issue 001 - wild - a foma press zine

fear of

wild

making

art press

issue 01

a zine of poetry and prose about wildness

Welcome to issue 001 of a new zine series from your friends at Fear of Making Art Press.

This edition features written responses to the theme ‘wild’. It includes writing that explores what wildness means to a variety of people, from the natural world to mythology, taking time out of your day to go for a walk, and beyond.

When we decided on the theme, we knew that it would mean something different to everyone. We asked you what drives you wild, what it means to be wild, and how it feels to be in the wilderness.

For us, the theme is about reaching out to the part of you that seeks out wildness, and about opening yourself up to the joy of something unknown, and uncontrolled.

The natural world is a big part of that, but there’s also a lot to consider in how we preconceive this wildness through the lens of our lives. The impact we have on the world around us, in particular the ever-encroaching danger of the climate crisis, is a form of wildness too because it is uncontrolled, but it is not the wildness most of us seek when we step into nature.

We hope you find the wildness you seek in this zine, and we’re so grateful to our talented contributors for sharing their work with us. At FOMA Press our goal is to share writing that moves us, and we know we’ve more than achieved that here.

We’re also really proud to be including contributions from many writers creating work in our home of Scotland. We hope to be a platform to celebrate work from people in Scotland, and we are committed to uplifting the voices of marginalised people who are often excluded or discouraged from making and sharing work including LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, working-class people, and disabled people.

Take the time to enjoy every piece in this zine, let it encourage you to ask questions, look more closely at the familiar and unfamiliar, and take you somewhere new and unknown - somewhere wild.

If you’d like to see more from FOMA Press you can visit our website fearofmakingartpress.wordpres.com or @fomapress.

A few of our previous zines are available as digital zines from our shop, and if you feel inspired by this zine, we plan for it to be the first of several, so keep an eye out for our next round of submissions.

poetry Jeehan Ashercook • Iona Glen • Lucia Yonge • Ali Graham • Molly Edmond • Lynn White • Dan Brady • Jade A Farrow • Megan Cartwright • TAK Erzinger

Rough Arctic Seas Jeehan Ashercook

Piercing chill creeps down bone marrow wet numb blue its frigid touch and when its fingers wrap round ribs, lungs freeze till air can no longer squeeze through arctic seas and breathe

morning Iona Glen

dawn lookout in my cow-print dressing gown, my feet on wet grass. I’m cold as a chess piece

hedges and fountains encamp on the lawn, the day’s topiary cuts me with its green threat

my unicorns are leashed like guard dogs, bats sulk, feral out-turned umbrellas

creatures pruned from primeval woodland stags in the broth of routine so quiet and velvet

I’m stripped of sleep’s armour, ushered from vigil in dream’s mansion

where the lavender gloam shuffles the tarot I’m caught still in night’s apron-strings

the moon there is a scythe beneath the ceiling, she scatters stars as grain

Wild Lucia Yonge

Wild, unbroken child Grows, Is tamed, domesticated, becomes mild, Becomes same.

Grown up, self misplaced.

Searching? Return to the child Re-find self, Rewild.

Creed for onward Ali Graham if a bird’s eye view, if the remainder of the world considered I would not be good or skilled if chancing after the fact admitting guilt is a beak I give no colour taking no shape I have tended nebulous to inflict waiting on myself august is belly-drag tricky you neglect to sev -ere from her as said swarm held down in here where not-quite-I speaks you not quite outside in the murk substantial I hush poorly tongue bloating makes for unbecoming earthwork I count on eventual seep of this patterning song I refer slippery to our liver on the one hand your torn knuckles riddle when asked you detail slugging a wall your mouth inscrutable ought to have spooked my mushrooming heart green man outside I will ask why I have made you I believe in rinding this vex bare this trajectory to philtrum alone an oil portrait, spaniel curls & prettiness aside taking by sight the white t-shirt in flatscreen detail the road needing the rain’s lick the dull curling strip negotiating your navel & waistband when suddenly I met your face this burgeoning takes no noun. spring to harvest I tended to you. what glamour. colour I forget but the name I have. green man, face obscured. I tread over you. outside I ask why I have done.

