visit
by Zoe Dickinson
oh!
how water
brings all the
pieces
of the world
closer
to each other!
now
the moon
enters the maple’s dripping,
empty branches
and
streetlamps
stroke yellow
into glazed
asphalt.
Zoe Dickinson is a poet and bookseller from Victoria, British Columbia. Her poetry is rooted in the Pacific coastline, with a focus on local ecology and human relationships with nature. She is the co-Artistic Director of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “visit”? I wrote this poem imagining what the Ancient Greek poet Sappho would think of a West Coast winter. For about half the year on Vancouver Island, everything is permanently dripping with rain. It took some getting used to when I first moved here, but over time I began to see the beauty in it: how water, like light, has the ability to change the way we see things.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
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06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
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07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
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08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD