I have come to believe that Sundays are best spent with wine and wonderful words. With this in mind, I decided to spend my Sunday with a glass of Merlot and Issue 28 of Dream Catcher Magazine. Although I had read it before, many times, it was no less engaging today.

Early last year, I was lucky enough to be selected as a guest editor for the magazine’s first female-focused issue. With two other women, I read poems linked to feminism and family as well as small moments, like a song sung before a funeral. It was amazing to read so much thoughtful and well-crafted work over the space of a few months – something that made our job as editors all the more difficult!

Even though I had read the work before the PDFs did not do it justice. Today, as I leafed through the pages of the published issue, I enjoyed the pieces in a new way. They seemed sleeker, bolder, more alive. I remembered the launch at According to McGee and the difference I felt hearing the words read out by their authors. I re-watched the video of that January day and heard snippets of the readings again. I love that, even after it is written, poetry can continue to transform.

I considered too the art exhibition that complimented the work in Dream Catcher. Between the female-focused pieces in the magazine and the womanly paintings hanging in the gallery, Director Ails McGee captured the heart of this collaboration beautifully: “The works have an instinctive love of colour, light and space. All very feminine, but not, I hope, in a traditional or reductive way, more as an acknowledgement that women can bring a different type of energy to creative thinking, and making a visual statement. There’s just as much shadow as there is sunlight.”

It has been an excellent Sunday indeed. Never underestimate the power of good wine, great words, and joyful memories.