Pollock Park Sunday - October 2023 Molly Edmond

A simple question of physics One foot Down and forward- isn’t it funny howWe, walking, are powered by energy of oranges?

Of dappled pine, Fire trees and hissing bark Of salt-frost crystallize lovelossspin and cosmos lying in needles, water of phloem cones rising.

Bark lying.

Pine tree clinging, hair tights snagged.

Here is Free.

The same as fire cindersEnergy.

Humming Birds Lynn White

She asked me why caged birds sing when their home is a prison.

I couldn’t tell her, not for sure.

She asked me why humming birds hum, if it was their song, I said it was a work sound made by their wings a sound of struggle and survival.

“Do they still sing,” she asked.

When it’s Over Dan Brady

No walls, no fences will be found, when finally man is underground, when the statues have all tumbled, when the concrete has all crumbled, when threadbare flags wave no more and the last plastic raft reaches the shore, and when the sounds of men have gone, let the skylark sing its song.

The Wild Jade A Farrow

You wanted the wild, My natural child?

I promise you pain you will scream in the night I promise you grief You can tear with your teeth I promise a cause for your fight and your flight

You wanted my nature?

I give you my nurture The howling and hunger of winter’s cruel breath I give you the freeze And the wasting disease The terrible void of the mother bereft

You’ll rot in the rain As spring comes again The maggots will crawl and devour your flesh For this is the love Of the abyss above The earth will not notice your life or your death

The rabbit that falls To the night-hunting owl Knows that the wild is bitter, and brief Do not disdain The domestic and tame The wild is savage; a hunter, a thief.

Persephone Rising (Sonnet for Dactylanthus Taylorii) Megan Cartwright

Persephone paints her cheeks with roses.

Amid riotous larkspur and iris she blooms, gilded on a bed of crocus while her sisters gather calla lilies.

The god gropes skyward, a wood rose winding vines about its host, draws her underground.

Here, leech-like tubers milk marrow, the stench of fetid tree roots mingles with decay.

Persephone, crowned in thorns, buds violet violence. Slick with scarlet, her fingers peel petals from sinners. Coils wisteria to suffocate the parasitic King.

Persephone rises like dawn, harvests fluted burls, breaking Hades’ wooden bones.

Crown Shyness (in a family)* TAK Erzinger

They’re afraid to admit that they planted that seed and now it’s sprouted throughout my body. It’s been

nourished by the soil from each transplantation my solid spine carries memories and my trunk records time.

I’ve grown and grown but they turn their faces, inward, they don’t want to know.

Too much rough weather, cracking against the wind – between us, crown shyness, our branches inverted

create a distance but allows the sun to break through.

I face them, I am a shadow version of their previous generation.

I want to be something good for them, even though I am over here.

I imagine fresh leaves pushing through well-worn limbs

it’s not too late to nurture me, even if the season is off if only they would remember we’re from the same tree.

*a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps.

prose + longform poetry A T McDonald • Mel Reeve • Lott Roberts • Caitlin Sherret • Em Ramsey • Molly McKeagney • Alexander Horn

Intae the Wild A T McDonald Ye’re bored. The internet’s doon. Whit ye gonnae dae? Ye complain and moan fir a bit. Ye play aboot wae the rooter like ye know mare than the Virgin man doon the road playing wae the box.

Ye don’t.

Ye gie up.

Ye look aboot yer modestly sized, immodestly priced flat. There’s bookshelves an’ a tele an’ a couch an’ a dining table. The books ye’ve read and the tele ye’ve seen. Whit, ye gonnae watch mare of the 24 hour news?

‘That’s it’ ye say to naebody cause yer flat’s empty. ‘I’m gaun oot.’

The journey fae the tap of yer close tae the bottom is perilous in no small part thanks to yer rush to get yer shades on. Aye, ye dae look cool, but ye also cannae see any of the stairs ye’re rattling doon. There’s a wee pool of yella liquid near the door at the bottom and ye hope wae aw yer might that a neighbur’s dug produced it.

