Whether creating or consuming, art has been a grounding force for many of us during lockdown. Not4U, a Dublin-based poetry collective, has beautifully demonstrated this through its latest collection of visual art and poetry, aptly titled “From Home”.
In this, its first “e-zine”, Not4U Collective co-editors Eva Griffin and Jess McKinney have compiled a selection of poetry and visual art from Irish creatives that explore different experiences, moments, and reflections of the mundane and extraordinary reality of quarantine 2020.
In an email to The University Times, Griffin and McKinney explain that their goal “has always been to create something beautiful with our contributors and collaborators”. For the collective’s editors, “the zine exists as a sort of companion piece to that idea of showcasing the art we’ve been huddled away making during lockdown”.
This wasn’t the first time Griffin and McKinney had collaborated on a zine. In 2018, Not4U Collective published two zines entitled “Cailleach” and “Being is Believing” in print, both of which were launched as fundraisers for the Together4Yes and Bodywhys campaigns.
Despite “From Home” being published in electronic form, the two editors were able to work from their steady tradition of amalgamating poetry and visual art. “We think it makes a more compelling read to have a mixture of text and image”, they note, explaining that “it gives contributors a wider spectrum to respond to the nominated theme, and creates an interesting interplay when putting everything together”.
When asked what inspires them to pair certain poems with certain visual art pieces, they respond that “it’s rare you’ll get submissions from different people that perfectly go together, though it does happen”. However, due to their similar taste in poetry and art, the co-editors managed to narrow down a range of submissions from 51 poets and artists – most of whom submitted more than one piece – to what we see in the e-zine today.
Despite its recent publication, the idea behind “From Home” originated back in April of this year. It was on Poetry Day Ireland that the co-editors initially reached out to poets they had worked with before, asking them to record poetry readings which Not4U collective would later share on social media. For Griffin and McKinney, it was these live poetry readings during lockdown that inspired this eventual online collection.
If you, like me, are waiting for another Not4U publication to be released soon, you will have to wait until 2021. “We think it’s important not to burn ourselves out”, Griffin and McKinley assert in agreement. “We don’t want to feel pressured to constantly produce projects, as this can detract from the sincere enjoyment of the collaborative experience and the more natural process of gentle inspiration.”
In the meantime, if you are looking for a way to show your appreciation for this free e-zine until you – in a manner of speaking – get your hands on the next, visit paypal.me/not4ucollective to support the “From Home” contributors.
To read the “From Home” collection, check out the Not4U Collective Twitter page and the e-zine itself.
