Letter from the Editor

I was a late bloomer, but anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky. 
– Sharon Olds, American Poet

You can’t be late for your own life. Although this is something I’ve said to other people, it isn’t something that I have granted in my own life. I’m working on that. You can be late for a meeting. You can be late for a doctor’s appointment, but you can’t be late for your own life because it is yours alone to decide how it’s spent. So here we are with the Spring issue, and the reason we published after the spring equinox as we typically do is because I spent the last day of winter in the UK before flying home on the 20th.

The Wireworks Project is an initiative developed by artists Ivan Smith and Anthony Shepherd, currently exhibiting Into the Promittocene as part of the international photography festival, Format. The exhibition features work by multi-disciplinary artist Thomas Wynne that was developed during a six-month residency at the old Wireworks at Ambergate that is set in the Shining Cliff Woods along the Derwent river. The works  “created during the residency reflect on the prospect of humanity inhabiting a second planet,” and ask us to look at our relationship with the earth. This was the perfect way to end one season and begin another. 

Having lived in the desert for more than 20 years, it has been such a long time since I have been in the green of the woods. When my feet sank underneath me I heard, “Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie,” and to no one in particular I whispered, “Hopkins.” Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall: to a young child”  is a poem that has lived with me for many years.

This spring, we’re celebrating the recent book birthday of Creative Nonfiction. Editor Ronit Plank whose book of short fiction, Home is a Made Up Place, the Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award for Short Fiction debuted in February. We also celebrate Levi Bradley Jessup, who has been reading poetry with us since 2019. And this January, he completed his MFA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University. This issue he has written the notes about the poetry  selections. Levi’s notes are beautifully put together and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did.

We’re also finishing up our upcoming mini issue: Love & Desire. And honestly, that has been the nicest extra work I’ve undertaken in the last six months. A lot of wonderful work has come our way, and we’re excited to share this themed issue with you.  If you’re also looking to read more Creative Nonfiction this spring, Citron Creative Nonfiction Editor Charlotte Hamrick co-founded SugarSugarSalt Magazine  with Jamy Bond almost a year ago. We are thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to discover previously published CNF that we may have missed the first time. 

On the drive to The Wireworks Project I talked with another artist about what it means to be called emerging as if we’re coming out of something; as if we haven’t fully bloomed by now. Any writer or artist can tell you that there are so many years spent working on craft that it isn’t a sudden emerging or a sudden blooming into the season. It’s simply the moment that the sun shines our way. 

On behalf of The Citron Review, wherever you are this Spring, we wish you a beautiful season that blooms on your time.

Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief
Poetry Editor
The Citron Review

IMAGE ABOVE: Angela M. Brommel, Quality Florists, Derby, UK, 2023. 
IMAGE AT RIGHT: Promotion for Special Mini Issue

Masthead

Table of Contents

Poetry

Notes on the selections by Levi Jessup

Creative Nonfiction

Notes on the selections by Ronit Plank

Flash Fiction

Notes on the selections by JR Walsh

Micros

Notes on the selections by JR Walsh

Zest