From the Publishing-Editor of Hubris: Our May 2026 issue opens with the poetry of Laurence O’Dwyer (brought to our attention by Poetry Editor Claire Bateman). O’Dwyer, born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland, is a graduate of University College Cork who holds a PhD in paradigms of memory formation from Trinity College Dublin. Next,  Jenks Farmer remembers a beloved South Carolina mentor, Pearl Fryar, in an excerpt from his book, Garden Disruptors: The Rebel Misfits Who Turned Southern Horticulture on Its Head. The Reverend Robin White returns to us this Mother’s-Day-May with a sermon about Jesus the Mother Hen. Diana Farr Louis, from Athens, Greece then reprises a column from 2017, “Storytellers Who Changed My Life.” Don Schofield, based in Thesssaloniki and Athens, follows, with eight war poems written in two centuries. We then move from Greece to Italy, where David Havird takes us along on a pilgrimage to the Palazzo Strozzi, and “an exhibition of Annunciations” (while musing on Robert Browning). An amuse-bouche by Dr. William Ramp, of Alberta, comes next: Bill returns to us at long last with a brief meditation inspired, initially, by Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow. Kathryn E. Livingston recalls “Flower Power” in this cruelest of American springs. Dean Kalimniou, from Melbourne, writes this month of two sculptors with similarly hubristic goals, Gutzon Borglum and Dinocrates. And the issue closes with a little “Timecard Humor” from Editor Emeritus Tim Bayer.

About our May, June, and July Home Page Artist, Emma Kohlmann: Massachusetts-based artist Emma Kohlmann grew up in The Bronx and performed as a dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater prior to earning a BA from Hampshire College, where she studied philosophy and feminist theory. In a 2018 interview with Amadeus Magazine, Kohlmann discussed the very personal nature of her artwork, citing the liberal ideas and activism of Western Massachusetts as major influences. Her paintings embody a contemporary feminine mythology through the media of ink and watercolor, wherein elements from the natural world intersect with enigmatic faces and figures. Her “landscape” is a profoundly introspective one, marked by deeply saturated color and evoking dreamlike and surreal states of being. Kohlmann has participated in many solo and group shows, both in the US and internationally. In 2020, she illustrated six articles in succession for Vogue Magazine. Her book Emma Kohlmann: Watercolors, was issued by Anthology Books in 2024. Follow Kohlmann on her website and on Instagram; explore her picture book here and purchase Emma Kohlmann: Watercolors through Anthology Books; listen to an interview with the artist regarding her collaboration with Hay here; and buy her original works through V1 Gallery here and Artsy here.

 

Speculative Friction

“The Poetry of Laurence O’Dwyer,” By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2026—Laurence O’Dwyer has published four collections of poetry; Photosynthesis (Templar, 2025), Catalan Butterflies (Templar, 2022), The Lighthouse Journal (Templar, 2020), and Tractography (Templar, 2018). His awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Prize, the Yeovil Poetry Prize, the AUB International Poetry Prize, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Project Award and a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award. He has received a major bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland and fellowships from MacDowell, the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Trust, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He holds a doctorate in neuroscience (“in paradigms of memory formation”) from Trinity College Dublin. O’Dwyer writes: “Recently I’ve become fascinated by the way mathematicians talk about discovering new mathematical landscapes. They can often be quite bad at explaining their ideas which in itself can be endearing. (Read more . . .)

Plant People

“Learning to Love Pearl Fryar & His Plant Sculptures,” By Jenks Farmer

COLUMBIA South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2026—I was a freshly minted horticulture graduate in 1999, newly hired to build a major botanical garden at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. My colleague Porter and I had made it our mission to get to know every good gardener hidden in the small towns across South Carolina—to learn their plants and country ways, and to spread the word about what we were building. We drove backroads on Saturday mornings, itineraries mostly set up by Porter, looking for the real horticultural history of the state. Not the grand plantation gardens. The other kind. We were kind of lost, way out in the Pee Dee, so I turned the zebra van down the road Porter suggested. “I think that man named Pearl lives down there,” he said. Young, smug, refined-garden-loving me thought this was going to be a waste of time. The tar and gravel road came to what passed for a subdivision in the rural South—a single lane, dead-end road with about eight houses ending in a farm field. (Read more . . .)

Wing + Prayer

“Lola & Her Mother Hen: Luke 13: 31-35,” By The Rev. Robin White

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2026—Let me tell you a story about a mother hen. My beloved friend Chris lives in Ithaca, New York, where she has worked, for years, at the Farm Sanctuary in nearby Watkins Glen. One day, visiting a local feed and farm store during their “spring chick days,” she just had to have a look. Among the 13 little puffs of chick magic in a wire-bottomed cage, Chris was alarmed to see that one of the baker’s dozen was face down and very clearly not doing well. Chris asked to be given the fledgling so she could take him to the Cornell Vet school, but there even the amazing Dr. Ricardo de Matos wasn’t able to save the chick, and instead humanely euthanized the little being. Chris then went right back to the store to purchase the chicks that remained, just six. And so began her journey of raising bantam chickens . . . in her spare bedroom. (Read more . . .)

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

“Storytellers Who Changed My Life,” By Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS Greece—(Hubris)—May 2026—Storytellers have always won my admiration and awe. While I think the world can be divided between talkers and listeners, the men and women who can really hold our attention, spellbind us with their words and tales, are few in number. Naturally, there are plenty of people who fancy themselves as “the life of the party” and who drone on in extraordinary detail about their families, jobs, or opinions until our minds grow numb. But a real storyteller knows exactly how much information to give, how to pace it, how to keep you interested, and when to stop. One reason I admired them so much initially is that I was painfully shy as a child and later as an adolescent. I didn’t much like engaging with people and sought refuge in books. The printed word and world were so much safer. The first person who enchanted me with her well-spun stories was my stepmother, Betsy, who arrived in my life when I was eight, four years after my own mother had died. (Read more . . .)

Imagination’s Favors

“War, Huh, Yeah, What Is It Good For?” By Don Schofield

THESSALONIKI & ATHENS Greece—(Hubris)—May 2025—A few facts, historical and personal: I came to political awareness in the 1970s, in my university years, at the height of the Vietnam War. That’s also when I turned to writing poetry. Iran makes the 29th country the US has either bombed or invaded since 1949, the year I was born. Some, like Iran, more than once. According to Bunk History, “From 1965 to 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, making it the largest aerial bombardment in history.” I didn’t go to Vietnam. At 17 (1967), because I got caught stealing a pick-up truck, the court ordered me to enlist in the Army. I would’ve arrived in Vietnam just in time for the Tet offensive (January 30-31, 1968). But, because of my poor eyesight (20/400), I failed my physical and was classified 4F. Since 1980, the year I moved to Greece, there has been no single year in which the US and/or Israel has not been involved in Middle East military conflicts—bloodshed that frequently impacted friends, colleagues, and students of mine, many of whom are (were) from the countries involved. (Read more . . .)

Close Encounters

“Brother Angelico’s the Man,” By David Havird

SHREVEPORT Louisiana—(Hubris)—May 2026—There was at the far end of the gallery in the Palazzo Strozzi a vibrant, monumental altarpiece depicting Christ’s descent from the cross, but it had already drawn a crowd—it was Saturday, January 17; everyone there had a timed ticket for 10:00—and so my eyes, if not also my wife’s, turned to a smaller but no less vivid painting on the left-hand wall, an altarpiece depicting The Annunciation. Fewer than four months earlier we had given Florence, my wife and I, one and a half days at either end of ten days in Italy (a week of which we spent in the Tuscan countryside). Banners featuring a blond, rose-cheeked Madonna with a placid expression, clad in a blue and gold hooded mantle and reddish shift, her right hand gesturing deferentially toward her similarly blond, curly-haired child-man (a detail, as it turned out, of the Franciscan Triptych, an altarpiece by Fra Angelico)—these hung, without our paying much attention to them, from a massive structure of brownish rusticated stone, the Strozzi palace, a few minutes’ walk from the Duomo. (Read more . . .)

