This issue was inspired by a poet. A blues kind of woman. A noontime butterfly who learnt the haiku in Harlem. Sonia Sanchez, real name Wilsonia. An original freedom rider and leader of the Black Arts Movement; it was, she says, a cloudy day when she met Malcom X. A true homegirl with hand grenades – women’s rights mother of the 70s – the kind that passes down power from her corner seat in the library, legs crossed, and who knows just how close to

hold her mouth to a microphone.

“to worship until i become stone to love

until i
become bone.”

Sanchez is all here on page 82 and speaks to everything this issue honours.

Majestic is, above all, a mood.
It’s the kind of gravitas you don’t get from everything having gone right all the time. It’s the absolute greatness of living true. That higher sense of being your guru – whoever that might be – or maybe even your inner voice, talks of. Being and surviving. The rites of personal transition. Human, tragic, beautiful, triumphant.

May your will be renewed. May you find your own god. And if you doubt, may you think of what Sonia would say, with a wink and a smile, “One day you will sister.”