Harbinger Asylum: Winter 2018

by Z.M. Wise, R.W. Haynes, Mary Shanley

Houston, Texas is home to one of the oldest creative writing departments in the country. Harbinger Asylum is a Houston based poetry and arts journal existing on the outskirts of the academic sphere where artists are in control of the endgame, not professors. Yet we are not beat either, exactly. We pride ourselves on representing a broad range of ideas, of encouraging intellectual adventure and honesty as well as poetic experiment. We enjoy poetry that blends mysticism with social revolution, edge with tradition, thought with emotion. We do not shy from uncomfortable truths ad we do not pander to ideological politics. Our immediate aim is to portray humanity in its yearnings, genius, and fire as well as its failings and compromises. We want to be the historians and prophets, the signposts and signals, of the age we live in. Freedom of thought is a sacred art. Harbinger Asylum will tear at the forces that seek to bottle and box the human imagination into simple prescriptions. The world wants to put the human mind in a box, but let's save the confinement until we die. Poetry lives!

66 pages, Paperback

Published December 17, 2018

About the author

Z.M. Wise is a proud Illinois native from Chicago, poet, essayist, occasional playwright, seldom screenwriter, co-editor and arts activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He has published five books of poetry, including: Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock! (MavLit Press, 2013), The Wandering Poet (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014), Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems (Weasel Press, 2015), Cuentos de Amor (Red Ferret Press, 2015), and Kosmish and the Horned Ones (Weasel Press, 2018). Other than these five books, his poems, essays, and book reviews have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES! Mr. Wise will make sure to spread that message and the love of poetry, making sure it remains vibrant for the rest of his days and beyond. Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading.