Reflections on Ten Issues of Young Ravens Literary Review

I can't believe that what started out as a little passion project between two English majors has blossomed into the tenth issue of our biannual online journal, Young Ravens Literary Review!

I am honored that so many people chose to share their creativity with us over the years. In each issue, we explore a different concept:

Issue 1 Open Theme - Creative Scintilla

Issue 2 Fairy Tales

Issue 3 Science and Imagination

Issue 4 The Heart of Cyclicity

Issue 5 The Four Elements

Issue 6 Prayers for the Planet

Issue 7 So long, Farewell

Issue 8 Centering

Issue 9 Rarity and Scarcity

Issue 10 Sacred Spaces

Weebly is a great website for tech newbies like me, but I struggled to understand how to use it at first and even today I am still learning how to better clarify my formatting. I am grateful for everything I have learned in the process and hope that with each issue, the vision of Young Ravens will improve.

With the release of Issue 10, my co-editor Elizabeth Pinborough and I ask ourselves the question: What have we learned from editing ten issues of Young Ravens Literary Review?

Elizabeth:

I am so grateful to be part of this publication. My favorite part of editing Young Ravens Literary Review for these past 10 issues has been working with long-time friend and editor Sarah Page. Sarah writes our gorgeous calls for submissions, and I am always impressed by how she frames the topic, the many angles from which she sees any given theme. She knows how to ask important questions and how to invite others to think creatively. 

Reading submissions has revealed how incredibly diverse the work of poetry is today. Our authors have reinforced the idea that poetry is a powerful tool for solving the problems of this world. These nodes of individual creativity spread across cyberspace have the potential to revive a dying world, to inspire compassion, to accelerate creative problem solving for some of the truly baffling predicaments of our time, and to inspire the fellowship of verse. 

One of the most valuable lessons about creativity that I have learned is to just start! Creativity begets more creativity. Everyone is a creator, and everyone has the power to discuss their feelings, experiences, and ideas in verse. It refines and challenges you. I find that reading a good poem almost unconsciously begets a poem in me. If I am attending to the poetry I am breathing, I can catch a current of another poet's creativity and ride it to a verse or two of my own. My voice requires the uplift of other poets rhythms to be possible. I'm grateful to the poets and artists who have enriched our pages. 

Sarah:

Thank you, Elizabeth! I have greatly enjoyed working with you, too, these last several years! From the submission process to journal elements and introductions, I rely on your keen insight to refine each issue to a shine. There have been several times when I thought that our project would need to be put on hiatus or end because of challenges that came up in life from health to time constraints, but I am really glad we did not give up. 

I have been humbled and amazed by the beauty and variety of human creativity our contributors bring to every call for submissions. Poets, artists and writers take the theme of each issue, almost like a rough lump of stone, and polish it into a diamond of many-faceted verse and imagery. I think the most important thing I have learned is that I can never know or count all the facets of an idea; perception is in the eye of the beholder. We need each other's minds to truly illuminate the depths and angles of our universe.

So thank you, dear contributors and readers, for giving Young Ravens Literary Review ultimate shape and sparkle!