PEACE: 24 Hour Chapbook Challenge V
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We release this latest chapbook on the weekend marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement here in Northern Ireland. Therefore, the theme of ‘peace’ seems appropriate. Although peace can apply to many things on different levels – personal, interpersonal, local, nation, etc – the reasoning for choosing our picture in question is inspired by the outgoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The Russian Bear is a long-standing trope, used in political cartoons to suggest a brutal and hungry regime. The idea of the bear swimming through blood in order to attain peace feels like an appropriate, if crude, metaphor for our own experience of ‘The Troubles’. There is of course nothing about the current Russian regime however than suggests any appetite for peace, only power. ‘Peace’ can be an uneasy word, loaded with precursors and requirements. Our poems here reflect on how fragile and elusive peace can be, and yet show us that it is the most desired of human conditions. May we continue to hope for peace whenever it is required. Colin Dardis, Editor. 
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