Ootside the shades prove their worth. The power ae the midday Scottish sun cooks you lit a wee toy sodjer. Steam almost rises fae that greasy napper ae yours. Self consciousness starts to rear its ugly head but ye remember the sunglasses. Ye’re cool.

Steps take you away fae yer flat. Going nae place in particular yer body moves forward.

The noise ae the street is too much. Motors hum and pollute yer surroundings wae their noise let alone their fumes. Ye trust yer body. It knows what it wants.

And so ye find yersel sauntering into a park. That local one. Ye know the one? It’s only a wee ten minute jaunt. Ye march through the gates that are never shut and already the motors are quieting. The maws are oot wae their weans. The lunch crowd have commandeered aw the benches. Even a few school weans have tane the journey just tae get a bit ae respite.

Ye wander roon the park. Despite the heat there’s a nice breeze. The trees dance, swaying side to side as if the wind’s a love song. Yer body joins them in a way. Yer gait becomes a sort of flowing walk. It’s the park that’s moving ye mare than yer own feet. But ye don’t mind.

Intae the Wild A T McDonald

As ye venture deeper ye see less an’ less ae the people. The path descends into a nature trail. Ye’ve only been oot the hoose twenty minutes and ye’re already oot in the wild.

The coos in the field put a smile on yer face. Ye know if ye keep gaun there’ll be sheep tae.

Bet ye any money they’re no sad about the internet being doon. There ur still people cutting aboot but they’re no city types anymare. Naw these are the committed outdoors folk. Auld couples with them hiking sticks. Younger wans with camping equipment strapped to them.

Adventurers.

Time stops oot here. Yer phone’s in yer pocket but ye’ve nae desire to check the time. No lit you could dae much else wae it oot here. Wan bar if ye’re lucky. Ye’ve nae need for bars noo.

Eventually yer legs get tired. Yer calves burn. Yer hamstrings are tight. Hametime ye reckon.

And so ye trudge aw the way back. It’s too summery for the sun to be near setting but if it was any other season ye’d be in right darkness by noo. Slowly but surely the busyness comes back. The people then the motors then the noise. As quickly as you arrived oot there in the wilderness that’s you back in the boring auld toon. Yer nostrils fill themselves with that unmistakable smell.

Ye keep gaun, considering nipping in for a wee juice before ye realise ye never even bothert tae bring money wae ye. Parched, ye near enough crawl up the close stairs and slump inside yer hoose. First thing ye dae is turn that tap and fire yer mooth right under it.

Nothing lit tap water eh?

Back in the living room ye collapse on the couch yer day started on. Yer eyes glance at the computer. Yer finger caresses the monitor’s button. In a flash ye seen the internet’s back and ye can dae whatever ye were daeing this morning. But after that adventure the day ye cannae really be bothert so ye just kick yer feet up.

Experience Caitlin Eilidh Sherret

Hand them down to Experience, my mother says when something goes awry.

She gets all the best ones.

Experience, with raven hair pinned high is seated at a table wide and loud wine flows Bacchus-like to every lip as she tops up her dearest, oldest guests – regret, embarrassment, and shame – they glow somehow their faces shine with gentleness each guest is welcome, ushered in, embraced pariahs are the guests of honour here

I visit sometimes to ask her advice or, if I’m honest, scour old faces for answers to some question from my past sometimes I come to see what used to be my worst fears come to pass now safe, secure, contented in her court – the rows we used to play out like a worn sitcom have found their peace here now, have made this their new home

Experience Caitlin Eilidh Sherret

I keep on handing down to her my worst mistakes, my fumbles, foibles and each time I watch in wonder as she holds them up and turns them over like a precious stone she takes the moments when I am my worst and turns them into something full of life sometimes I wish I could live with her here in this palace where my failure finds its home

but she would never let me stay – she knows better than any that the living must continue filling up her raucous halls with new mistakes, misspeaks, new mangled plans.

