Guest Editor’s Note
When Patrick asked me to guest edit the fourth issue of Wet Grain, we were on the top floor of a museum, overlooking eaves and statuary. I came to our conversation with a deep fondness for the print poetry journal, which he established in 2020.
‘I want poems that can’t be paraphrased,’ I told Patrick early on, by which I meant work that achieves what only poems can do. I was drawn to the mysterious and wrought, to the tonic of blunt words. When I shuffled the works, I found harmonies and fruitful frictions. What conversations might they form?
This issue was forged across distance. But when Patrick and I next meet, it will be among strangers, friends, and poets on a summer’s evening, at the first of several readings that bring to life what this issue has distilled. We’re glad to welcome you to this space, here and in the world.
Sylee Gore