Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s SPACE issue. From the very small to the enormity of our imaginations, essays grow from the furtive earth-bed of mushroom forests to the stars. Granville Carroll’s afro-futuristic cover artwork “Becoming” places us in space. John Angerson provides the obligatory rocket-propelled photos. Matilde Gattoni reminds us that one’s freedom to explore space can suddenly be taken away. The connection with space doesn’t stop there. Melissa Tuckman’s aptly titled poem “Space Junk” connects space debris to modern living. A new section on New Nature Writing probes the world beyond our urban confines. In the second outing for Decolonising Travel, there are excruciating, painful stories, sexual imaginings in the steam room, and personal reflections on historical ties to oppression; all whilst giving writers who have come through VONA/Faith Adiele’s writing programme space to share their work. We finish the issue with a stroll through London — the most ethnically diverse world capital — through the lens of Books Editor Nicolas D. Sampson.
...I have never met you. How could I have? You died twenty-seven years before I was born. That is why I am at Duino Castle in northeast Italy on the border with Slovenia, hoping to sense your presence when you were a guest of Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis between October 1911 and May 1912, when you began composing your magnificent Duino Elegies. Early this morning I got into my car at my apartment in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, and drove seven and a half hours east then southeast through Austria and followed the SS14 until I spied the castle, perched high on a cliff overlooking the Adriatic Sea. You, however, arrived by a chauffeured car arranged by the Princess and were greeted by the same view. Much more romantic an arrival than mine in my Skoda.
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