Art Is Not a Luxury

Dear Readers,  

I’ve started and deleted this introduction to Volume Three multiple time because I just haven’t had the words... 

The world feels sharp in ways that are increasingly hard to contend with. The news cycle is a relentless gut-punch. Queer communities are under attack. Bodily autonomy is being eroded. Violence – physical and political – is everywhere. It is infuriating. It is exhausting. It is oh-so-easy to become immobolised by despair, to feel as though we are howling into the abyss, unheard and unanswered.

And yet, people keep creating. 

Trickling into our inbox over the last few months were poems and essays and photographs and artworks – stories of queering history, dancing through trauma, getting comfortable with bisexuality, highlighting diversity within the trans community. Artists and authors committed to creative practice, in spite of everything going on out there. 

Because the truth is this: art is not a luxury. It is a lifeline. It is resistance. It is medicine. It is proof that we refuse to disappear.  

To everyone who shared their creativity for this volume... thank you for the reminder that sometimes hope is simply continuing. Continuing to make. Continuing to connect. Continuing to believe that our stories matter. 

BLOOM ANYWAY.

JJ (Founding Editor) x