The Passionate Transitory

Editorial

Here, safe in The Passionate Transitory's office (well, cubbyhole with a desk in it), we're glad to report that we've managed to avoid the recent storms and flooding, the transport disruption, the assault of the norovirus. Indeed, our only calamity was the PT's cat, Calliope, being sick on the Mac keyboard. And if that's a calamity, then God help those men who still hadn't bought their wife's or girlfriend's or partner's Christmas present by five minutes before closing time on 24 December.

So, our second issue has now been put to bed, or should we say shot into cyberspace – and what a cracker it is! We hope it will entertain you during these strange, elongated days between Christmas and New Year. This time we have twenty-one poets represented (there were fourteen in the first issue), including eleven new names. A big welcome to all these new writers, whether from Europe, India or America. Incidentally, we are especially pleased that Indian poet Dhirendra Kumar Shah has joined us, and also a second poet from Bulgaria, Ivanka Mogilska (remember Bozhidar Pangelov in the first issue?) We are keen on receiving contributions in English from all around the world: Africa and Australasia, for instance – anyone interested out there?

Although we are actively seeking poems about "life, landscape, travel and pilgrimage", it's only fair to say the brief has been widened as we've contemplated the submissions: sure, some excellent journeyman and journeywoman poems have been sent in, but we're loath to exclude other types of poem just because they don't fall obviously into this category (though I suppose all poems fall into the category of "life"). Quality, not subject, will always be the benchmark. Nonetheless, that said, we will always have a special interest in poems of a questing nature and poems steeped in particular landscapes.

Since we mention quality, we are proud once again that the contributions are of such a high standard in this new edition of the magazine. The poems are immensely varied, and you'll warm to some at once, though others may take more time. But savour them, read them again and again, and, like us, we think you'll come to appreciate them all, with their different styles, syntaxes, punctuations, themes and concerns – whether they are the intense, inventive poetics of Jenne' R Andrews or the mythical dreamscapes of Hélène Cardona, the urban park realism of Stephen Regan or the wry humour of Les Merton, the playful originality of Seth Crook or the conjoined inner and outer worlds of Morelle Smith. We can't single out everyone here; just read and enjoy. And we leave you with some of our favourite lines from the whole collection: "These things we see by chance, / Like city lights celestial in the rain, / Or something overheard about Idaho . . ." (Geoffrey Heptonstall).