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In the first house I lived in upon my arrival in England, my elderly landlady, who co-owned the house with her daughter through whom I came to the house, told me that above everything else I aspire to do in England, I should pray to become settled. As if reading the lines of my confusion, she continued: no, I do not mean like your papers and all that. I know you came into this country legally–my daughter has told me that. I am talking about the feeling of being settled. As simple as it sounds, it is the greatest achievement you can ever have as an immigrant. Some have come, and in a year, they feel settled. Some spend twenty-five years, and that feeling of being settled still eludes them.

She was an elderly Black, British-Zimbabwean Christian, a retired nurse who divided her time between England and Zimbabwe. Experience was her greatest ally.

Trying to gauge the waters of my faith, she eyed me circumspectly, measuring my absorption of her caveat. I suspect that perhaps, having seen my boxes of books and realizing I was a writer, and that my line of vocation could produce the greatest of skeptics, she left it at that, not wanting to delve into matters of spiritual merit devoid of empirical methods.

She was right. At least, I like to think so, because until my second year in England, I struggled with this very idea of being settled, a sense of belonging that I did not seem to have in the first year, and that consequently affected not just my psyche but my writing. I was too conscious of my otherness as an immigrant, so much so that beyond this thrust into a New World that I had to endure, my writing—the one mechanism I used to navigate the peculiarities and curiosities of my existence against the larger world—suffered. My rhythm, my balance, and my sensibilities suffered.

In my eight months in Turkey, I felt this same shift, which did not last very long–as it did in England—barely three months. Perhaps this was because the urban pressures of the Western world pinch differently. Something I think of as almost asphyxiating, since every day, every living moment, the feted high standard of living, which often translates to an equally high cost of living, seems designed to reduce one to a pauper.

Once, when I did not have the time to meet up for beers owing to work commitments, my Romanian friend joked about how, as an immigrant without recourse to public funds, I could not afford to be sick. A joke we both laughed about. But it was the price to pay for being part of a new culture, a new community, for that pathway of being part of the British Commonwealth. A barely uninterrupted five years of slugging it out shift after shift, paycheck after paycheck, which, speaking fairly, was fine. And I dare say just, too—if one, at the end of this immigration probation, got to benefit from the rewards of the British Commonwealth.

This accounts for the hiatus the journal has been on. Although, I must confess that I like to think of it as a creative sabbatical. It excuses personal failure, a passable self-deception of sorts.

Issue 36 brings together different voices. Beyond the artistic and aesthetic beauty of diverse lenses and philosophies, it reiterates the need for going beyond the comfort of our borders, routine, and tastes in exploring truth and beauty. Especially as the world order as we know it is shifting under our very feet. There is a shift, it would seem, from an extreme left to an extreme right, and one wonders why humans for the life of us, cannot settle on balance, why we cannot court the workability of two conflicting ideas side by side, for mutual correction in the event of the operative excesses on either side.

The tussle between Denmark and America over Greenland for obvious mineral and financial profit sheds light on the very same tussle over mineral-rich Africa that has led to countless bloodshed and civil wars since time immemorial. If it teaches us one thing, it is the notion that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as Martin Luther King rightly said. A reminder that our interconnectedness as a species should never be taken for granted. We must understand that in matters of corporate and political greed, no one is exempt from predation. Irrespective of colour and-or creed, the only thing that matters is the interest of the predators, and it is non-negotiable that this unbridled greed must be curtailed; excised from its roots each time it rears its ugly head.

Lest one risk appearing to take over from where Reverend King left on the pulpit, issue 36 features the brilliant fiction of Alexis Levitin, who reminds us of unforgettable love in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, fiction by JB Polk who also reminds us of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, an essay which weaves literary nonfiction with the polemic by Elisabeth Hascombe, and irreverent yet enchanting poetry by Elif Sezen, Summer Qabazard, Sandra Marchetti, Jennifer Mccauley, Lauren Davis, Nathaniel Calhoun, and A Menaer.

As with all art, beyond the enchantment of words, stanzas, and imaginative journeys that we would go on, we hope that despite the despairing skidding from left to right of the political  tracks, that the need to see the humanity of otherness is preserved, that the beauty and glow of diversity shines so bright that our balance endures.

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Kelvin Kellman.

Oxford, 2025.