She never lets me hand over success – tells me to keep them tucked safe up my sleeve – but also tells me never to forget the failures that I press into her palm.

She’ll hold them here until some time has passed and I can bear to look upon their face then she will sit us softly side by side and she will pour a drink for us, and wait.

untitled Lott Roberts

If anyone ever asks, I want to be by the fire waiting for the flames to get small. This will be my cue to get up on groaning muscles, to brave the cold and provide for myself more logs to burn. We keep them down by the old chicken shed past the barn (rotting), and up the lane a bit (slippy). You have to take the wheelbarrow (also rotting) and use the tree stump to balance the logs on, and then take the axe (rusty) and throw the blade down on the log to make it split in two. Once you have enough to fill a decent-sized wicker basket, you can scurry back to the warmth of the smallest room in the house, and put slightly damp logs on the fire so it spits in exasperation, rushing to pinch the sparks off the carpet quickly and throw them back into the flames.

Very little I have to do now directly correlates to my survival, survival for me is easy. I take pleasure in indulging my imagination, that the log-slog is essential for maintaining life inside the house, when really the fire is a comfort not a necessity because there’s a heavy duvet on the bed but the bed is away from the telly and the telly has old reruns of Sex and The City which is, again, not essential for survival. If the wifi reached up to my bedroom (the house is old and the walls are thick) I might not be writing this at all.

The ultimate indulgence is imagining that I could run away. Not that I would tell anyone what I was doing, I would leave letters to be opened later saying things like let me go, let me be if I can, let me not be if I can't. My preference, over a small village in the Highlands (too intimate), would be the countryside. Past the barn, up the slippy lane, over two broken gates haphazardly held together with bailer twine, through the field full of cows too afraid of me to come close (therefore no fear of being trampled) and into what isn’t the wilderness due to having been cultivated for centuries and having supposedly lost all of its biodiversity.

I want to believe otherwise but isn’t it true that the field of grasshoppers or crickets that would jump away from your footsteps in dense crowds that resembled tides breaking is barren now? Much like the field my dad calls the bluebell field, which is only known to me as the place to drop paper boats into the stream.

untitled Lott Roberts

One of the fields has a big crack down the middle that gets wider towards the bottom, maybe the wilderness has retreated down there to escape us. I know that under the mud there’s a layer of chalk, so I could carve out pictures of what’s important or beautiful to me for other people to happen across and admire. The issue there is deciding what I think is important enough to carve into the ground. I admire the people from the past who seemed to know that HORSE was it.

Of course, the logistics still need to be hashed out in my mind. I would need to collect resources and consider sustaining a small number of crops myself using that system where the plants are grown in among each other or…trade with the small farms dotted through the fields. Would this entail learning some kind of craft? Is anything valued enough to trade anymore?

Either way, I imagine acquiring a stray dog for company, building a small wooden shack to totter in and out of. Waiting for the fire to start to die before stocking it again to make it grow louder and more confident. I want there to be rumours about a hag living in the thicket, parents using the idea of me to scare their children into getting home on time. I want to keep my long grey hair plaited and twisted around my head and my skin to lose its elasticity, my body to grow weaker until one day I lie down on my bed in my shack and die before the fire does.

The hag version of myself is what I pretend to be at the end of long summers, while collecting berries and batting away bugs competing with me for the fruit. Berries I take home to cook into a crumble and eat on the sofa with the tv on in the background.

tidal Em Ramsey

never carved names into a tree like an imposition afraid of cursing someone i love watched heavenly creatures before knowing the ending lost in her accent (just like hers) sprinkled crumbs over iced botanic gardens emptied all things in the bathroom at closing lied to others and many others left parents to the sea’s separation, each wave shuts its own door what else to fear if not weather? been asked enough times now asking planning a route, contingency upon contingency, in metres, height and swell, calm or flat each sailing a question land might answer. when we untether loss comes before the waves – the drop and then the waves. we won’t be caught we won’t be caught. and we are caught this vessel contains ninety lifejackets

tidal Em Ramsey

do you know how many lives this jacket contains? i’ve touched every one of those warnings, fingers tight in my ears, this vessel shaking. vessel a term wider than you would think it; most vessels wider than you would think is the vessel secured for the long journey? i don’t want this journey, any journey; no question without an answer or with too soon an answer. we started jumping, once, to not feel the ground falling away – its lack a choice we leapt into, all motion imperceptible in the frenzy of our own

