'By the time you hold this issue of Island, we'll be collating and considering the responses to our first major survey of readers in a number of years. The online survey closes on 1 September 2018 but if you miss this chance to share your views, you're welcome to contact us by email because we value the feedback of our readers and we want to create the magazine you want to read. As former editor Matthew Lamb wrote in Island 142, 'it is readers who close the circuit created by writers and their works, thereby sparking the light of literature. It is readers who turn writers into authors, and their words into essays. into fiction, into poetry' (Vern Field : Introduction)
'I rise early each morning to go to work but my work is not that of the office or commute. It is one of the ancients of the Sean-nos (old way) for I am a farmer. It is still winter and while the days are short my work is long for all our animals are inside now, birthing, living, eating, and some, though battle as I might, dying.' (Introduction)
