Vetch (magazine)

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Vetch  

Discipline	literary journal
Language	English
Edited by	Kay Gabriel, Stephen Ira, Rylee Lyman, Liam O'Brien
Publication details
Publication history	2015–present
Frequency	Once or twice-yearly (has not published since 2017)
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt1 · alt2) NLM · MathSciNet
ISO 4	Vetch
Links
Journal homepage

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Vetch is a journal of poetry devoted to publishing work by and for trans people. Vetch'’s founders, all graduate students at the time Vetch was founded, established the magazine with the intent to create a publication where trans authors could express themselves through poetry without having to explain themselves or their work to a cis audience. According to its editors, Vetch was the first poetry magazine to publish work solely by trans writers and for a trans audience.

"Poetry written by and for trans people allows itself a richer and more varied poetics when it isn't subject to the standards, however implicit and unconscious, according to which a cis reader may judge some work," wrote Kay Gabriel — a poet, essayist, and Vetch editor — in an interview with The Fader. "Our poetics can be more abstract, figurative, and formally interesting when we ferociously imagine new possibilities together."

History

Vetch'’s first three editors were writers Kay Gabriel, Stephen Ira, and Liam O'Brien. When they established Vetch, two of the three — Ira and O'Brien — were students in The Iowa Writers' Workshop MFA program. Gabriel was a PhD student at Princeton University. According to Ira in an interview with The Fader, the three "started Vetch because there was no journal for trans poetry, and we wanted one. It's as simple as that."

When it released its debut issue in fall of 2015, Vetch became the first magazine to publish poems by exclusively trans people, according to its editors. However, in an interview with The Fader, O'Brien said he felt that literary journals like THEM and Troubling the Line were evidence that the literary scene was already beginning to become more inclusive of trans writers even before Vetch was established.

The magazine published its debut issue in autumn of 2015. It published three issues after that, with its fourth and final issue coming out in autumn of 2017.

Editors

Gabriel attended Princeton University, where she received a PhD in Classics. She co-edited an anthology of trans and gender non-conforming poetry with Andrea Abi-Karam titled We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, published by Nightboat Books in 2020. In 2017 she published a book of poetry titled Elegy Department Spring / Candy Sonnets 1, through BOAAT Press. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Social Text, The Recluse, The Believer, The New Inquiry, Tagvverk, Nat. Brut, Datableed, Alien Mouth, and elsewhere. She has also received fellowships from the Poetry Project and Lambda Literary.

Liam O'Brian attended Sarah Lawrence college, graduating in 2017. While at Sarah Lawrence, O'Brian received the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Poetry and the Nancy Lynn Schwartz Prize for Fiction. Later, he completed an MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop. His work is published in The Offending Adam, Blackbird VCU, Buffalo Almanack, Industrial Lunch, PBS Newshour, and the HIV Here and Now Project.

Stephen Ira received a BA in Writing & Literature from Sarah Lawrence college in 2014 and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2019. In 2013, he was selected as a Lambda Literary summer fellow in poetry. He also served as poetry editor of the speculative magazine Strange Horizons, during which it was nominated for a Hugo Award. His poetry has appeared in publications such as Poetry, Fence, DIAGRAM, and Tagvverk.

Rylee Lyman received a PhD in mathematics from Tufts University in 2020. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University. Her research interests include geometric topology, geometric group theory, Teichmüller theory, tropical geometry, orbifolds, and cube complexes. Her most recent publication, Train track maps and CTs on graphs of groups, was published on February 4, 2021.

Published issues

Vetch published four issues between 2015 and 2017 and has not published since.

Vetch'’s first issue was published in August 2015. The Vetch website lists the contributors to this issue as Melian Radu, Stephen (Stephanie) Burt, Kay Gabriel, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Grey Vild, Zach Ozma, Alok Vaid-Menon, Sara June Woods, Shana Bulhan Haydock, Liam O'Brien, Rebecca Bedell, Maxe Crandall, Joss Barton, Stephen Ira, Joy Ladin, Isz Janeway, Sybil Lamb, Hal Schrieve. Though the issue does not have an explicit theme, its editors introduce it on their website as "[offering] a collection that rejects the distinction between the aesthetic and the political", and — like Vetch as a whole — an attempt to fix both the "dearth of published work by trans poets dealing with trans themes", and "the prominence of poetry that hits the palliative buttons of liberal inclusivity-oriented ideology".

Vetch'’s second issue, published in Spring 2016, "directs its attentions to personal negotiations of the past as a site of gendered truth, collective forays into trans genealogy and history, mourning for lost friends or those we didn't get the chance to know, and utopic invocations of possibility by which the distance of the past helps us to focus negatively on the injustice and exploitation of the present", according to the Vetch website. Its contributors include Joss Barton, Trish Salah, Cat Fitzpatrick, Wo Chan, Amir Rabiyah, Lilith Latini, Hal Schrieve, manuel arturo abreu, Tanis Franco, Thel Seraphim, Rebecca Bedell, Vita E., Zef Lisowski, Aristilde Kirby, Vivien J Ryder, merritt k, an. cinquepalmi.

The third issue of Vetch was published in Fall 2016. The chosen theme was "rewriting and ecphrasis". According to the Vetch website, the issue's aim was to confront "the cissexist demand that trans people continually authenticate our experiences of gender ... and collectively negate it by embracing formal techniques of derivative and secondary composition". Its contributors include Anna Anthropy, Ching-In Chen, Tyler Vile, Melian Radu, Trish Salah, Colette Arrand, Allison Parrish, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Charlie Bondhus, Kamden Hilliard, Beth M. Stratton, Zach Ozma, Wo Chan, Aristilde Kirby.

The fourth and final issue to date of Vetch magazine was published in Fall 2017. This issue assembled poems centered around the theme of "bad behavior". It's contributors include Thel Seraphim, Anna Steed, RJ Barnett, Beth M. Stratton, Edward Barnes, Francisco-Luis White, Hal Schrieve, Mai Schwartz, Serge Rodriguez.

All issues of Vetch for purchase on the website are digital. They are all "pay what you want" and all rated five stars on Vetch website by readers.

Submissions and policies

On its website, Vetch magazine states that it accepts submissions 1-2 times per year. The website also specifies that those submitting must decide for themselves whether they are a trans writer or not, and that any submissions must be either poetry, or prose that discusses poetry. There is a maximum of five poems per poetry submission.

Media coverage

For its debut publication, Vetch received a short mention in M.F.A. And Creative Writing Community Digest on September 4, 2015, in a post written by Craig Teicher. On September 14 of that same year, the magazine was featured in PBS NewsHour in an article by Corrine Segal titled Read the first-ever poetry journal by trans writers. When interviewed for the piece editor Liam O'Brien said of the magazine: "We want to publish poetry that doesn't bother to translate itself for a cis audience." That same month the magazine was also mentioned in an article on the Poetry Foundation's website titled Announcing Vetch, the First Literary Journal Devoted to Poetry by Transgender Writers and an article in The Fader titled How A New Poetry Magazine Is Claiming A Space For Trans Writers To Be Themselves.

In 2016, the magazine was featured in an article on the Lambda Literary Society's website titled A Look at 'Vetch' a Magazine for Trans Poetry and Poetics. That same year the magazine's editors were interviewed for a Huffington Post blog post titled An Interview with Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. Additionally, The Wanderer posted a review of the magazine's second issue by Zach Ozma.

References

This article "Vetch (magazine)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Vetch (magazine). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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