Nine Cloud Journal is an independent literary journal founded by Vijay R. Nathan, featuring poetry, essays, and artwork from a wide range of contemporary writers and artists. Through its print editions and interviews, the journal creates a space for literary dialogue, cultural reflection, and emerging creative voices.

Nine Cloud Journal: December 2022

This issue of Nine Cloud Journal was inspired by the prompt “Releasing the Mandala.” The term “mandala” has entered the Western consciousness from the traditions of Sanātana Dharma, otherwise known as Hinduism, and the Buddha Dharma, otherwise known as the vast array of traditions springing from the historical Buddha’s teachings. A mandala functions as a focal point for meditation. It appears as a geometric design that creates a sacred space for contemplation. I’ve also been taught that a mandala is a two dimensional representation of a universe of pure consciousness. From the mental wellness perspective, when we “release the mandala” we let go of our patterns of mental formations and enter a sacred space that is not determined by our known mental grooves.

It takes a courageous leap to begin our journey to escape the established patterns so that they will be cleansed to rejuvenate us into reclaiming our future in a very present centered way. Only through raising our awareness of these phenomena in the light of these paradigms can we begin to acknowledge what it is we’re seeing in its proper context. Only a maze that has an exit point can be escaped. Those that can not envision even that much as a possibility cannot allow for room for transcendence. Everything begins in the imagination and to access a point in the future we must know that it is possible now in our imagination. Each step along the way is an affirmation of what we can conceive in our minds that we are committed to birthing in our future, however laborious. Although journeys do not always require neat endings that tie everything together with a bow, we seek to find greater vision for the present each today so that we may bring about a brighter tomorrow.

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Nine Cloud Journal: December 2021

In this issue, number 3 in the Nine Cloud Journal series, we were seeking essays, poems, and visual art on the topic of wisdom embodiment. In what way have you self actualized? In what way have you taken a piece of knowledge and acted mindfully on it to empower yourself or others? We were especially interested in exploring how you "suit the action to the word, the word to the action" to quote Hamlet's advice to the players. In other words, what have you read or heard that has led you to take direct action in life? My high school drama teacher assigned me that speech during my senior year. I delivered it most bombastically as a warning to the listeners to avoid performing in the fashion I was performing.

It took me a while to integrate this lesson into my own acting- at first going for big broad laughs with a tendency to over gesture, presenting an exaggeration of myself on stage. As I grew more comfortable with the person I was off the stage, I was able to become more comfortable bringing that person on the stage, sharing personal details about my life and family, able to be emotionally present and truthful. The stories in this edition are present, truthful and gripping, proffering an assortment of quotes to live by, to live with - to live inside, wondering whether wisdom is best embodied in your brain, your heart or in your teeth?

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Nine Cloud Journal: May 2021

When we reveal our experiences in their bare unapologetic essence we open up the space for honest and true communion with reality. We can choose to perpetuate nonsense and violence and suffer as a result or we can choose to embrace reality and grow as a society and individuals. We are at the threshold, waiting. We explore here the truth in the adage that vulnerability is power. We see in several pieces the raw vulnerability of the speaker and the truth they uncover when they expose their perceived weaknesses and struggles. The thematic prompt for this issue was a call for radical acts of healing and self care.

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Nine Cloud Journal: August 2020

Ah, poetry, that beautiful, so called “non-essential,” art form that welcomes its reader to interpret not just the words on the page but the spaces between the words. The idea of “negative capability” that John Keats wrote on is the idea that the poet disappears into their work to transform their views into that of the poem’s subject. In these featured poems, we, as the readers, see themes emerge that go well beyond the personal narrative of each individual poet; this is especially true because there are recurring themes in the collection as a whole. I curated this collection around the idea, prompting the submitters to consider a single central thesis, that “The Personal is Political.”

We see many of the poets in this collection in dialogue with identity politics, solitude and silence, senseless violence and trauma, systemic racism, and barriers in interpersonal communication. The poems in this collection welcome us without pretense or cryptic language barriers that many poets employ thus locking their readers from inhabiting the spaces the poem inhabits. Instead, these poems stand together to testify to the collective human experience at the midpoint of 2020, the year that is emerging easily to be the most challenging of our lifetimes.

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