A Letter from the Editor

Welcome to The House of Pomegranates.

I first conceived of the publication in ideation almost two years ago. I had found myself overcome with a growing claustrophobia at the limitations of intrigue, expression and beauty, of words and their extensiveness, when the few stages for one’s thoughts and writings are either constricted by functionality - essays for school where one may only speak of what exam boards want to hear, the endlessness yet enveloping solitude of a journal, the pitfalls of conversation in the form of constriction on time and space in the face of more pressing matters, the patience and interest of one’s interlocutor, the very ephemeralness that the art form is predicated upon. I was spilling over with words, ideas, thoughts, interests, chronicles, stories, poems with no place to put them and trying to keep them all balanced on the tip of my tongue was proving quite the choking hazard. They needed a home of their own.

Where the quantity of the vagrant words finally grew too dire in their need for a bastion, for my own sanity more than anything, was in the uphill battle of coursework for GCSE Literature in school: I knew my work inside and out, I was boundless in my fervor and voracity for intrigue and deeper meaning but that was simply not what was wanted at that stage and the bitterness of that grew almost too much to bear. I wanted much more. So while I did have to learn, and am still learning, to put the self aside for the sake of getting the grades, I needed to find a sanctum of expression where I could. I needed to make my own.

Although I had tried to start The House of Pomegranates before in late 2023, it wasn’t yet its time. Through the fate of distraction it was put aside, at first for practicality, as we all had far too much going on to properly honour the task of it, but really, for something far more fated, which although delaying its ripening for more than a year, is now the very thing, in its decay, The House of Pomegranates if borne from. I do not believe that any love given is love wasted, as we are an amalgamation of all who have loved us and cannot exist as we are without that. Moreover, one’s love, in its more absolute, purest form, once set boundless cannot be taken back, belonging to the land of the path, now boarded up and no more than wistful memory, not taken and belonging to whom it was given (you who has an endless fountain of love in their heart cannot be selfish in giving to those who need its waters more). Love can only be melted down and reformed into something eventually unrecognisable, although somewhere in the ship of Theseus is a sailor who knew the first ship by touch, by smell alone, even as blind and ancient as he is now. And even he will die. He will be in ground or beneath the waves upon publication and there he shall remain but there will always be flowers where he lies, bright, full carnations. All that shall be left will be nothing more than the tender, quick-fading dream of a fitfully restful sleep to be remembered in bursts and vivid and fleeting as the flowers themselves, dying with the dawn.

Thus is the theme of our inaugural Issue, The Glukypikron. Greek for the Bittersweet, or rather, the Sweetbitter, as Anne Carson notes in Eros the Bittersweet, the work most greatly influencing this Issue. It is found, fittingly, in a fragment of Sappho

“ʹΕρος δηυτέ μʹ ὀ λυσιμέλης δόνει · γλυκύπικρον ἀμὰχανον ὂρπετονEros once again limb-loosener whirls me sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up”

— LP, fr.130/ A.Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

We’re all victims of the Bittersweet; in love, in loss, in hatred and in tenderness. But perhaps, it is for this that we love, a sort of self-mortification of the heart, bringing us closer to the idea of the beloved and the saint bringing themselves closer to the idea of Christ. Perhaps the sting, the pain inextricable from love is something we strive for just as much as the tenderness, the adoration, because it proves to us that we are, in fact, living, feeling creatures. Only few piteous creatures are exempt from love and it’s ache, so it is this Bittersweet that imbibes the ink of the poet or writer, the paint of the artist, the melodies of musician, which we endeavor to examine and embark on ourselves here.

But let us not forget the universality of the bittersweet, of love and of loss. To feel isn’t revered solely for those chosen by the muse to write, to paint, to compose, it is the marker of life. As much as tragedy and beauty and love is in the waiter, the cleaner as is in the greatest of the artists, only it lives and is confined within them. Perhaps then it is greater, not having the consolation of celebration, only that of vague recognition in the suffering and joy of others. I hope we can offer that consolation, that mirror or at least a place to wait out the storm. There will always be a light left on and a key under the mat for you in The House of Pomegranates.

There is naught to a house without its walls and foundations, so are we naught without our team and those who lent us the love to be here. I give my immeasurable and endless thanks to Ava, Malak and Jasmine for being my sturdy walls and pillars as it would all crumble to pieces without them and I doubt I would have enjoyed it half as much with anyone else.

Your Editor,

Sara Sheikh