all the writers we have yet to meet; though I do hope you’ll linger a while and enjoy those gathered here now.
Warmest wishes,
Jessica J. Lee
London, September 2021