Editorial

My primary aim for Uneven Floor is to make it a good read. Inez Baranay observes that good writing ‘gives a feeling of freshness in the mind’.1 This freshness is the undefinable quality I look for as I read the submissions. The poetry I want to publish is interesting and original, but not in a mannered, egregious or pretentious way. Originality is not an end in itself. It has a purpose: to help induce that freshness in the mind.

If I am successful, you will get something from each poem on your first read (or listen). The poem may be puzzling, but I hope you will notice something moving or shifting inside you. Then I hope you will reread the poem — perhaps several times, perhaps on the same day, perhaps weeks later — and each time discover in it further levels of aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction.

Here are some more of my aims for Uneven Floor:

• to publish poetry that is intelligent and artistic without requiring its reader to be a poet or a literature student
• to provide a professionally-edited outlet for a variety of poems, including those written in styles that may not be at home in more orthodox literary magazines
• to publish poets from diverse backgrounds, ages, ethnic origins, genders, sexualities, etc
• to edit critically while allowing for minor flaws and for diverse Englishes
• to connect readers and poets from Western Australia, eastern Australia, and beyond
• to make it difficult to visit the site without experiencing at least one poem.

Poetry is art. It may also be decoration, entertainment, commentary, celebration, lament, protest, or a call to arms — but the kind of poetry I want to publish is art first. Contrary to what someone once said (if you know who, please tell me!), now is the time for decorative art. As I walk through the asphalt Waste Land of the corporations' city, I realise we need it desperately. And messy art. And ugly art. And flaky art. And awkward art. And surreal art. And serious art. And everyday, common-or-garden art. Here are a few words from the Bauhaus Manifesto.

...there is no such thing as “art by profession”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the artisan. The artist is an exalted artisan. ... the foundations of proficiency are indispensable to every artist. This is the original source of creative design.

So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future...

With any luck, this building will have an uneven floor. Happy reading, and please watch your step.


Jackson (Founding Editor)
March 2016

1. Baranay, I. (2006). Freshening the Mind: An Account of Teaching a Three-Week Creative Writing Course in Chennai, India. In N. Krauth & T. Brady (Eds.), Creative writing: theory beyond practice. Teneriffe, Qld: Post Pressed.