Channel Magazine publishes fiction and essays to 6,000 words, and poetry. “We publish new, previously unpublished work that engages with the natural world. We have a particular interest in work which encourages reflection on human interaction with plant and animal life, landscape and the self.” Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: Why did you start this magazine?
Cassia & Elizabeth: We started Channel in April 2019 to offer a platform that was lacking here in Ireland for writers whose work engages with the natural world. Our inspiration came from international eco-journals such as the US-based Orion and the UK’s Elementum. Ireland had been without such a publication since the closure of the wonderful EarthLines Magazine in 2015, and we felt that, in the current climate crisis, this type of project was crucial to building a culture of connectedness with nature.
In all uses of the word a “channel” directs something—an idea, a material, a spirit—through or towards something else. We created our Channel as a passage through which ideas about human relationships with nature might flow.
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
Elizabeth: Hiddenness, uncertainty and surprise (see Jane Hirschfield, Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, 2008). I’m looking for that “oh!” moment when something reveals itself, and the self it reveals is utterly honest and unexpected.
Cassia: Honesty, precision and a distinctive point of view. I love to read a piece that seems to have sprung out of its author almost by accident, because it demanded to be written.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
Elizabeth: When a work doesn’t seem ready for publication, it’s usually that the piece’s resonance is limited by something within it (a construction issue, or a tone that’s too bold or too vague, or a truth that the writer themselves is turning away from, for example).
Cassia: Cliché, or the sense of a rehearsed or recycled voice.
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s)/stanza(s) of a submission?
Elizabeth: Whether poetry or prose, I’m looking for immersion. I want to enter a piece with confidence in its intentions and be kept curious as I go along.
Cassia: I’m looking for freshness and specificity in the language. A sense that the writer isn’t creating this piece because it feels clever, or they’ve read something like it, but out of real and deeply felt engagement with whatever it’s trying to say.
SQF: If Channel had a theme song, what would it be and why?
Elizabeth: Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell
Cassia: Something collective, a round or call and response.
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?
C & E: What counts as “nature writing” in your view?
Nature writing is a broad and adaptive genre, given many definitions across time, and much of the work we publish falls outside some of these definitions. It might be said that all writing is nature writing of a sort, in the sense that all human thought and language is ecologically derived. We gather and showcase work that engages intensively with that truth, using nature variously as grounding theme, character, setting, metaphor or otherwise. The scope of this is best judged by reading a back issue.
Thank you, Cassia and Elizabeth. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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