The intersection between literary platforms and literary works goes beyond creating an enabling platform. While literary platforms take pride in being recipients of quality works and in the volume thereof, for both, it is a win-win situation, in many ways.
As a literary platform, we see submitters as family. In this case, a literary homogeneous one intent on mutually beneficial deeds. For instance, I was at an event where a poet’s biography was read out prior to introducing him. I was so full of pride to hear Nantygreens mentioned. When you think that he’s featured on adverts for banks and performed at festivals in parts of the world, it tells me that we’re doing great. On the other hand poets and writers want feedback beyond those gushing at their creativity — usually from supportive friends and family — and lacking in any critiquing of their work. As a literary platform, with wide readership, we take pride in being adequately resourced to provide that.
The rapidly closing year brought in an unprecedented number of poetry submissions. For many of these poets, especially the not yet acclaimed ones, they were testing the waters, finding a comet to latch their poems on in the universe of heavenly poems. We were glad to see many of these ones, acclaimed and non-acclaimed, go on to feature in anthologies such as this edited by poet Adedayo Agarau. A few also featured at literary festivals recently.
We standardized submissions for essay, short story, fiction and nonfiction. Delightfully, many of you did not shirk away but took on the challenge. And I was especially delighted to see beautiful stories such as this by Karthryn Olusola and of course many scintillating book reviews by our contributors. A hearty thank you to everyone.
You see, Nantygreens is solely reliant on the benevolence of Feyisayo Adeyemi, a current MA student at Potsdam University, Berlin. The transfer of that benevolence is that we’ve stayed operational for over ten years and continue to advocate for lesser known writers, poets, essayists and thinkers. We take pride in that.
I remember a few years ago when he sent a poem in for editing. Without mincing words, I was going to trash it. But, I saw the message in the poem, beyond the craft of the poet. And so we worked with that poet to make his work better. That was something of pride for us. Today, we rarely get submissions like that. A testament to the work you poets and writers continue to put into your works.
This is a thank you narrative. A thank you to the poets who have blessed Nantygreens with their works. Some of you kept coming back, with improved works, making our job here easier. This is a thank you narrative, to the essayists, photographers, painters and writers and narrativists, of every colour and leanings, for trusting us with your work. Thank you.
To our various, indispensable volunteers too, this road is easier with you. Thank you for the sacrifice of time and energy and dedication to your tasks, even for those long, tiring nights.
In the coming year, we hope to implement and achieve a few things. We hope to publish our first poetry anthology. We also hope that we can, through the support of readers and the public, begin to pay a token in appreciation for works submitted. We need your support, your donations. And if you would like to be a patron or know someone you know would do well in this regard, please get in touch.
I’ll see you in the coming year.
Lake Adedamola
Editor.
