Editor’s Quarter Note

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Hey Quarter Notes friends,

Thank you for finding your way to this corner where literature and sound meet in all kinds of interesting ways. I know you’ll be as inspired as I am by the work of these wonderful contributors to this, the Winter 2026 issue. I feel that it marks a time in which the Quarter Notes family isn’t only growing, but also deepening.

This is the first issue to feature returning contributors—and we have three! Taylor Daukas returns with a poem meditating on how sounds travel through the dreamscape; Josephine Foster with a poem put to song (of which she shares the process in real-time!); and Alan Howard with his prism-like poem, “Shimmering.” Alan also shares new work with his improvisational sound-and-poetry group Closure Ring, which also features Devin Rule and Mark Moreno.

Another collaborative and interdisciplinary piece in the issue is Chris Gylee and Ruby Louise Rose’s “Word Cairn,” a moving and mesmerising sound poem. And yet another piece working in the poetry of sound as well as the sound of poetry is the transportive “Memory Flows” by Landon Caldwell, which also appears with a few of his brilliant text scores.

Stray prayers from a neighbor’s broken tape recorder and voicemails from a strained relationship waft through the air of Abhilipsa Sahoo‘s visceral poem, “Field notes on replying to your mother’s withheld concern about your new jean jacket in the language of small, sewn memories.” And in “Half an Hour at Pigeon Creek” by David Menees, all kinds of interesting sounds—natural and unnatural—are notated. We hear birds there and all over this issue, such as the marsh wrens in Mark Faunlagui‘s poem “Pang,” or the unstoppable crew in “A Bird That Doesn’t Sing” by Gary Carter. What does the bird that doesn’t sing do? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Keep listening! ✩♬ ₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Lou Turner, editor

P.S. Submissions are always open! Read more here.

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