The Hubris Review

“Human Sintering & The Theory of Water,” By Dr. William Ramp

LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—May 2026—The text that follows here was sent to me by my editor, Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, in the spring of 2018, eerily coincident with a time in which I fell from a giddy height into deep self-recrimination in the space of a mere three weeks. It’s an excerpt from Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow, which Boleman-Herring had admonished all of us here at Hubris to read back then. In a single paragraph, Berry distills two key texts. One, is Dante’s “Inferno,” central to the Roman Catholic tradition, though not in the canon of the Doctores ecclesiae. Its narrative guide is Virgil; for American settlers, long the first among classical writers. The other is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, second only to the Bible, and perhaps the Westminster Catechism or the Psalms and Paraphrases, on the spartan bookshelves of those who armed themselves to settle and make manifest a Protestant fortress in North America. Berry returns to these texts to have a word with the interior drama of the American collective psyche, formed in equal parts of righteousness and fortitude, sin and punishment, and now also disappointment, rage and contempt. (Read more . . .)

Words & Wonder

“Flower Power,” By Kathryn E. Livingston

BOGOTA New Jersey—(Hubris)—May 2026—Every year I eagerly await the appearance of flowers in my backyard. A cluster of brilliant blue Siberian squill is always the first, in late March—I didn’t plant it, and it was years before I figured out what it is—followed by purple and white crocuses and a few jonquils, daffodils, and hyacinths. A little later, in April, the tulips, lilacs, and pear trees blossom. One can’t rush them; they come at their own pace. But it was harder this year to patiently tap my foot in anticipation of these colorful saviors because—despite the welcome light of Spring—the world feels so dark.  Speaking of flowers, when I drive by (or join) the protestors these days I’m reminded of the “flower power” years of my youth. In the 60s when it began all we claimed to want was love and peace. (Indeed, with nary a thought as to how we would survive financially, I married a man who played his clarinet on Manhattan street corners.) (Read more . . .)

Diatribe/North

“Dinocrates & Mount Rushmore,” By Dean Kalimniou

MELBOURNE Australia—(Hubris)—May 2026—“Somewhere in America  . . . backbone of the continent, removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilisations and out of the path of greed, an acre or two of stone should bear witness, carrying likeness, a few precious words pressed together, an appraisal of our civilisation, telling of the things we tried to do, cut so high, near the stars, it wouldn’t pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.” Thus mused Gutzon Borglum, the American sculptor who went on to deface the sacred Lakota Sioux site of Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, or “The Six Grandfathers,” with the iconic likenesses of four American presidents. For him, the gargantuan profiles represented the quintessence of American civilization. Etched indelibly upon the lofty heights, far removed from the corruptive and corrosive influences of daily life, they were to remain, for evermore, an imperative, set in stone, for subsequent Americans to follow. (Read more . . .)

Won Over by Reality

“Timecard Humor,” By Tim Bayer, Emeritus Editor

FAIRPORT New York—(Hubris)—May 2026—At my place of work, a “timecard reminder” lands in all our inboxes at the end of each week. Rather than send out the same, flat, “please submit your timecard,” prompt, our administrator includes images to liven up the message—such as the Ron Burgundy reminder, or images submitted by employees. I’ve contribute a few of my own pictures which reflect my idiosyncratic take on timecard-appropriate inspirational messages.  Here’s the first picture to which I added text and sent on to the timecard administrator. This picture above was taken when Emily and I were hiking the Skyline Trail at Mt. Rainier. The Skyline Trial has many beautiful spots where hikers stop to take a break. The chipmunks have learned that hikers carry nuts, granola bars, trail mix and other snacks—and that dropped food morsels may be found near the humans. Over time, the chipmunks have become used to people and have gotten more bold. (Read more . . .)

