Right from the beginning you had the idea that it would be good to produce a journal. Is that an accurate description of your original plans?
Well, my plans are all happening in reverse. The original idea regarding leaving Paris and returning to Ireland was to set up a Storm Shelter. It would be a writers and visual artists retreat and it would have workshops and festivals and once I had sorted that out there would be a journal and a podcast. Then Covid arrived, Lockdown came, and those plans had to change.
The Podcast, Eat the Storms, came first and then as that was developing, people were asking me, “What about a journal?”, and I just wasn’t ready, but once I had a few seasons of the podcast under my belt, I felt I could think about a journal.
I knew I wanted something printed even though that may be old-fashioned but I do think that, as a writer myself, to be able to open up a journal, or a book, where you can see your work inside the publication, that really matters.
I secured some funding from the Arts Council of Ireland for the first two issues and I also received funding from Fingal Council, which is the council area I live in, in Dublin.
“The Storms” is a journal of Poetry, Prose and Visual Arts. It had the following from the podcast and as such it was initially poetry orientated, but it now has more of all a balance between all three mediums.
What issue are you up to?
The 4th issue is supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and by Fingal Arts. It has certainly changed quite dramatically.
We have a lot more visual artists, a lot more painting coming in, sketches, we have a huge amount of prose, from memoir to flash fiction to short stories, and I think that’s because people have trusted the journey along the way. The quality has been so good, not only from the contributors but the production quality as well.
Did you always have guest editors?
I did want to have someone on the journey with me. It is a substantial amount of work and we get so many submissions, for example issue 2 had 2000 submissions and we have space for maybe 70, so it is good to have someone else to share the load. And because writing is such a solitary activity, when you have someone there alongside you who knows what that experience is like I think that helps in terms of an understanding of what I’m trying to achieve.
It is also important because you benefit from another opinion as to why one really great piece of work will get in and something equally great you have to say no to.
How do you narrow the submissions down to those going into the journal?
We have a traffic light system, both I and the guest editor use the same system, and then we get together to reduce the submissions. We might fight for one piece over another, might make suggestions for the other person to look again at a particular piece of work, and, eventually, we have the content for the finished issue.
Two thousand submissions is a fantastic amount of submissions?
Yes it is because people can submit three pieces and you might have hundreds of people submitting.
Do you produce the journal?
I do the editing, the layout, and I do try and have a theme, an arc, throughout the journal so that the poems, stories and the artwork all pull together.
Why did you make the journal multi genre?
Again, it isn’t just my own interests. I wanted to build a wider arts community, so it made sense to open the process to poets, writers and artists.
To me it’s all the various ways we can express ourselves. I know, for myself, there are times where all I want to do is write poetry, and other times where I want to take a sketch book and draw, or maybe make a sculpture in the garden. Sometimes I like to paint. I might want to write a short story; actually I am working on a novel at the moment.
The commonality is that they are all ways of expressing yourself. I wanted people who love poetry to buy it and fall in love with the art, or people who love short stories to buy it and fall in love with the poetry. The journal is an open door for creativity.
Where to now?
That really depends on funding. It’s not cheap to do, partly because I want it to look a certain way, and again it requires commitment and effort, and I really would like to pay contributors and again you have to find the funding to do that.
When you have 70 to 80 contributors, that is not cheap, and thankfully Fingal Arts, Fingal Council and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, have been very generous this year.
We will keep going, keep promoting the journal, and keep looking to expand the capacity of what we are able to platform and support.
To find out more about the work of Damien B Donnelly go to the link below
