Crania began life in 1996 as an online magazine featuring poetry, fiction, and artworks. I was publisher, fiction editor, webmaster, writer of short reviews and critical essays, and solicitor of artworks that lent themselves to an online medium. The poetry editor was Janet Holmes, who had won awards for her critically-acclaimed collections of poetry, and her fine poetic ear meant that the magazine’s poetry was of consistently high quality. Approaching that standard with fiction and other features was a struggle, but in the end I believe Crania had a part in enhancing the then-nascent online literary culture.
Alas, matters of life intruded into the considerable time needed to get each issue online, and after an even dozen issues the magazine was laid to rest. I’d like to say that the premature death was accompanied by some ceremony, but the final issue just lingered there for awhile until the web hosting contract ran out. RIP.
I did, however, keep renewing the domain name registration. There were even a couple of offers to buy it, but they weren’t enough to be really tempting and somewhere in a dusty nook of my mind the idea of resurrection lurked. I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that it has now emerged from the ashes, because the content is from the sometimes inexplicable depths of my own mind, not from other poets and fiction writers and artists. But I like to think it has a similarity in spirit, which is born from the idea that words and sentences matter. That the mind’s strange ability to create living, breathing art from those inanimate things is worth celebrating, and trying to keep alive.
Dennis Hathaway