Re-Entry Alex Horn

I fall out of love like a satellite falls out of orbit; the falling and the flying don’t feel so different, at first, or at all.

Little boy wants to be an astronaut, you ask him why and he says “cuz there’s no gravity in space. You can float around up there.”

And I say “wrong, little boy, so so wrong, little boy, there’s as much gravity in space as there is on the surface. You’re not floating, up there, little boy, you’re falling, fruit from a fig tree, and the only difference is that the Earth is falling away from you too.”

A satellite doesn’t start falling, when it falls out of orbit; it’s been falling the whole time, cold, nauseous, instruments decaying, not even the Russians will use you anymore, and it’s too late now, little boy, to reach escape velocity.

What comes up

Re-Entry

must come down, but you never went up, you were up, up’s where you started; that’s where you were who you are. You’re only a satellite once you get on your track, and you’re only a moon if you stay there; so you stay there you do then you don’t.

Thick atmosphere of the body, kindness in continents, the gravity of it all, it drags at your soul, solar panels go dark, you lose speed, lose altitude, and then the Earth stops falling but you don’t, you don’t stop; so you don’t then you do.

Your fall feels like your orbit, because your orbit was a fall; and you wonder, as you burn up on re-entry, if any little girl on Earth is watching, and if she would call your ugly, burning wreckage a pretty shooting star.

“Look now,” she’d say; “Look now, before it lands.”

Alex Horn

An Almanac of Open Water Molly McKeagney stripping // \\ shedding exhaling // January, the month of resolutions and forgotten promises.

Fixed change that is inevitably temporary, Or none at all, to avoid the guilt.

Except this year, a commitment that has so far been kept.

A pinky promise made on the way to a Loch.

Each month renewed, baptised under the morning sun.

The agreement?

Each month, all year, a swim; lake, loch, river or sea.

Minimum once, ideally thrice.

Starting as we mean to go on; Duck Bay, the first of many began with many.

Luss, lilac and apricot dawn overhead as we sip at minus three air, sowing seeds of our morning tradition.

Another dawn, though obscured, flurries of snow, wondering why.

February, Loch Eck, in water that is achingly cold, Empty cobalt skies dance across a rippling loch.

Another friendship birthed amidst wintery waters fierce; protection against the elements.

An Almanac of Open Water

March, Pisces season.

Loch Swilly with Mum, back for what became his final birthday.

Duties momentarily discarded in choppy currents.

Loch Lomond, morning alarms set ever slightly earlier, ensuring we see the sun crest.

April, an anxious month.

East coast waves gracing us with an escape, the only reprieve found by dipping below.

Coming up for air momentarily, temporally buoyant.

May, too early for sunrise.

We return for the insatiable feeling of lucidity, purest when sourced by truly succumbing.

Loch Aline in midafternoon heat, lounging with distant pals.

June, drifting under the solstice sunset, tingling.

A spontaneous swim in ‘that spot’, a surprise for her, tantalising yet laced with awkwardness.

Hiding below the surface, I don’t know what to do with myself.

We promise to do this again, although not kept till a cooler month.

Later, I take someone else there, we end, with a ditch.

July, Granny’s beach, washing away my mother’s tears.

Lunchtime moving with the tide, until full tide becomes breakfast.

These wild waters always calling home.

An ever changing headland, no fixed landmarks beyond the sea.

These shores are my site of pilgrimage respite for a weary body, seeking solace and safer shores.

Molly McKeagney

An Almanac of Open Water

August, Loch Ard, my first swim back without you, but with your people.

