Mission Statement
The term bombogenesis, colloquially ‘bomb cyclone,’ describes a rapidly intensifying weather system spurred by a steady drop in atmospheric pressure over a period of 24 hours. Founded in the midst of such a storm in January 2018, Bomb Cyclone addresses the rapid deterioration of global climate infrastructure and international relations over the previous year.
As a journal of art and literature, we provide a critical space for re-imagining our natural, built, and social environments as changing weather patterns, rising sea levels, and nuclear arms races intensify and become global existential threats. To that end, we are committed to uplifting and engaging marginalized voices through publishing poetry, prose, and literary translation by emerging and established writers alongside dynamic mixed media arts.
The nature of ecopoetics—a dialogue between land, air, water, and song—is unavoidably both personal and political, local and global. Environmental factors impact us according to other dimensions of our lives—including race, ethnicity, gender, class, and ability. At Bomb Cyclone we view ecopoetics through an intersectional, international, and interdisciplinary lens; patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism are environmental issues under late capitalism.
If your work investigates ethics of personhood, place, and identity, we want to read it. We especially seek submissions from women, queer and trans artists, artists of color, differently-abled artists, and those whose identities intersect with more than one of these margins.
Masthead
Valentine Conaty
Editor in Chief, Editor of Poetry and Mixed Media
Valentine Conaty is a Birmingham-grown artist and editor based in Queens. She has curated poetry and visual arts for Loose Change and founded Bomb Cyclone. She holds a BA from New College of Florida, where she designed an individualized curriculum bridging Art History and Literature through the lens of Gender Studies. By day, she assists poets, presses, and literary organizations in planning events at Poets House, among the nation’s largest public poetry libraries. Recent work can be found in (b)OINK, Anomaly, and The Operating System’s Ex-Spec Po series—and elsewhere, under various former aliases. Her interests include popular music, contemporary sculpture and installation arts, and built environments of the American South.
Catty Donnelly
Art Director, Editor of Mixed Media
Catty Donnelly is a voice actor, illustrator and composer from New York. They are currently working on a new musical, but it’s coming slowly, so don’t hold your breath or anything.
Aozora Brockman
Editor of Poetry, Prose, and Translation
Aozora Brockman is a farmer-poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbooks The Happiness of Dirt and Memory of a Girl, and is currently writing a linked essay collection on farming, climate change, and loss. She is a poetry MFA candidate at the University of Michigan. aozorabrockman.wordpress.com
Allya Yourish
Editor of Poetry and Prose
Allya Yourish is a poet and Fulbright grantee currently living in a small town in rural Malaysia. In daily life, she stumbles through the few words of Bahasa Melayu she knows and finds poetry in the constraints of her new vocabulary. Before being where she is today, she lived in Portland, Sarasota, and New York, in that order. She does not know where she will live next.
Amelea Ng
Editor of Poetry and Translation
Amelea Ying Ying Ng is a Chinese-Malaysian poet, multimedia artist, and educator. Formerly based in Shanghai, Portland, and NYC, Amelea currently lives and teaches in Perak, Malaysia.
Hannah Larrabee
Social Media Coordinator, Reader of Poetry and Prose
Hannah Larrabee is a poet, science-geek, and former Mainer who grew up on a blueberry farm. Her first full-length collection, Wonder Tissue, won the 2018 Airlie Press Prize. Her chapbook Murmuration (Seven Kitchens Press) is part of the Robin Becker Series for LGBTQ poets. She’s had work appear in: Harpoon Review, Lambda Literary Spotlight, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere. Hannah was one of 22 artists selected by NASA to see the James Webb Space Telescope, and her JWST poems were displayed at Goddard Space Center. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire. hannahlarrabee.com
Phoebe Ramone
Reader of Poetry and Prose
Phoebe Ramone, a recent graduate of Pomona College, was birthed and now is based in NYC. She is interested in contemporary and medieval poetics, Jewish philosophy, and holes.