a great abandonment of purpose

March 2025

So, how did you like it? Issue #31 of Gutter has been out and about for a month now, and we’re always eager to hear how readers enjoy the work we’ve shared. It’s the great pleasure of editing a magazine like this one: choosing which words to include (and the great challenge: which words not to).

Speaking of, we have just opened out submissions window for the next issue, to be published in August. As usual, we’re looking for your best essays, stories and poems, and, as usual, we can’t wait to read them. All the details on how to submit are over on our website. You’ve got until the end of March.

Of course, that’s not all you’ll find on the website. As usual, we’re sharing some new work from the magazine, and this month it’s a poem by the fabulous and hilarious Hera Lindsay Bird. In it, she imagines herself ‘on the back of a wild, white goose’, all responsibilities abandoned.

I’m sorry I missed your call, I will say in my answerphone message
I live on the back of an enchanted Soviet goose now, get over it already!!!!

The poem is called ‘Sometimes I get so fucking tired of it all’ and we cannot recommend it highly enough. (Thanks also to Hera for the title of this month’s newsletter.) Read the poem here.

Also on the website, of course, is our Book of the Month, Small Town Joy by Carrie Marshall, which looks at ‘how queer music changed the sound of Scotland.’ It’s reviewed by Nyla Ahmad, who praises Marshall’s ability ‘to tackle the topic with enthusiasm, grace and attitude.’

‘This whole book feels like a mixtape,’ writes Ahmad, ‘lovingly assembled by a friend’s cool, knowledgeable older sister.’

You’ll have to wait just a little longer for the book’s release, but for now you can read the review and preorder your copy.

And that’s that for another month. Please do send your writing in to us for Issue #32, or get in touch if you’d like to write reviews for the website or the magazine.