Editorial - Connectivity

Hello Dear Reader, and welcome to Issue 1 of Consilience.

Consilience was set up to create a space for the people working on the overlaps between the sciences and the arts. We wanted to create an environment where people were free to experiment in the interstices, and where their work could be nurtured and celebrated. In curating this issue we have worked with 19 poets, subjecting their poetry to a rigorous, but fair and transparent peer review, adopted from the model used in many scientific publications. For each poem, our editors processed the recommendations from two independent reviews, collating this information to feedback to the poet, and then working with them to further develop their work. Some of these revisions were relatively minor, others caused for more significant re-writes, but in every instance the verse that you see here is testament to the inclusivity and collaborative nature of this process.

It seems strange that in many other journals, a poem is either ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’ at the stage at which it is submitted. By only rejecting those poems that fall outside the scope of Consilience, the theme of the individual issue, or which are at odds with our inclusivity statement, we hope to be able to collaborate with poets (both new and experienced) to provide the support that they need to develop both their craft and their identities.

We are very proud of all of the poems that feature in this issue, but we also wanted to create a system for our editors to highlight the poems that spoke to them most strongly. That is why each issue will contain an “Editor’s Pick” of our favourite four or five poems, chosen collectively by all of our editors, and accompanied by audio clips of the poets reading their work.

The theme of this Issue is Connectivity, and it is an inescapable fact that we are currently part of a global society that is struggling to connect. Struggling to connect with our loved ones via the various social distancing measures that are implemented by our governments. Struggling to connect with those same governments as they not only turn a blind eye to racial prejudice, but in many cases actively fan the flames of hate and bigotry. Struggling to connect with a society in which segregation, inequality, and injustice permeate through every stratum of society. We don’t profess that the poems that are gathered here have all, or even any, of the answers to mending these connections, but we hope that in reading them they cause you to think about some of the strained connections that exist in your own lives, and what needs to be done in order to start to repair them. As the American novelist and poet Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker once said:

“Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.”

The Consilience team is also made up of visual artists, and as well as inviting submissions from people working in the intersections of the sciences and the visual, the cover art of each issue is specially created by one of the artists and constitutes their personal reflection on the issue's theme. In this issue we are delighted that Tony Pickering was able to create such a rich exploration of the potential for connectivity. 

Here at Consilience we acknowledge that we need to do more to raise the consciousness of both ourselves and our authors and readers in order to help mend our communal connectivity. We are an international group of 35 volunteers, spanning five continents and 26 local time zones, but we are aware that we do not speak for all peoples. We can do better; we want to do better.

As the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein observed:

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

From issue 2 we will be accepting poems written in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Czech, English, and American Sign Language. These are the limits of our language, as represented by those that are spoken to a native level amongst our editors and reviewers.

How can we be more representative of those members of our communities that are under-heard and underserved? How can we use our voice to help tackle inequality and injustice? These are not rhetorical questions. We want to know what we can do to not only break down the barriers between the sciences and the arts, but to also help tear down the palisades of prejudice and injustice that pervade our society at all levels.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and the poems therein, and that in some small way we can connect with you through our poets.

The Consilience Team