By Cassandra Taylor, Publications Assistant
Several Thomas More College staff, faculty, and alumni have joined with other friends of the College to launch The Colosseum: A New Journal of Arts and Letters.
The journal released its first issue over the winter. According to The Colosseum’s website, it “will publish new poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews in hopes of enlivening contemporary literature, renewing our culture, and supporting the return to literary craft and intellectual and spiritual depth in the arts.”
Admissions Director Michael Yost ’18 is the Managing Editor alongside the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, poet James Matthew Wilson. Dominic Cassella ’18, Teaching Fellow Amy Fahey, and two of the College’s emeritus Visiting Chairs, Robert Royal and Joseph Pearce, serve on the Advisory Board. Additionally, Fellow and President William Fahey and Fellow Fred Fraser each contributed pieces to the inaugural issue.
“I will always remember the day when James and I founded the magazine together,” Mr. Yost commented. “I had already messaged James, saying that I wanted to found a magazine, and asking for his advice. It was an act of desperation. I was disheartened by the paucity of serious magazines that simultaneously devoted significant space to the literary arts, were tastefully done, and published the writers (and especially the poets) that I wanted to read.”
Mr. Yost and Dr. Wilson launched The Colosseum in response to a need they discerned in the literary market. “Sadly, most heritage literary publications are disinterested in the real revival of verse,” Mr. Yost explained. “If they did publish verse, it was verse that shied away from the formal elements that all the great poems of our tradition share in, or it was simply free verse. Most conservative magazines focus exclusively on politics and have scant space for the culture they say they wish to preserve. I wanted a magazine that published serious verse, serious criticism, and serious fiction, but that also featured essays on cultural and literary topics of interest. Something needed to be done.”
In his introduction to the journal, Dr. Wilson reflected on The Colosseum’s origin and purpose. “In our semi-annual issues, we will offer a selection of new poetry and fiction that we hope will prove of lasting worth alongside essays, articles, and reviews attentive to the ever-changing features of contemporary culture,” Dr. Wilson wrote. “The horizon of that culture seems, at the moment, to be expanding in sometimes interesting, sometimes troubling ways, but The Colosseum will stand consistently for comprehensiveness and capaciousness, for depth and height of vision, especially when current opinion seems intellectually shriveled and teleologically truncated. It will publish works that we hope will renew the age but also, in hope, survive it.”
“The launch of The Colosseum is a hopeful sign of the renewal of Catholic arts and letters in America today,” remarked Dr. Amy Fahey. “The Colosseum arrives on the scene at a time when the once-glorious edifices of literary journals have largely crumbled into dust. The journal is named for an illustrious precursor edited by Catholic historian Christopher Dawson and once graced by such Catholic luminaries of his age as T. S. Eliot, Sigrid Undset, and Jacques Maritain. Like the travertine limestone of the Roman monument, this new iteration of The Colosseum communicates both the resilience and beauty of human achievement, which cannot flourish and come to fruition without the saving transformation of Christ.”
Mr. Yost is looking forward to The Colosseum’s future. “We are now working toward the publication of our second issue,” he said. “We have a wonderful Editorial Board, and a vast array of talented writers who have trusted us with their material.”
Learn more about The Colosseum, submit pieces for consideration, and subscribe here.
Watch a poetry reading with James Matthew Wilson and Michael Yost held at the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture:
For further reading:
TMC Is the New Publisher of Joseph Pearce’s St. Austin Review
