5 Questions with Hyades Magazine

Hyades Magazine is an online magazine of poetry and fiction, co-founded and edited by Munira Tabassum Ahmed and Janiru Liyanage.

The first issue of Hyades will be launched later in the year, and submissions are open now till mid-April.

No.1

What prompted you to start Hyades magazine?

We had both thought about starting a journal or zine for a while. We wanted to see a space curated for voices like ours. We wanted to find and draw a light over new voices that wouldn't otherwise traditionally hold a stake in literature.

We started the mag to carve a safe space to hold those marginalised voices as our priority. We started the magazine to find work that challenges even contemporary notions of writing, both prose and poetry.

No.2

Both of you, Munira and Janiru, have a large list of writing accomplishments, some of which include work with the Sydney Writers’ Festival and a Pushcart Prize nomination, amongst many more. I’m curious how it all began for each of you. What was the first creative work you remember being introduced to that still stays in your mind now?

Janiru: The first contemporary poetry book I ever read is the immediate one that comes to mind: Calling A Wolf A Wolf by Kaveh Akbar. I’ve probably read and re-read it about a hundred times now because it’s truly a masterclass in what language can do.

I still remember reading it for the first time—I honestly didn’t understand the ‘meaning’ in half of the poems (as in the way schools teach you to glean works for understanding), but it was the language, the sonic textures that delivered me. In the author’s own words, ‘Language organized mellifluously, delivered earnestly, can thin the partitions between worlds, whether or not we have a perfect denotative understanding of what is being spoken. Poets have invested themselves in this promise for millennia.’

Every line he wrote was strange, spiritual and beautiful and it showed me what image and sound can do in a poem. The final lines in the book: ‘I hold my breath. / The boat I am building / will never be done’—[it points to] the struggle of living; the struggle of craft: build a boat that will never be finished, and it will always outlive you and the flood.

Munira: I went to Bankstown Poetry Slam for the first time in April 2019 and watched wāni Le Frere perform a suite of poems. His work changed how I viewed poetry as a vessel for storytelling and how important phonaesthetics are when constructing a poem. I still think that everyone should see performance poetry when they’re first starting out; so often do we view poetry as a good to be produced and consumed, we forget that it’s a shared experience. Poetry has traditionally been an oral artistic practice—we’re built to listen and memorise and repeat. The poet’s voice is often the intentioned space for a poem, or, at least, the first place the poem found a home. I would say we should all keep that alive, but that tradition will keep itself alive.

No.3

What kind(s) of writing are you interested in publishing in Hyades? Or perhaps I can be cheeky and ask about the submissions you’ve received thus far.

We want work that’s urgent and grounded in sound. We read a poem out loud first for its sound and next for its image. We love poems and stories that move us or move something in us. Work that demands our attention. A poem should decontaminate our familiarity with living and language as a living thing; a wild and brutal animal with texture and history. Send us the work that could only be written by you and no one else. Send us work that is unyielding in its desire. Simply put, send us your best.

The submissions we’ve received so far have truly been wonderful. This early editing process has made it clear to us that the narrative voice of the writer needs to be strong; we like storytelling that doesn’t fear itself or its place in the audience’s mind. Even in prose, we’ve seen the lyricism, experimentation, and rhythmic memorability that we seek in our poetry submissions, but extend as a possibility for all. Hybrid works that muddy the line between prose and poetry are always welcome at the mag, and we’ve been very lucky to read a few.

No.4

As writers and editors, how do you think of the collaborative process between the two roles?

Our roles as writers allow for our evolution as editors, and vice versa. We're still new to this and learning what works best but as a whole, these roles have converged in solid spaces for both of us. It’s interesting to be on this side of the editing process, but we’ve each gone through it countless times. This has allowed us to develop a firm notion of our curation style and how we plan to work with contributors to maintain the intention of their pieces. This has, in turn, reflected back on our writing experiences, providing us with greater perspective on a magazine’s curation process and operation.

No.5

What are you reading at the moment?

Munira: Coming of Age in the War on Terror by Randa Abdel-Fattah. (Signed copy!) Re-reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy when I get the time.

Janiru: Right now I’m in the middle of two non-fiction books, Ceylon Dilemmas of a New Nation by W. Howard Wriggins and Facets Of Ethnicity in Sri Lanka (ed. Charles Abeysekera and Newton Gunasinghe). I’m also reading a memoir called Relative Merits by Yasmine Gooneratne and re-reading Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.