2022 Letter From the Editors

Dear Reader,

We’re back in print! It’s been a long, hard road to get here, but we did it. You did it. We all managed to persevere, to create, through a worldwide pandemic. Take a moment to think about that for a second, and be sure to recognize how much strength that required of you. We should all be proud of ourselves for getting through 2020 and 2021. We won’t say we’re living in unprecedented times, but we are living in a world that not everyone has had to, and we’re making it through together. There is a sense of community on MCLA’s campus that flows through all we do. We hope that is reflected in the work we’ve done to ensure Spires’ return to print is worthy of the students here who were kind enough to share their creativity with us. As Lord Byron once said, “The great art of life is to feel we exist, even in pain.” The pieces included in the 2022 edition of Spires embody this idea to its fullest. These poems, paintings, drawings, photographs, and prose pieces were all created despite the pain of the last two years. The quality of these works just shows that the spirit of creativity can never be dulled, not even by Covid. We would like to thank Professor Zack Finch for his guidance as an advisor to the journal (and also for checking in on us editors whenever we got particularly stressed). We’d also like to thank Professor Shawn McIntosh for working with and advising Liza regarding the layout of Spires in Publication Design and Typography, as well as Katie Napier for being her work partner. Thank you to Professor Caren Beilin for her support as co-advisor to the journal and thank you to the English and Communications department as a whole for fostering an atmosphere where projects like Spires can come to life. And lastly,

Thank you. The Spires Editorial Team