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a dandelion and in the background wild flowers and a forest

Eye to the Telescope, Issue #56: A Garden of an Issue

Eva

This year, I was delighted to edit the 2025 Spring Issue 56 for Eye to the Telescope on the theme of Plants.

For those who don’t know, Eye to the Telescope is an SFPA journal that publishes one issue per season with guest editors.

I had a wonderful time reading through the poems, long and short, and all the imaginative ways the poets interpreted the theme. I got 256 submissions and I wish I could accept more than the twenty poems that appear in the issue.

Go read the issue and enjoy the blooming poetry in it!

 

And here is my editor’s note:

From centenarian trees to small flowers blooming through cracks in the concrete, plants have shown that life is as simple and complicated as putting down roots and absorbing the sun.

Plants have been fighting storms and blizzards, heatwaves and droughts for millions of years. Today, with climate change, the expansion of urban landscape, the wildfires and the unregulated deforestation, being resilient sometimes seems to be all a plant can do.

In some ways, words are like plants.

Tenacious. Defiant. Even when cut down, uprooted, stepped on, erased, their seeds still fall on the ground, their pollen travels with the wind. Eventually, they sprout and grow into poems all over again.

In this garden of an issue of Eye to the Telescope, the twenty poems blooming from the underworld to outer space and everywhere in between will take us into a journey about memory, adaptability, change and hope.

I would like to thank everyone who submitted and trusted me with their work. It has been a pleasure to edit this issue and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

—Eva Papasoulioti

Eligibility Post 2023

Eva

Hello! Happy New Year!

I hope this year finds all of you healthy and well. I’m sitting with a cup of cold coffee in a non-wintery and spring-y Greece – it’s 19°C degrees currently— contemplating the passage of time. I think time is one of those concepts that are indescribable when it comes to how everyone experiences them. Some days feel like months. Sometimes, full years feel like a brief moment. A blink of the eye and they’re gone. And there’s also this alternate dimension that we’ve all fallen into where 2020 was last year. Well.

All this to say, that I was very lucky to publish some pieces last year, both short stories and poems. I have no idea when this happened, how I’m starting from this very same chair another spin around the sun all over again, but I’m grateful and I’m ready.

 

Here are the two short stories I published last year in two wonderful venues:

  • “Money Thirst” in Radon Journal. A contract gone wrong, as all things do when you make deals with corporations.
  • “The Bodytakers” in Heartlines Spec. A story about huge tortoises with forests on their carapace, found family and taking a leap of faith.

 

And here are all the poems that are eligible for the Rhysling Award:

 

 

 

Issue 2 of Heartlines Spec - A pink cover with people sitting around a picnic blanket. Next to it, a sticker of a heart which is the magazine's logo and next to it a bookmark with the art made for all the pieces of the magazine in black and white.

The Bodytakers | New Story

Eva

I am very happy to have a short story out in Issue 2 of Heartlines Spec. “The Bodytakers” is now free to read in Heartlines Spec. Ιt’s a tale about found family, huge tortoises with forests on their carapaces and a leap of faith. Also, dead bodies.

It’s one of the first short stories I ever wrote, and I’m very happy to see it published.

Look at this lovely pink cover!

Look at the even lovelier artwork that the journal’s Associate Editor Emily Yu made for the story. <3 It features a tortoise with a forest on its carapace, where the people in this story throw their dead. I called it a Helona after the Greek word χελώνα which translates to both tortoise and turtle.

You can take your own leap of faith, and go read the story. ^^

how to poem

Eva

I found this in one of my notebooks. I like to practice writing with my left hand and I will do it sometimes when my carpal tunnel acts up.

 

*on the photo reads

 

Where is the poem
in the words written with
your non-dominant hand?

Maybe it’s in all the wrong
spaces. Or maybe it’s in the
learning to write again.

 

Sunset in a cloudy sky, over a pine forest

A small update because life

Eva

So, the past couple of months have been challenging.

At the beginning of May, my father died. It was very quick and very sudden. I’m still processing what happened and going through his belongings. We’re currently mid-emptying my parents’ house, bringing stuff to our own, as well as rearranging and purchasing new furniture to accommodate the new arrivals. Overall, it feels as if I’m the one moving out. Needless to say, I’m not a fan.

On the writing front, my poetry is living the dream. My poem “Petrichor” is a Rhysling finalist and “Fifth tongue”, that appeared in the Spring Issue of Silver Blade, has been nominated for the Dwarf Stars. I feel very grateful and lucky to see my poems liked by people.

Last week, my flash story “Money Thirst” was published in the 4th Issue of Radon Journal. While you’re there, check out all the wonderful poems and stories published in the same issue.

And that’s it from me. I’m going back to packing stuff and writing in between stolen moments.

Have a nice day and tell your loved ones you love them.

🌺💜