You just become, like a flower becomes the fruit. It’s all built-in within you. Allow it to work out.
– Nirmala Srivastava
Be what you are becoming without clinging to what you might have been; what you might yet be.
– Luce Irigaray
becoming is an experimental quarterly of prose, poetry, art, and choreographic work, in the form of “mark-making” and movement-capture. It aims to reflect multicultural values and actively embrace THE METAMODERN, a broad concept that defines the meditation on the times that we inhabit, especially their transformational potential at individual and collective levels.
becoming aims to follow in the footsteps of (and diverge from) the 1980’s journal SPLASH, edited by Wystan Curnow, Roger Horrocks, Tony Green, and Judi Stout, and produced “unofficially” through the English department of Auckland University. Four issues were released between 1984 – 1986.
SPLASH editors explored new models of critical theory and post-structural thought, with the aim of creating journals that were “provisional in form but provocative in content; to disrupt the epistemologies of poetry and posit innovative alternatives”.
becoming is equally provisional in form. Indeed, its provocation lies in its understated and experimental page layout, phrasings, and form, to explore the metamodern paradigm; to consider how the present may be re-valued and imbued with new meanings derived from revisiting traditions while seeking new forms of self-expression as well as the roots of what it means to be in the world – as reflected in art, literature, and education in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas[1] .
The magazine is published both online and on paper. The paper version of becoming is produced by John Nixon from The Printing Museum through a linotype printing press, a gesture towards the metamodern integrating "the old '' while living in the “now”. The present is captured in the art and written texts included as well as in the contemporary technology needed for the online version. Its sparse, minimalist look evokes the simplicity of the spirit, as the centre around which contemporary complexity gravitates.
Contributors range from amateur to established writers and practitioners, in an endeavour to capture the present of the cultural moment that we live and – hopefully – evolve in, as a tree that continues to grow while it is being explored, as a boat that is being adjusted as it sails, as the spirit that discovers itself and starts shining under one’s very eyes.
Editors
becoming, (issue #1), may be purchased for $4.00, (+p&p, dependant on location), by writing to becoming.metamodern@gmail.com or contacting Wardini Books books@wardini.co.nz For questions, sponsorship, or contributions of written, audio, or visual texts, email becoming.metamodern@gmail.com The submission deadline for issue #2 is 14 May 2023.
January 2023
Describe your image
Describe your image
January 2023
Issue #1
bios
Alexandra Balm
Alexandra writes poems, short stories, and literary studies. At the start of the millennium, she proposed metamodernism as a cultural paradigm and a period term. In 2014 she completed her PhD (Otago, Dunedin) with a thesis about Metamodernism in Literature, followed by a Master of Creative Writing (AUT, Auckland) with the novel Why Don’t I Keep a Diary or A Secret Story of Metamodernism. She received awards, fellowships, and scholarships from various universities and organisations at home and overseas. Her work was published in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, America, and Europe (Czech Republic, Greece, Romania). She taught at the Universities of Cluj (Romania) and Otago (Aotearoa New Zealand). She lives in Auckland, where she teaches at Manurewa High School and is a PhD Adviser for AUT. Garry Forrester called her “mother of metamodernism” in his 2014 memoir More Deaths Than One.
Jillian Sullivan
Jillian lives in the Ida Valley in Central Otago. Her thirteen published books include creative non-fiction, novels, short stories, and poetry. She’s taught fiction and creative non-fiction in New Zealand and America. Her awards include the Juncture Memoir Award in America, the NZSA Beatson Fellowship, and the Kathleen Grattan Prize for Poetry. A grandmother of eleven, her passion is natural building and earth plastering. She’s a keen environmentalist for the Central Otago Environmental Society, and co-founder of Under Rough Ridge Writers Retreat.
Her latest book is Map for the Heart- Ida Valley Essays (Otago University Press 2020).
Karine-Gwenaëlle
Karine was born in Neuchâtel, a little town in the French Canton, mentioned in a song by Zaz, ‘Je veux.’ She has been traveling since her infancy, having lived so far in five countries: Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, and now Romania. At the age of 21 years, she considers herself quite the nomad. Art is in her blood; like her grandfather who was a painter in his free time, she likes to experiment with different mediums and styles. And like her mother who was a (closet) writer, web developer, and businesswoman, she tries to make sense of the world by putting her thoughts and experiences into words. Some of her writing deals with the many tragedies that have struck her; the biggest one was the abrupt loss of her mother at 17 and being left to fend for herself by the rest of her immediate family.
After she got her diploma and finished two years of cooking school in Murcia, in the south of Spain, her grandmother took her in. That is where she lives now in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania.
Sandra Arnold
Sandra is an award-winning writer who lives in rural Canterbury. She is the author of five books including The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell, Mākaro Press, NZ, Soul Etchings, Retreat West Books, UK and Sing no Sad Song, Canterbury University Press, NZ. Her short fiction has been widely published and anthologised internationally. She has received nominations for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, Australia.
Lincoln Jaques
Lincoln’s poetry, fiction and travel essays have appeared in Aotearoa, Australia, Asia, America, the UK, and Ireland. He was the winner of the Auckland Museum centenary ANZAC international poetry competition, a finalist and ‘Highly Commended’ in the 2018 Emerging Poets-Divine Muses, a Vaughan Park Residential Writer/Scholar in 2021, and was the Runner-Up in the 2022 International Writers’ Workshop Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems (judged by Janet Charman). He holds a Master of Creative Writing from AUT.
Irena Karafilly
Irena's is an award-winning Montreal writer, poet, and aphorist. She is the author of several acclaimed books and of numerous stories, poems, and articles, published in both literary and mainstream magazines, as well as in various North American newspapers, including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Her short stories have been published, anthologized, and broadcast, winning literary prizes such as the National Magazine Award and the CBC Literary Award. She currently divides her time between Montreal and Athens.
Her novel, Arrested Song, is about to be released in the UK (March) and will be available from Book Depository (which offers free shipping around the world).
Simon Nicholls
Simon is a generative artist with over 15 years of teaching and research experience in design. His research expertise is centred on digital practice, including digital painting, web design, and interactive installation. He has a particular interest in experience design and metamodernism, and is known for his work in generative art and the authenticity of digital forms of art. In his artistic practice, Simon explores the concept of chaos as a mathematical property and uses both analogue and digital methodologies, including the use of a plotting robot and artist-written algorithms, to create chaotic flow field patterns.