Missing our rituals, feeling unmoored.

Molly McKeagney

September, the last of the summer.

Three swims in a week, our first together since she left.

Loch Chon, an hour floating under the setting sun; wading out as night emerged.

Long Niddrie, an evening of a double dunk, the second as dusk hides our naked bodies.

Returning to the Atlantic, cradling us, healing mum’s numbness.

October, celebrating the tenth month, our spot transformed.

Fog hovering, shivering, tentatively revealing the water within, its grasp takes our breath.

Sliding in without hesitation, hungry for its sting.

Swallowing us, whole.

November, Has yet to pass, the cusp of winter’s true wildness.

Raw darkness releasing, slipping inwards, gloomy lochs, hidden sun.

Embracing sensations, we once feared.

Each dip, every month: the water returns us to ourselves, holds us, when we cannot.

Awakening, rewilding deep below the surface.

Our harbour of unbridled joy, replenishing, ballast, as we journey to

sea.

The Ocean Pole of Inaccessibility Mel Reeve

In blue, faded bright and brilliant, floating in the sticky grip of surface tension, the object lies. Before, there was heavy machine craft, crisp clear packaging, desperate grasping hands. First found in the buzzing business of fast-food, clasped and chewed by a young mind with hungry, blunt teeth. And now here, lost and forgotten.

Sun-bleached, faded, barely visible as what once was - but the shape remains. Bobbing along in salted waters, a hidden symbol etched eternally in hard plastic formed to be humanoid, that outlives us all.

Here, there is an endless watery desert beneath scorching sunlight, with no sight of land.

Perhaps the only sentient gaze flies overhead in distant satellites, traversing the stars and watching it all unfold through lines of data beamed back down to the surface.

The toy figure bobs, nudged by a curious touch. The black, shining nose of an orca finds the tasteless flesh of the object, sharp mouth cutting through faded plastic with curiosity, puncturing and ripping. A small gasp of stale air released from dismembered plastic, and beneath the waves we go.

Stream of bubbles rising, sinking through the emptiness. The orca fades into the distance, swimming for richer waters.

The Ocean Pole of Inaccessibility Mel Reeve

Sunlight stretches down into cornflower blue water, the bright azure of gas flames. Molded arms reaching up out of enforced habit, and still falling down. Turquoise darkness fading into pitch blackness. Yet life still moves here. The flicker of a stingray, perhaps the distant shadow of a bull shark in the periphery.

Darkness now, the pale plastic invisible in absolute blankness. Travelled from factory, to freebie with food, to forgotten toy, washed through rivers, and out to sea.

Sliding through pressure without resistance, an eel would move freely here, in the wondrous nothingness of deep open waters.

Sinking still, where even whales cannot dive, where the only light comes from flesh and blood, darkness shattered only by the glowing horror of bioluminescence.

The ghost-light of a passing sea angel flickers across plastic features, as they fall through marine snow, expressionless and unmoved.

Peaceful, perhaps in the wretched toxicity of a hydrothermal vent, or the utter blankness of sand which never knew light, we land. Crushing pressure, absolute lightlessness. Silence.

Nothing, and yet not nothing.

High above, the sun shines down on slippery, moving waters, with open ocean on all sides.

Contributors Jeehan Ashercook is a poet from Edinburgh currently undertaking a DFA in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Her poems explore the ocean poetics of drift, movement, and journeys and have appeared in various publications including, Gutter, BlueHouse Journal, IR11's Heat pamphlet, Poemeleon, and All Becomes Art: An Anthology, with others forthcoming. She won first prize for The Voice of Peace Continental Anthology Competition, was long-listed for the John Dryden Translation Competition, and was a John Byrne Award top-ten finalist.

Dan Brady has been writing for a few years.

Megan Cartwright is a poet and college Literature teacher who resides in Australia. Her writing recently featured in October Hill Magazine.

A T McDonald is a working-class writer from Glasgow. He has a masters in creative writing from Edinburgh Napier and, amongst various jobs, worked in small town libraries for a little under two years where he ran a writer's group for people in the community.

