Hello, and welcome to the Spring 2015 edition of Subprimal Poetry Art/Music. This is my first official letter from the editor. Generally, I like to present the works and let them speak for themselves, but this time I wanted to weigh in and give you a little history.

We enter our second year here at Subprimal, a baby among many adolescent, mature, and even hoary journals, with a sense of accomplishment. We have had the honor of presenting a variety of voices from around the world and the pleasure of merging their voices with the musical accompaniment that we love to compose. It’s perhaps a small accomplishment among the publications available today, but one that we hope you will celebrate with us as we continue into our future editions.

One of the most curious repeated questions that we have received here at Subprimal is whether or not we accept submissions from country X. I suppose this is a question born of exposure to regional journals, but please allow me to take this opportunity to say that we never consider artificial national boundaries when looking for work to publish. Quite the contrary. As a USA ex-pat and citizen of the globe, I consider voices from underrepresented regions to be among the most compelling in the world of poetry today. We welcome writers from everywhere and are thankful for those from such compass points such as South Africa, Australia, France, México, the U.K., Zimbabwe, and Texas who have entrusted us with their contributions.

Another question we sometimes receive regards how we create the musical accompaniment that we place alongside the author’s audio reading. Technology questions aside (for we are indeed a child of technology), the basic process is this: we loop the author’s reading until a musical inspiration arrives. We work with the author’s cadence, pitch and rhythm to find the pitch and instruments to complement their delivery. The goal is to add the voices of various instruments to the author’s voice in order to bring another dimension to the words.

I’ve noticed a trend in the last couple of editions of Subprimal. We are not only getting more submissions, but higher quality ones as well, and sometimes we have to make decisions based on how things work themselves into the overall mosaic. I am most grateful for everyone who has taken the time to submit. Thank you very much for your interest and I hope you will continue to spread the word.

Meanwhile, enjoy the pieces we’ve put together for issue #4 and express your thoughts in the comments section. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or ideas, please get in touch.