Our March/April 2026 Issue

Words & Wonder

“Upside Down,” By Kathryn E. Livingston

BOGOTA New Jersey—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—The other evening, which now seems like 20 years ago, I was listening to the news when I heard a commentator say that we are in “the upside-down times.” Those words resonated with me for the rest of the week because it seems as though that’s exactly where we are (notwithstanding the term’s connection to Stranger Things, which I’ve never watched). Right is wrong, wrong is right, up is down, down is up, innocent is guilty, guilty is innocent, and if the sky looks blue you will surely be informed that it is orange and you’d better believe it—or else. It’s clear that to some this unhinged reality feels right side up; they celebrate as cruelty replaces compassion, inequality reigns over equality, exclusion axes belonging. (Read more . . .)

Waking Point

“Stilling a Beating Mind,” By Helen Noakes

SAN FRANCISCO California—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—In times of crisis or anxiety, I find myself turning to books, immersing myself in words and ideas to crowd out my own dark thoughts and fears. It’s not by chance that, once again, I’ve reread Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, to remind myself of what America once was and could be, to wonder at de Tocqueville’s accurate assessment of the mindset of so many in this nation at this time: “There is not, I think, a single country in the civilized world where less attention is paid to philosophy than in the United States.” Americans, de Tocqueville points out, “are universally preoccupied with meeting the body’s every need and attending to life’s little comforts.” I pick up a book of poems by Seamus Heaney, whose work I’ve only recently discovered, and find cold truth in these lines from “The Mud Vision.” (Read more . . .)

Diatribe/North

“MAGA Downunder: Immigration Insecurity & The Perpetual Foreigner,” By Dean Kalimniou

MELBOURNE Australia—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—The recent anti-immigration protests held in Australian cities serve as a troubling reflection of a society grappling with profound insecurity. A confident Australia that once prided itself on dynamism and outward vision appears increasingly to be turning inward, losing its sense of momentum, retreating behind walls of suspicion and recrimination. The disquiet they reveal is neither incidental, nor ephemeral. It speaks to a deeper malaise, a sense that the nation, rather than confronting the complexities of the present with courage and imagination, prefers to seek refuge in exclusionary certainties. Historical precedent is clear. (Read more . . .)

Hapax Legomenon

“Poet Dimitris Tsaloumas’s Unhoped-for Summer,” By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, Publishing-Editor

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—Even the most vivid events in my past are becoming pixelated, further evidence that some of us sip from the Lethe long before (well, it is to be hoped long before) we press our coins into Charon’s welcoming hand. Preparing to send off to poet Alicia Stallings some slim (usually slim, aren’t they?) volumes of poetry from my dwindling Greek library—which I am doing my level best to bequeath, as I live and breathe, to much younger and able readers—I came upon five books by Greek-Australian poet Dimitris Tsaloumas. The still familiar covers caught me up short and sent my fingers scurrying to Wikipedia: was Tsaloumas still among the living? He was not, alas. I had not thought of him in years, but the painting on the cover of The Observatory took me right back to the Dodecanese, without benefit of analog transport. (Read more . . .)

Singing & Drowning

“The Fortunate Deception,” By Janet Kenny

POINT VERNON Australia—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—I have a song to sing-oh. Boy, do I have a song! I was a young, inadequately prepared singer, fresh from New Zealand and it was the general opinion that I had a rather good voice, which enabled me to hold my own against competition in a foreign climate. I had achieved some small successes and become acquainted with some interesting musicians. The death in 2016 of the great conductor Sir Neville Marriner has caused me to remember my encounter with him. It is at once a sad story and a very funny story. I have preserved my account of events. The experiences surrounding this encounter led to my sad decision to abandon my career as a professional singer. (Read more . . .)

