Michael Diehl, The Yachina Bay Bridge
Letter From the Editor
Wow, another summer, another year! Welcome to Issue #30!
I’m particularly pleased to introduce to you Michael Diehl as our featured artist for this issue. I’m not entirely sure how long we’ve known each other–perhaps a decade?–but Michael has been a co-worker at the landfill I’ve worked at for 14 years now. It always pleases me when I come across another person striving to pursue creativity and artistic pursuits amidst working a full-time job as well as raising a family and attending to all the business of life. Michael was a lead tech working on the site’s yellow iron (ie a heavy equipment mechanic) for many years, but has been promoted to site manager in the last year. He would sometimes show up in the morning and have to show whoever was there photographs he’d taken over the weekend at the Oregon coast for example, after a King Tide event. He would proudly pass his phone around to my co-driver and I while we drank coffee in the break room prior to start of the workday. This was how I found out he did photography on the side. He was pleased to accept my offer to feature his artwork after finding out one of my creative pursuits outside of work was to edit an online poetry/art journal. It’s a special pleasure that we can support each other in this way outside of work. I will confess that as a co-worker I was often something of an ass to him and less than gracious than he was about the state of company equipment–drivers and mechanics typically suffer a tenuous relationship pointing accusing fingers of blame at one another, he as the ‘maintainer/fixer’ and I as the ‘operator/breaker.’ Granted a landfill is one of the harshest environments for equipment operation and maintenance. So this is a way I can maybe make it up to him. Thanks Michael for the beautiful photographs, exclusively of the Northwest US, where we live and work!!
Also, regarding poets and poetry there are lots of returning contributors and many new ones. Several Oregon Poetry Association folks have found us, along with other poets from around the US, Ukraine and Italy. Lots of rich commentary on contributor work by so many peers in the issue. This extra participation is not only part of our journal’s particular mission, but entirely voluntary–all contributor’s pick which poems they choose to offer comments on. It always pleases me to see such rich, extra contribution of reading and commenting.
I really hope you enjoy all the new work presented here. This is a great issue and has been a lot of fun to curate and produce (as usual). Enjoy taking a look!