Announcing EMERGE: Coming Into View and Pandemic Views
By Brenna Ebner
For this year’s Yellow Arrow Publishing value, board/staff picked EMERGE. It was a decision made to celebrate a new year after we all faced such uncertainty and turmoil throughout all of 2020. We felt the start of 2021 was especially important in this way and were grateful to be able to turn over a new leaf and welcome new times filled with opportunity and optimism. As we have progressed through the year, we have progressed as individuals and as a community. EMERGE spotlights the growth and change we have made be it from this past year or before.
With this yearly value, we chose to call upon Yellow Arrow staff and authors to spotlight their growth and change in our EMERGE zines. EMERGE: Pandemic Stories focuses on the ways in which our staff and authors have dealt with the uncertainty and fear from Covid-19 and the ways they have prospered from overcoming this daunting global challenge. Their experiences are ones many of us can relate to and ones that can open our eyes to the ways Covid-19 has impacted each of us differently as well. EMERGE: Coming Into View similarly focuses on change and growth many of us have had in facing the pandemic and racial unrest while also focusing on themes outside of this year. The stories included take place at many different times and touch on family, self-empowerment, and racial identity as well.
Both zines will be available through Yellow Arrow’s bookstore as a PDF (for a donation) on September 28. And on the same day on our YouTube channel, we will release videos of several EMERGE authors reading their incredible pieces. Please show your love and support for our authors. More information can be found on our events calendar.
As a sneak peek, we would like to share Nichola Ruddell’s piece “Emerge” from EMERGE: Coming Into View not only for the fitting title but because it perfectly encapsulates everything we have felt as a whole going through the uncertainty of the pandemic and in finding the courage to push on. Nichola emphasizes the importance of poetry as a way to cope, understand, and process the hardships we have faced during 2020 and the fear of what is to come next in 2021. But with the powerful tool of writing and a newfound sense of bravery, Nichola inspires us to follow in her lead and focus on the strengths we have gained through this experience and from our passions. EMERGE celebrates not only these recent transformations but many others as well. With our zines, we hope to encourage continued growth, change, and EMERGING.
“Emerge” by Nichola Ruddell
As I emerge from this year, I feel a certain hesitancy to move forward. The transition back to a life we once knew after a year punctuated by fear and loneliness, a year of panic and anxiety will be slow and fraught with hard decisions. Our round and ripe world full of possibilities is also a world deeply fractured, chaotic, and messy. The pandemic illuminated the world’s shadows and deep inequalities and injustices were brought to light. Many of us struggled to find a way to contribute, connect, and reconcile these inequities. Collectively, we confronted this pandemic yet each person has had a unique and important experience.
For most it was incredibly challenging. I found the ebbs and flows of life seemed to be quicker, louder, and sharper. There were flurries of fear and then periods of stagnation.
As a parent with school-aged children, my primary focus has been our children’s mental health and their safety. During the height of the pandemic, I often felt like I was out at sea without an anchor. The children had questions that my husband and I could not answer. They wanted to know when this would end and life felt fragile. Their innocence required us to stay strong, confident, and hopeful.
During this time, I wrote regularly using immediate and urgent poetry to integrate any experience that felt overwhelming, beautiful, or mundane. My father and I decided we would try and write a poem each day to each other over text message. It helped me stay connected and inspired me to write without constraint. “For me, poetry is a beautiful stone revealing the unearthed, holding the weight, and shining a light to experience.” As we enter the month of June, British Columbia is beginning to open up. This poem “Don’t Choose” draws on the mixed feelings that have arisen during this time:
We fly through this aching world
in moments of fire and stillness
We revel in magnificence
and then shelter in minutia
Fire
Stillness
Magnificence
Minutia
In this aching world
Don’t choose
This summer will be very different from last, and I know there will be residual fears and unknowns. I am worried that I have lost the ability to be with others and not fear getting sick. I worry that my children fear the same. Yet I also know that with time there is a settling of self and many opportunities to pause, reflect, and integrate this past year with myself and others. We know how to keep safe in our surroundings, school, and work, and we continue to learn how to live in this new way.
Our family continues to grow stronger as we navigate this time together, and I have witnessed such kindness and connection between friends and our community.
Poetry has carried me through the roughest of days and continues to strengthen my ability to reveal my truth and create meaning in our current world.
I’m not certain what the next few months will reveal, but I know that even as I continue to wrestle with hesitancy, fear, and uncertainty, I will push forward into this next phase with a renewed strength and deep gratitude.
Brenna Ebner is Yellow Arrow’s CNF Managing Editor and project lead for EMERGE. She previously interned with Mason Jar Press and was Editor-in-Chief of Grub Street volume 69 at Towson University. She also does freelance editing on the side and is slowly making her way through a CNF reading list.
Nichola Ruddell was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and raised on Salt Spring Island. She attended university at the University of Victoria, receiving a degree in Child and Youth Care. She is also a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapist. She enjoys writing poetry and is previously published in the online magazine Literary Mama. Her poem “Movement in the Cinnabar Valley” was published in Yellow Arrow Journal, Home Vol. V, No. 2, and she recently became an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets. After living in many places with her family, she has made a home in Nanaimo, British Columbia with her husband and two young children.
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Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.