Speculative Friction

“The Poetry of Kendra Hamilton,” By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—Over the course of her multifaceted life as a journalist, poet, essayist, and scholar, Dr. Kendra Y. Hamilton has produced, among many other publications, an essential work of Gullah Geechee scholarship, Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess (University of Georgia Press, 2024) as well as a rollicking journey through a blues landscape, The Goddess of Gumbo: Poems (WordTech Publications LLC, 2006). Hamilton is an interdisciplinary artist who has co-created conceptual art projects for the Spoleto Festival USA; and she is also a Cave Canem Foundation fellow, whose poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, The Southern Review, Obsidian, and anthologies including Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, and Shaping Memories: Reflections of 25 African American Women Writers. (Read more . . .)

Close Encounters

“The Freedom to Strike without Warning,” By David Havird

SHREVEPORT Louisiana—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—“Japan invades,” the poem begins. The line continues with a new sentence, which itself begins, “Far Eastern vines,” thereby sandwiching “Japan invades” between the poem’s title, “Kudzu,” and a phrase that not only defines the proper noun but also clarifies the nature of the invasion. But given that the poet, James Dickey, saw action in the Pacific during World War Two, your first thought, which a close reading will mostly verify, is likely to be that here’s a poem from the perspective, maybe, of a young GI (in Dickey’s 1964 collection Helmets—a suggestive title, that) about the war against Japan—that the provocative, two-word declarative sentence at the very beginning isn’t merely a figurative way of describing the proliferation in the poet’s native Georgia, indeed throughout the rural South, of a vine that is native to Japan and boasts a “tremendously fecundating root system.” (Read more . . .)

Planetary Hospice

“Peak Oil: The Numbers Don’t Lie,” By Dr. Guy McPherson

BELLOWS FALLS Vermont—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—If you have followed my website, Nature Bats Last: Our Days Are Numbered/Passionately Pursue a Life of Excellence, for long, you will know that I have tracked “peak oil”—the point when global petroleum production reaches its maximum rate, after which it will begin to decline irreversibly—for a very long time. There are some 200 posts on my site dedicated to the subject, and the concept remains important. According to a report published by the International Energy Agency, global peak oil still matters. In a report published 16 September 2025, the IEA is still ringing the alarm about peak oil. The report is titled Declines in output from existing oil and gas fields have gathered speed, with implications for markets and energy security. (Read more . . .)

While I Draw Breath

“Hanging Out with Wild Things,” By Dr. Kevin Van Tighem

HIGH RIVER, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—March/April 2026―I stopped at Castle Junction one day to break up a long drive, ate my lunch sandwich, and went for a short walk into the woods. The pine trees stood still; there was no wind. Patches of old snow caked the mosses and grasses beneath the trees. I could hear the busy hum of the Trans-Canada Highway across the river, but all was still in the forest. I assumed I was alone. Something flickered between two trees. I stopped to watch. A sharp little face, and then a marten came bounding out into the open. It stared at me, then resumed its random hops, hunting for voles amid the downed logs and frozen vegetation. Its hunt took it in a half-circle around me, barely a couple of paces away, before it veered off into the woods. (Read more . . .)

Signal & Memory

“Stewarding the Future Our Alphabets Outgrow & Outlive,” By Daniel J. Dodson

AUSTIN Texas—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—We are surrounded by ghosts we no longer notice. They live in the walls, the wires, the notations, the interfaces we tap into without thinking. Fire disciplined into furnaces. Wheels made obedient. Agriculture coaxed from wild grass. Sanitation quietly preventing catastrophes no one remembers surviving. The printing press. Electricity. Engines and computers alike—machines that learned to carry intention forward. These achievements are easy to list, easy to celebrate. But they are not the whole story. Because beneath nearly every loud leap lies a quieter one: an architecture of symbols that made the leap possible in the first place. A scaffolding for thought. A way to compress experience, preserve intention, and pass it forward intact enough to be useful. (Read more . . .)

