Reviewed by Dr. Gregory Stephenson
Tough Poets Review 02
Edited by Kathleen Cullen & Rick Schober
Spring/Summer (May) 2026
Paperback, 186pp, ISBN 9798234043887
If, as I do, you believe that quirkiness is a dwindling resource and originality an endangered species in this increasingly insipid digital era, then you will be heartened to hear of Tough Poets Review, a new, impressively diverse, bi-annual, literary print journal.
Issue 02, Spring/Summer 2026—just out—contains fiction, art and photography, poetry, essays and interviews. It is a heady, eclectic mix, ably edited by Kathleen Cullen and Rick Schober. Contributors hail from various cultural traditions and geographical spaces, the latter including West Africa, the United Kingdom, China, Ireland, Canada, Iran, Brazil, the United States and cities in continental Europe. Yet in some fortuitous manner, the modes and minds of the contributors work well together, making this issue a potent compendium of creative energies.
Just to suggest some sense of the vibrant variety of contents that make up the Spring/Summer number of Tough Poets Review (without claiming any of the following as representing favorites or highlights) let me name a cross-section of the contributions. There is a parable-like, prose piece titled “The Panther” by Treat Williams; a delicately lyrical poem called “Gathered Time” by Ashley Hasburgh; a poignant bilingual poem, “Frances/Francesca” by Carolyn Maria Bevington; a preternaturally distinct yet dream-like photograph titled “Joshua Tree” by Edwin Vasquez; a similarly compelling realistic-oneiric photo by Alan Murphy called “The Cloud.” There is Jean Akintoye’s moving, metrical, end-rhymed verse “Humoresque for a Slave;” the hallucinated, haunting poem “I am the crime” by Lydia Lunch; a typographically experimental prose piece “Mister Clean Pain” by Elberto Muller; and reflective, incisive excerpts from Daybook, a journal by Sven Birkerts.
In addition, there are hybrid works blending text and illustration such as “Hide, Then Seek” by Pariya Pooladvand, and conversations with other innovative artists, “unbounded by form,” such as Nihaarika Negi. Other contributions in this multifaceted magazine are engagingly aslant, acute, inventive, oblique, connecting with outer or inner worlds in new and challenging ways. Even before the beginning, so to speak, before even opening the magazine to the first page, a jolt of startlement is administered already by the image featured on the front cover of Tough Poets Review 02: a black and white photograph of a disconcerted kitten held up by an anonymous outstretched arm, a composition by the master of Fotografia Metafisica, Herbert List (1903–1975.)
This spirited new journal lives up to its name: solid, uncompromising and shot through with a vigorous lyricism. Tough Poets Review is an adventurous blend of diverse voices and artistic styles, a rich feast for the eye and mind. Literary journals as lively and interesting as this are rarely come by.
About the reviewer: Dr. Gregory Stephenson is a former professor of English, Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and author of Exiled Angel: A Study of the Work of Gregory Corso and The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation.