[water] acknowledgement by Josh Corson
An author-made cine-poem (as he calls it) by Tampa, Florida-based writer and artist Josh Corson, “[water] acknowledgement stands witness to the history of phosphate mining in Florida.” It appears at the very end of TriQuarterly‘s Issue 167 (Winter & Spring 2025), where the description notes that
Corson’s editing and soundtrack pulse with hypnotic urgency. Cutting between images of storm water drainage, advertisements, archival footage, and aerial footage of industrialized landscapes or phosphate extraction, Corson’s pace evokes a racing heartbeat as indictments against companies like Mosaic accrue. At times, Corson superimposes images over one another, as if they’re various layers of mining sediment sifting to the surface of the frame. Fervent in its pace and messaging, [water] acknowledgement is a transfixing cinematic clarion call for environmental concern.
The description also includes an announcement about changing editorship:
Issue #167 brings with it some exciting changes in the video essay and cinepoetry realm of TriQuarterly. As the year turns and the journal welcomes Jess Masi into the position of Managing Editor, Sarah Minor will step away from her role as video editor after six years of curating and writing about video works at the journal. Jon Bresland served as the inaugural editor of our now ten-year old video section, which boasts an archive of over a hundred carefully selected video works. Bresland was succeeded by Kristen Radtke, then Sarah Minor, and in 2025 writer and film critic Hannah Bonner will join the TQ team to take over curation of what is now the longest running video section at an American literary magazine. We look forward to seeing how Bonner shapes this section and invites readers and writers to the screen in years to come. In this issue we present works by Caitlin Lenz, Lee Hodge, and Josh Corson.
Read the rest, and then browse the rest of the issue. With poetry film forming a bit of a passing fad for some other major literatry magazines over the past 15 years, it’s great to see TriQuarterly maintaining its commitment to a video section, and publishing really important works like this one.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
