Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
After a longer than expected break, we are very happy to announce the passing of the torch to a new editorial team which is excited to bring you this new issue of The Manchester Review. In issue twenty-six, the new editorial team has endeavoured to remain faithful to what makes The Manchester Review so special: its ethos of collecting the best poetry, short-fiction and creative nonfiction in one place. This new edition is an eclectic goody-bag that showcases a wide range of genres, styles and perspectives and contains writing from well-established, upcoming, and first-time writers.
The new editorial team, in place since June 2024, have been busy posting reviews and reading through the wonderful range of submissions we received to our call for re-submissions in late-August. We are still getting our feet under the table and catching up with old and new friends of the Review. We are always looking for opportunities to reconnect to pre-existing networks that the Review was an active part of and are hopeful of fostering new literary networks and connections in the ever-shifting literary landscape. Reading back over the poems, stories and creative nonfiction in this issue, we often returned to John Moessner’s, ‘To the Man Sleeping in the Airport’, which makes us smile at its ability to capture the profound in the monotony of the everyday:
Your arm is reaching into the carpeted walkway,
where hundreds travel the gentle slope
toward the cold tile of the ground-floor lobby.
Your pink stomach winks through the rise
in your shirt, keeps watch as the crowd follows
in rippling curves to miss your hand, palm-up,
your fingers slightly curled as if tied off with five
loosely rigged strings anchored at your wrist, your body
run aground on a bank of sleep. It looks like
you recently let go of something hand-shaped, a bowl
to hold the food you cannot get down the corridor,
a ripe piece of citrus—the way sails hold the memory
of wind in their slack. I hope what you let go of
comes back—I hope you do not need it.
We are, as ever, keen to see new writing and are already planning a late spring/early summer issue, celebrating the history of The Manchester Review and its future. From February 2025, please keep an eye out for the submission window opening. In the meantime, please send any reviews or review pitches to manreviewsubmissions@gmail.com.