‘In the place, through which we wander
Reason turned around
And every fool
Will see his madness crowned’

(‘Giving Ground’ – The Sisterhood)

“It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.” Don DeLillo

There’s no escape. Every word is The Word. Every story has to be told. Again and Again and Again ad infinitum. Everything matters, and of course when everything matters, nothing is important at all. We doom scroll and doom scold, our voices added to the maelstrom of pain, longing and fear. All we are is repetition. Repetition is all we are. Locked into some endless 1970s television comedy rerun marathon, we object to new rules, new faces. Our Arcadia is a half an hour long. Our stories old and worn out. We’re still fighting them on the beaches.  

How is it possible to long for a time and a place that never existed? This issue explores the static that surrounds us continually, the ‘culture war’. The redefining of time, memory and culture into a grievance for a golden age, some Arcadia, that if it ever existed, certainly didn’t for the majority of the population. Memory is curated to exclude poverty, disease, urbanity and of course anyone that isn’t white. Essentially an idyllic English country village is imagined, the type found in jigsaws and Agatha Christie novels, whilst 1970s comedies and old war films loop endlessly and Vera Lynn sings the soundtrack of our lives. This used to be just a far-right trope, but this corruption of memory and language has entered mainstream conversation. Weirdly, the Arcadia of the Irish reactionaries is very similar to that of the English. Only more people have red hair. There seems to be a template for Arcadia. It always ends with a body count.

There is an anger that surrounds us, a nebulous cloud of frustration, dissatisfaction and pain that envelops us. Perhaps there always has been and it builds up and builds up then explodes to facilitate horror and atrocity. But now it has a digital home and none of us are safe from ‘opinion’ and ‘telling it like it is’. The bar-room bores and the armchair generals are now legion.

Abridged in its White Noise issue is looking for poetry that explores the corruption of memory, the glamour of nostalgia, fear and information overload. You can send up to three poems, to abridged@ymail.com preferably in Word or similar and if unusually formatted in PDF. Please put your name and a short bio in the body of the email as it might end up in the Spam folder and we might miss it. Don’t send anything via Google Drive. Deadline for submissions is 30th September.

Please note this issue is for anyone Irish and anyone of any nationality who lives or is based on the island of Ireland/Northern Ireland.

 

This issue is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland

Abridged is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and The Arts Council of Ireland.