EDITORIAL MENTORSHIP 

Mentorship Recipient
Bitter Herbs

Recipient Reflection: 
Alanna Shaikh

On "Bitter Herbs" by Alanna Shaikh

by ​​Jason Harris

​There are poems I read that remind me of a fact I often don’t consider: that narrative is already always happening. I was reminded of this fact the first time I read Alanna Shaikh’s poem, “Bitter Herbs,” and each reading after. Upon my initial reading of the poem I felt drawn to the size of it—how much happened in such a small amount of space; if it were a tactile thing I could have held the poem in the palm of my hand like a gift.
 
For the next week, I would open Submittable and reread it again. And then again. “Bitter Herbs,” from the opening line dropped me into a narrative much bigger than me; it reminded me that life—like narrative—is already always happening. It happens when we are awake, when we are asleep, when we are in that liminal space called dreaming. Two things struck me about “Bitter Herbs” and that is the small space in which the poem is contained and the surprise that I felt, not knowing where the dream would take me, until the very end.
 
Working with Alanna also solidified for me that what matters most, when working with artists in an editorial role, is the vision the artist has for their work.

Jason Harris

Jason Harris is an American writer. His interests include listening to true crime podcasts, practicing negative visualization, revision, and finding associative links between disparate ideas. He is a Graduate Poetry Fellow of The Watering Hole. He is also the 2021 Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence at Twelve Literary Arts. His first poetry collection is forthcoming. To read more of Jason's work, you may visit his website: jasonharriswriter.com.   ​