Introduction

Salt Magazine began as a print journal in Perth, Western Australia, back in 1990. Well, that’s when its first issue appeared. Really, its history goes back to the early ’80s, when I had a burning desire to establish a new literary journal in Australia outside the usual venues (universities) and funding sources (governments). Back then, it was called “Canti”, and I managed to collect some fabulous material for a first issue. “Canti” never happened — money and the vagaries of my life got the better of it. Its re-construction as Salt in 1990 is a bizarre story I have told elsewhere. The name comes out of the salt wastes of the Western Australian wheatbelt, and the intimate connection I have with them. Yet it is not simply an image of degradation, but also one of renewal — my cousins and uncle (and I occasionally on holidays as a kid), planted many thousands of trees in the wheatbelt in an effort to heal the damaged land. This is the salt that intrigued me. The grotesque and the beautiful, and the question of what — if anything — really separates them. From 1990 through to about 2004, Salt journal appeared with the support of myself and my partner (Tracy Ryan did a huge amount of work on early issues), then Fremantle Arts Centre Press (now Fremantle Press), then Salt Publishing. A “final” issue appeared on the Verse Blog a couple of years ago.

I was thrilled when Chris spoke of reinventing the journal as a web mag — it suits the nature of the journal well. The design and labour behind putting it up are his — I get the good and easy task: selecting material. This first web issue has been put together from solicited material, as the next couple of issues will be, but then I will also open it out to general submissions. I always saw Salt Magazine as internationalist (and regionalist!), pluralistic, eclectic, and generative. It belongs to no camp. Though closely connected with Salt Publishing, it is not a front for Salt books — I am determined that it remains “independent”. This is not to say that there won't be interactivity, and threads that bind and twine the two entities, but that it has its own vision of existence. That has always been the case, right back to the mid ’90s when Salt (Folio) Books made occasional appearances. Salt Magazine, like those early books, kept its own timetable! So, here it begins again, while never really going far away. It’s a crossover space: a poetry space and more. Really, a place of poetics. So, from out here in the Western Australian wheatbelt, I say welcome, via Cambridge and elsewhere. The places connect, speak out, remain silent … converse.

I would also like to thank my very hermetic brother who has nothing to do with the internet, for his extraordinary artwork, which had to be prised from him, between shearing runs.

John Kinsella