Molly Edmond is a writer, archivist and records manager by trade, based in Glasgow. She enjoys rambles in the outdoors, reading and (very occasionally) playing the cello.

TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been featured by journals at Indiana University, Cornell University, McMaster University, the University of Baltimore and more. Erzinger’s poetry collection “At the Foot of the Mountain,” (Floricanto Press 2021), won the University of Indianapolis, Etchings Press Whirling Prize for 2021 for best nature poetry book and was a finalist at The International Book Awards 2022. She lives on the foothills of the Alps in Switzerland with her husband and two cats.

Jade A Farrow is a new writer living in the South East of England writing from a queer, disabled perspective. She is a nature enthusiast and former healthcare worker.

Iona Glen is a writer and arts worker living in Edinburgh.

Ali Graham lives and works in Glasgow. Their work has been published by Datableed, Cambridge Literary Review, Ludd Gang, and Gutter Magazine. They have pamphlets out with Spam Press and Distance No Object, and they have poetry books forthcoming from Veer2 from Hem Press. They can be found on Instagram as @aligrhm.

Alex Horn is a writer from South Jersey. He studied English and Creative Writing at Columbia University. His work has appeared in JAKE: The Anti-Literary Magazine, Across the Margin, The Bookends Review, and The MockingOwl Roost. His short story "The Split Lives of Medusa" was published in the book The Accidental Time Travelers Collective, Volume 2. For more of Alex's fiction and poetry, check out his website at www.alexhornwriting.com Molly McKeagney is a self-described casual writer. She’s happiest when floating in a loch/swimming in general, which fits her queer Pisces energy. As an Irish woman living in Scotland, her writing tends to linger on what it means to be home or where home can be.

Em Ramsey is a translator trying to write a bit more. From an island (no longer living there), they are interested in animals, language, abjection and remoteness.

Mel Reeve is a writer and lapsed archivist living in Glasgow. Her prose has been short-listed for the Creative Future Writer’s Award, and in 2020 she won the Glasgow Women's Library Bold Types short story prize. She’s been published by 404 Ink, Knight Errant Press, The Skinny and more. She runs the Bi History project and is co-editor of Fear of Making Art Press. She writes about landscape, history, and self: about.me/melreeve Lott Roberts is a writer, cyclist and cat lover. Often found cyano-typing or writing about Joan of Arc. Co-editor of Fear of Making Art Press.

Caitlin Eilidh Sherret is a poet from Nairn, currently based in Stirling. After studying English and Film at Edinburgh Napier University, she was a Traverse Theatre Young Writer in 2020 and one of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Next Generation Makars in 2022.

Lynn White Lucia Yonge is an artist and writer who grew up a wild child in Ireland and now lives on the edge of Dartmoor and spends happy hours wandering its tors and paddling in its streams.

We are Fear of Making Art Press Editors: Lott Roberts and Mel Reeve.

FOMA is a small zine press based in Glasgow - making, sharing and writing zines about the things that move us – big and small.

Since 2017 we’ve been writing, making and sharing our work. We’ve published zines on queer monks and nuns, the career journey of Joan of Arc, mental health recovery and way more.

Our workshops have covered creative writing, zine making, self-expression and the radical possibility of expressing yourself on your own terms.

“There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world.

It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations” Jeanette Winterson – Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal

“Wild women don’t get the blues, but I find that Lately, I’ve been crying like a tall child” Mitski – First Love/Late Spring

“The wildness in them Had to brim over. The hall ran red With blood of enemies” – Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

fear of

making

art

press

an anthology of writing exploring what wildness means: from mythology and nature, the unknown ocean, chalk hill carvings, taking a walk in the park, and the wildness we find inside ourselves • writing that reaches out to the part of you that seeks out the unknown and uncontrolled • featuring contributions from many writers creating work in Scotland

look more closely at the familiar and unfamiliar, and let us take you somewhere new and unknown - somewhere wild

@fomapress fearofmakingart.wordpress.com