Revolutions and Revelations

Editorial#12

Kaya. This is our twelfth issue and marks the end of three years of making Portside Review. We are grateful to do so on Whadjuk Country, coming to you from Boorloo by the banks of the Debarl Yerrigan where that river takes our words out across the sea to you, no matter where you are in the Indian Ocean. Thanks to our recent ports of Singapore, Mumbai, Cape Town, Penang, Kolkata for the welcome reception.

Portside Review has always had a geographic concept, an ecological frame, a material sense of its place. This is artistic and political. In our very first editorial, we stated ‘that our love of the Indian Ocean can be found in many places that are not ours alone’. That sense of multiplicity, of sovereignties in the plural, of connection continues to matter too. We have made our presence known in many places where the waves lap and the salt breeze blows. In one way, most of all, we push against the hard declamatory style of ‘radicals’, believing ourselves to be ‘revolutionary' instead, floating like happy pirates repatriating treasures seized by emperors from bygone eras. 

As readers over the last three years will know, we are not a journal of critique and review, nor of scholarship and journalism, nor of doctrinaire reference. By going our own way, which is many ways along the way, we have built a journal to last for everyone who comes. This has been while maintaining a stance of equity, diversity, and inclusion, which is the mandate of our parent organisation - Centre for Stories. It has meant we always continue to learn from the ideologies of pacifism, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, socialism, feminism, decolonialism, and more, in aesthetic and activist terms. That is why we continue to thank our forebears and peers like Mekong Review, Caravan, and LIMINAL. 

Our artists, guest editors, staff, interns, readers and friends have always brought their own inflections to this, thankfully re-routing and shifting Portside Review itself, just like the water in our ports. We are grateful to them all. By placing different people in positions of power, we can elevate, enlighten, and change our ideas. It is as much about these people as it is about the fish and stingray, the coral and lifebuoy, the knotted rope at the heart of home, floating in an ocean of myth and lotus. 

This issue features new and old works. Some new poets we haven’t featured before, such as T. Banks Vittini, Cindy Solonec, Radha Jyoti Nur and Christal Ho. Some old friends return with new poems to share – Ko Ko Thett, Glen Hunting and Jerome Masamaka. For prose, we have thoughtful pieces by Taya Reid, Janelle Koh, Zahina Maghrabi, Alyssa Carroll, Samantha McCulloch, Megan Cheong, and a return from Asha Rajan. We also feature a series of First Nations poetry in response to a poem by Mabel Gibson and, in part, in response to the devastating results of Australia’s Voice to Parliament referendum. Finally, we share a hybrid essay-poetry piece by Lakshmi Kanchi (SoulReserve) in partnership with her mentee Jayelan Lee, a non-verbal writer with complex communication needs.

In celebration of the past three years, we also selected a number of poetry, prose and conversation pieces from the vault: poetry by Luoyang Chen (Issue 3), Isabella Motadinyane (Issue 10), and a selection of queer poetry curated by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal (Issue 8); prose by Warsan Weedhsan (Issue 4), Cher Tan (Issue 1), Kenneth Wong (Issue 9), Ruby Thiagarajan (Issue 6), and Malachi Edwin Vethamani (Issue 11); and two conversations including Paul Cleary and Tiffany Ko (Issue 7), and a yarn between Sandra Hill and Sue Schlueter (Issue 2).

There have, of course, been milestones in every issue and we are proud of what we do from the smallest poem to the photo of the lone resistance warrior. Thank you. It is because of you we are happy to share this volume. When we return in 2024, all our material will be free to read from now until forever. That is in the hope of making our work accessible and widely shared, a way of saying thanks for reading. Until then, have a look around and if you like what we do, tell your friends at the beach or on the ship or just walking down the coastal strip eating gelato. Till soon. 

Robert Wood