THE BEAM | MFL NEWSLETTER

Invitation to Invent

June Edition

Fresnel lens inside a lighthouse. Photo by Katja Ano on Unsplash

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” — Thomas Edison

Every great invention begins the same way: with a question. With someone refusing to accept that things have to stay the way they are. Whether it’s a lone tinkerer surrounded by, as Edison put it, “a good imagination and a pile of junk,” or a visionary who sees not the world as it is but as it could be, inventors share the willingness to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist and then do the stubborn, and often unglamorous work of bringing it to life.

Invention is rarely a single lightning-bolt moment (haha). There’s trial and error, which we writers know through the processes of writing and editing, being published or being rejected.

In this issue of “The Beam”, we’re celebrating the spirit of creative ingenuity. If you’re a writer, then you’re already on your way to becoming an inventor!

⚓My Fair Lighthouse in June

This month, we have brought you twenty-three stories from twenty writers, an increase from May!

I noticed an interesting trend of stories centered on technology — which I suppose should hardly come as a surprise when the topic of AI is on seemingly everyone’s lips! Trevor Pinto addresses this in his wonderfully whimsical poem “Alice in AI Land”. Hide Katatae also demonstrates how AirPods aren’t always enough to keep unpleasant observations at bay in “Failed to Erase”.

Many of the English language courses I’ve taught have included a unit on technology. A warm-up exercise I like to use is to have small groups list all the technology they own and collaboratively decide on categories for the various items. This inevitably begs two questions: “What is technology?” and “How far back should we go?”

In light of “Tales in Time”, our Special Edition Pier 21 Prompt, we invited you to reimagine historical happenings through a fictional lens. It was my first time writing in this particular genre and out of it came the short story “St. Patrick’s Goat”. Amalia wrote both a poem and a short story for this prompt, the latter being about one of the early inventions of the photograph!

Can you imagine the chaos that ensued when people were shifting from riding horses to driving cars? A clever invention was needed, which you can read about in cindee D Renee’s short story.

You can find more information about the resulting stories from this prompt, as well as our workshop event within the current writing prompt, “An Acquired Taste” linked below.

[embed]An Acquired Taste Pier 21: June-Julymedium.com

💡Visionaries

Here are our favorite stories in June, written by visionaries!

Amalia’s Pick

This month, M.S.Jaral’s “Cartographer of Fault” particularly impressed me. The poem’s narrator ‘maps’ out a relationship with a person who seems to victimise by pushing blame, without taking accountability. The extended metaphor pairs with vivid imagery of landscapes and nature, architecture and geography, to create an experience of weaving through the world with only one, crumbling mindset.

She makes a map of my intentions and draws the borders wrong, then hands it back to me and asks why I am lost.

[embed]The Cartographer of Fault For the ones who carry what was never theirs medium.com

Willow’s Pick

I especially enjoyed reading and workshopping Flaminia D.’s bilingual poem “CORAGGIO MAMMA” this June. We learn about Ignazio Vian, a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Italy in WWII. He left behind an impactful story and an inventive artifact that can still be viewed at the Historical Museum of the Liberation (Museo Storico della Liberazione) in Rome.

For seven days, hung in July’s airless streets a spectacle for inhumanity, your body was a warning: the flag soaked in red will never be white.

[embed]CORAGGIO MAMMA A poemmedium.com

Readers’ Pick

For the fifth consecutive month, we congratulate Mark Tulin for being our readers’ pick! His poem “Sylvia in Army Fatigues” was published in response to our “Tales in Time” workshop and centers on the horrific mass shooting at the Springfield Mall in 1985. Mark himself had worked across from this mall at the time.

In support of Mark’s poem, here are some of the comments you’ve written:

“It’s ugly, but beautifully painted, Mark. I really enjoyed the sense of time compressing, then almost being languid as the old man sits in untroubled silence.” — Sarah Scorze

“What a look back, Mark, to when these horrific and stunning moments, once upon a time in America, were so few and far between. Bravo for the poetic capture of the innocence lost.” — K. Stofer Smith

“Good depictions of mental illness. I’ve worked with paranoid schizophrenics. All have been incredibly intelligent. And none of them projected their panicked fears with the vehmence of Sylvia on killing of others. Masterful writing…” — Frank Ontario 🦋🕊️🌍

[embed]Sylvia in Army Fatigues Killing time at the mall in 1985medium.com

🧠Ingenues

We noticed a weird bug with our Features this month. Some previously featured stories suddenly lost their featured status and for a good part of the month, we had 0/4 credits. Have any other editors noticed something similar? The issue seems to be resolved now and our credits are slowly replenishing, but as a result, we were not able to feature as many stories as we would have liked this month.

Still, we are happy to highlight two ingénue stories!

• “Picture Haiku — Love Always Pulls Through” by Rachel Addison
• “Sibylle” by Simon Jung

👩🏻‍🔬Protégés

Please welcome our newest three writers to My Fair Lighthouse!

• Juliette Roanoke
• N. K. Quaye, “Cold Light”
• Anket

To conclude, we’d like to thank you for the time you spend reading our stories. We’ve recently hit 600 followers, which in today’s internet numbers might not look like much, but if you imagine 600 people in a stadium — that’s certainly a lot of people!

Our next edition of “The Beam” will be sent to you on Friday, August 7th. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you may do so here.