By Jessica Wind (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: September 26, 2012
It’s early on a Monday morning in September and just before your professor tells you to open to page 54 of Heart of Darkness, a group of students gathers at the front of your class. These are members of the editorial board for UFV’s literary and visual arts magazine.
Picture a book full of prose and poems, pictures and paintings, all conceived by members of the UFV family. Now working on its fifth annual publication, the Louden Singletree is accepting submissions from students, staff, faculty and alumni until December 17. But where did this magazine come from?
Andrea Macpherson, who has been with the magazine since its beginnings in 2008, said the magazine was always intended as an outlet for both students and faculty.
“Originally, John Carroll and I wanted to start a literary magazine, and envisioned it being run by the students,” Macpherson said. “It took a while. It has always been primarily concerned with showcasing our excellent student work and has grown to include faculty and staff and alumni. Even in the beginning, though, the appetite for the magazine has been clear, and each issue has grown, from size of the editorial board to the number and quality of submissions.”
First published in spring of 2009, the very first editorial board was comprised of a mere three members and a layout editor, all of them students. The first issue was 38 pages long, and was a brand new, unknown magazine on campus. Most contributors had two pieces published, and five faculty members had their words published to fill out the pages.
But as awareness of the publication grew on campus, faculty and staff have stepped aside and allowed the voice of UFV students to emerge.
By the second issue, the magazine grew to almost 75 pages, thanks in part to the addition of visual art. Including everything from sketches to photography, the September 2010 publication offered a much broader sense of the creativity coming out of UFV.
It wasn’t until the third issue hit the press in spring 2011 that the Louden Singletree emerged as we see it today.
Donning a new design layout for the cover, and returning to an editorial board of three students, the third issue saw more student involvement than ever before. 21 readers assisted in the selection of pieces by reading submissions and blindly voting on what should be included.
By the fourth issue, published in Spring 2012, students were no longer strangers to this creative showcase on campus. The 2011/2012 editorial board hosted the largest launch this magazine had seen at AfterMath this past April.
Eleah Turkstra, who was published in the first issue, reminisced about being selected. She described being chosen as “flattering” and the issue is something she’ll look back on if she ever gets a novel published.
The question that remains, however, is the origin of the curiously unique name. A simple Google search shows a louden singletree as an old farming tool meant for hoisting hay. So how did it end up representing UFV’s creative voice?
“I know that they named it the Louden Singletree not just because it was a farm tool but because they like how it sounded,” Turskstra said. “‘The Loud and Single Tree’: a lone, solitary figure, shouting out its truths of the cosmos.”
The latest editorial board is already knee-deep in preparations for the fifth issue, which will be out next spring. If you are interested in shouting some truths of the cosmos, or just getting involved with this unique and diverse project, make sure to follow the Louden on Twitter and Facebook for more information, and submit your creative works by December 17 to louden.singletree@ufv.ca.
