Brendan Kennelly, Derek Mahon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Senator David Norris, are just some of the names on the list of past editors of Icarus, Trinity’s literary magazine. After the launch of its 72nd volume last week, the current editors of Ireland’s oldest arts publication, Gabrielle Fullam and Alex Mountfield, are looking towards rebuilding a strong literary community in Trinity as the world around us becomes more uncertain.
At the in-person launch held in the Graduate Memorial Building (GMB), Fullam, Mountfield and the publication’s contributors were able to celebrate their work with screenings of multimedia pieces and readings of poems. “We’ve all been, I suppose, at home or isolated”, Fullam told The University Times. “We live in a kind of a digital, less tangible, world so being able to actually hand people something and say, ‘we think there’s like a little experience in this book’ was really nice.” For Mountfield, the launch reminded them of a pre-pandemic era. “I used to be more involved in open-mic circuits or spoken word circuits … so it’s really cool to give people a chance to, like, stand in harsh lighting and read something they wrote and for everyone to get to hear it in that context”, they said.
The duo have pushed the magazine to the forefront of innovation in literary journalism by including full-page QR codes that link to various types of online pieces, such as poet Cawhill’s visual poem ‘PI$$’ or PPES student Dylan McCarthy’s short film ‘Wasp Box’. Regarding editorship, Mountfield innocently texted Fullam about the role mere days before applications closed, and they decided to work together again. They had done so before as writers for Icarus, but described this new part of the journey as a “capstone to our collaborative work”.
This edition, like its predecessors, is striking. Found dotted around the suspected places on campus without price, their covers – this time a distorted monochromatic portrait by Donegal artist Áine Rose – loom with the promise of insight. While primarily a literary journal, stacked inside its pages are full bleed, colour prints of visual art, which add an impressive weight to the content, wonderfully blurring the lines between artistic disciplines.
Every issue has humble beginnings in the form of an anonymous Google form for file attachments, publicised on Icarus’ social media platforms. Different from most other literary journals, Icarus is fueled by non-theme restricted anonymous submissions and each piece is composed by Trinity students, staff or alumni. Submissions are then curated by Mountfield and Fullam into a selection of art pieces in dialogue with each other.
“I don’t think imposing an extra constraint when you’re trying to foster a community like that is necessarily the most fruitful thing in the world”, said Fullam. “I think it’s more interesting just to see how things naturally come into dialogue with each other.” Indeed, some of the most striking moments of the volume’s first issue occur when pieces naturally relate to one another, communicating only through the cultural context of the specific issue in which they appear. ‘Pretty!Women’ by Maria Cullen and ‘Sirhan Sirhan’ by Michael Lucy both explore different Kennedy family assassinations, but were written independently by two different people. They are placed side by side – one of Mountfield’s highpoints in the issue structure-wise. Similarly for Fullam, having a traceable journey was more important than a more traditional format. “In a lot of literary magazines, you’ll find if the same writer has two or three poems in it, they like to normally place them right beside each other. But we specifically didn’t do that because we really valued having the trajectory”, she explained.
Among the anonymous contributors between Icarus’ covers are a number of published or established writers who use the publication as an opportunity to engage with a new community. In this issue, Mountfield and Fullam have included work from award-winning writers Desree and Kevin Breathnach. “One thing you’ll find, if you submit to a lot of poetry journals, is that they’ll have you send in your bio with your poetry”, Mountfield explained. “You get this collection of the same people who always show up. So, you know, I think the anonymous press is good, because there’s people who have never really written anything before who are in this Icarus, because their work is just being evaluated based on merit, rather than how much experience they have.”
Reading through the pages, the dialogue and community the two editors reference comes across strongly. “I think there’s a collaborative aspect to writing even if you’re just sitting at your computer on Google Drive by yourself”, Mountfield told me as I spoke to the pair over Zoom, alone in our respective rooms, together with the magazine open in front of us. “It’s one of the really striking things about the issue: how on the same page everyone is, despite writing about their own thoughts and ideas. There’s so much synchronicity.”
Fullam and Mountfield look forward to opening submission applications for the next issue. No one knows how the pandemic will develop over the coming winter, but the two are hopeful that more in-person events will continue to be a possibility. Much discourse has been made of the effect of lockdown on creatives. Initially, it was said they would be short, and fruitful for writers; earning everyone their own Magnum Opus between every loaf of Instagram-learned banana bread. The reality was much more difficult, with literary spaces shutting down permanently and impermanently. But art persisted. People turned to weekly newsletters and podcasts and gathered around community platforms like Icarus. This issue of Icarus in many ways is testament to this persistence and celebrates the way all kinds of people and their stories will tell themselves no matter what.
Correction: December 3rd, 2021
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Kevin Breathnach’s work was submitted through the Google Form for writers to send submissions anonymously. In fact, the editors of Icarus approached Breathnach themselves and asked him to submit work.
