Where are we going? From the response to issue one, and the fabulous submissions to issue two, no matter where we’re going, getting there is proving to be marvellous and in the end, that’s what matters most.

We want to continue delivering quality poetry, but also, to highlight reviews and showcase talent in essay writing, and eventually, fiction. We want to combine writing with the work of the many talented virtual-artists and photographers, who like the poets in this issue, are beginning to have a real presence on the web and beyond.

This issue also sees Don Zirilli join as Art Editor, and C.D. Russell appear as guest art editor.

Our plans are to introduce a new zine-within-a-zine called II sometime in the near future. II will be themed to encourage artistic content that might not normally get a viewing. We hope there will be room for narrative poems, topical/political pieces, horror and love poetry and work aimed at children. Nothing is fixed yet, but we hope to let you know soon.

Finally, with this first issue of 2007, we look forward to a year of movement - movement that we hope by the end of the year will have transported us from wherever we are now, to somewhere with a nice view looking back.

Happy New Year!

The Editors

A Posthumous Afterword: On Formalism

This humility is not a meekness toward the reader. Readers have little tolerance for that. It is instead a humility against mere self-expression. The task of the writer is not to express himself. The task is to shape an experience for the reader. This is a humble task, an empathetic task. As such, the pride of a writer should come not from imposing his point of view on the world, but from simply knowing that he made something solid, something that will serve. It is the pride of an artisan.

Not all the poems in The Shit Creek Review rhyme, including my own, but I do hope they have been formed into something that will serve.

Don Zirilli