Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry
Call for submissions: Volume 9, Number 1 (May 2026)
Theme: Folklore
There is a common tendency to view folklore as something belonging to
the past, or to a timeless realm. Misunderstood as inherited rather than lived,
too often, emphasis is placed on its endurance
through ‘preserv’ation, like pickles. By extension, communities that foreground
folklore in their creative production are sometimes perceived as existing
within a mythic or ‘magic realist’ imaginary. This issue seeks to reconsider
such assumptions by endorsing folklore as a continuing engagement in cultural
production. One emerging through collective and communal interactions in the
present, even as it draws from the past and feeds future generations.
Northeast India is home to both long-standing written traditions,
particularly in Assam and Manipur, and rich oral cultures across its many
indigenous communities. Folklore moves across these oral and written
traditions, and across its narrative, verbal, material, and customary forms. Making
from the material of memory even as we add to our storehouse of stuff and
stories in circulation.
This issue makes space for engagements with forms of folklore, as well as in
relation to memory, land and ecology, gender, everyday life, translation, and
contemporary cultural production.
Submissions are invited from writers from Northeast India, including those who have lived in or are currently based in the region,
Themes
Submissions may engage with
one or more of the following:
- Narrative traditions
(myths, legends, folktales, fables)
- Verbal forms (proverbs,
riddles, jokes, everyday speech)
- Material cultures
(handicrafts, tools, traditional clothing, motifs)
- Customary practices
(rituals, dances, festivals, seasonal practices)
- Folklore and memory
- Folklore and land / ecology
- Folklore and gender
- Folklore and everyday life
- Folklore and translation
(oral to written, and across languages)
- Folklore and contemporary cultural production
Call for Submission
Teesta Review invites submission of poems, essays, translations,
interviews, book reviews, art and photo essays. The pieces are expected to
connect with the given themes.
Send your submissions to email id: tkeditsupoet@gmail.com and to teestajournal@gmail.com
Last Date of
Submission
5th of May, 2026 (05.05.2026)
Guest Editor
- TEESTA REVIEW
An International Journal of Poetry
(online)