Letter from the editor

Movement defines us, but the action of clashing shapes us.

This issue is dedicated to the savage beauty of encountering the different, the opposite, the paradoxical, and being able to inhabit it in active and dynamic ways. Writing, re-writing, erasing, destroying, and everything that comes between an original and its translation, in the broadest sense of the word, is built within the limits of the encounter with the other person, text, world. This encounter could be an explosion or a junction; could be a sign of change or a prophecy to remain the same. Translating is always transforming both the source and the new creation.

This issue is my first as Alchemy’s incoming 2017-18 editor, and I’ve collaborated on it with last year’s editor in chief, Majo. I would like to extend a special note of thanks to Majo for making this issue possible, a person who has been living and drawing inspiration from clashing cultures, who never hesitated to make me feel that this issue was also my creative project. This feeling of authorial and editorial fluidity is one thing that gives Alchemy its flavor. I’d also like to thank Aia Hawari, Alchemy’s fantastic new assistant editor, for her collaboration in this issue; and to Daniel Lara Cardona, for his striking photography.

As always, we are proud to show groundbreaking works: Daniel Centeno Maldonado y Alfonso J. Gustave deliver an amazing short piece of fiction a about a woman that “is Janis, Aretha, and Edith Piaf all mixed into one” and collides between the limits of beats and sound in Cuba and New York. Daniela Camacho and Majo Delgadillo share a piece of powerful poetry that draws in itself the very beautiful state of grief. Eleanor Hill and anonymous remember the everlasting lucidity of Mallarmé and Verlaine. Izabela Zdun translated a remarkable piece from Michał Paweł Markowski, which states touchingly that the anthropology of literature is “a lovely, really lovely science.”

Enjoy this crossing,

V