Skip the B.S.

“Crash Course in Third-World Reality,” By Dr. Skip Eisiminger, aka The Wordspinner

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—After arriving early for Wednesday’s “Conversation Partners,” I took a seat and waited for Laura to unlock the door to the library classroom. I’m often early, but why the librarians lock that door is still a mystery—there’s nothing in there but a dusty computer, tables, and chairs. If someone did steal something, he’d have to haul it up four flights of stairs and past a security guard. After my latest conversation, however, I realized that the librarians are quietly “guarding” the stories told in their “parlor”—the place Clemson University’s international students come to practice their English and talk of home. It wasn’t long before Laura showed up with the key and a young man I’d never seen before. From his dress, proud bearing, and skin color, I guessed he was African. (Read more . . .)

Plant People

“Jenks vs Blinkie,” By Jenks Farmer

COLUMBIA South Carolina—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—If Daddy were still around, I wouldn’t even have this thing. But his death led to the utter absurdity of AI attempting “to interpret” the doings at this old farm. There is a definite pattern to technology upgrades around here: In 1750, the house was built; in 1850, a hydraulic ram pump was added to provide running water to the kitchen (Rams are ancient technology, but they weren’t common in America, so whoever came up with this was a visionary.); in 1900, the kitchen was moved indoors and an indoor bathroom was added; in 1940, one electrical outlet and one light bulb were added in most rooms; in 1974, Daddy got a TV and a stereo (but only John Phillips Sousa was allowed); and, in 1976, we got a microwave (Obviously, the pattern accelerated in the 1970s: we were early adopters). (Read more . . .)

Nothing At All to Write Home About

“The Best Summer of My Life,” By Matt Barrett

CARRBORO North Carolina & KEA Greece—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—In February of 1973, my father took our family to the United States embassy in Athens to have our passports renewed. The Greek secretary who processed our forms refused to renew my citizenship. “Your son is no longer an American citizen,” she informed my father. My father raised hell. I was eager to go out to a baseball diamond and prove myself worthy of my American passport, but my father’s towering frame intimidated the secretaries and bureaucrats to the point where they were eager to give me my citizenship back, if only to get rid of us. I proudly accepted my new passport and thought little of the incident. Six months later, I received my induction notice for the Greek Armed Forces. (Read more . . .)

Seaside Scribbles

“No Resting in Peace: Death in Greece,” By Stacey Harris-Papaioannou

MYKONOS Greece—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—Death is tough. In Greece, death has all the intricacies of theatrical tragedy with its rites and rituals, superstitions and dogma, religious doctrine, symbolism and pageantry. Nothing is simple. Nothing is streamlined. Nothing is straightforward. And there is definitely no “resting in peace.” Even the accepted Greek expression offered in bereavement sounds coldly rote—“Eternal be thy memory /Eonia ee mnymi/Αιώνια η μνήμη”—as opposed to the personalized expressions of condolence in Western culture such as, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” “My deepest condolences,” “You have my sincere sympathy,” “Thinking of you during this difficult time,” or “My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.” (Read more . . .)

Hapax Legomenon at Large

“Our Autumn on Cycladic Sifnos,” By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, Publishing-Editor

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—March/April 2026—Every autumn, given adequate funds and the probability of returning home, in late October, without incident—something very much not in the cards this year, given my birth country’s rapid descent into fascism—our family departs for a month and a half on an island in the Cyclades—every year, a new island, and always one I have not thoroughly explored; an island haunted by none of my personal Lares and Penates. And though, when I recite the names of the larger Cycladic islands, I always “hear” that section (the “Gloria”) from Odysseas Elytis’s great poem, To Axion Esti—specifically as put to music by Mikis Theodorakis, more prosaic is the catalogue as parsed by Wikipedia. (Read more . . .)