Recently, a few readers have emailed me to ask why CRIT is published on the cross-quarters when it has no explicitly pagan slant. The answer has to do with the way in which poetry came to be my religion, a shift which required first that I come to see religion not in terms of holding particular beliefs but of doing certain acts (this was long before I went to Japan but certainly has something to do with the reasons Shinto appealed to me). Many years ago, while I was doing a very involved solo winter solstice ritual, I was told you’re not a witch; you’re a poet (though of course one can be both).

This meant finding poetic ways to celebrate the holidays that I enjoyed. For the most part that meant, and still does mean, writing marathons. When I founded CRIT, however, I decided that publishing the journal could be another way to mark the days. I chose the cross-quarters specifically because they are between the more distinct equinoxes and solstices. They mark less a turning-point than the state of being between turning points. They are themselves liminal.

Either that or I just wanted a sophisticated reason to publish the first issue on Halloween.