S/WORD Current Issue Submit Archive


Edited by spouses Seth and Chelsea McKelvey, S/WORD (variably pronounced “sword,” “s word,” “sslashword,” etc.) arises from the belief of a singular truth in Word: that it is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit.

Crossing out (or, more accurately, crossing over) is not an erasure or elimination; it does not render the word illegible. Rather, it invites you to read, and subsequently asks you to consider what you have read as flawed. It indicates a change in one’s mind, showing not just the before and after, but the change itself, the space in between. It shows process and progress, insofar as regress is necessary to progress.  

S/WORD seeks impossible expressions of beauty and power in language. Only in light of such failed attempts is it a worthwhile endeavour to cut and pierce, to show the malleable frailty of words. It is the firm belief in seeing the unseen, the contradictory capabilities and limitations of language.

S/WORD is concerned with the dissolution of language, its breaking point, so that we may know the Word through apophasis.

S/WORD exists as a record of these fragments, these shards, these partial reflections. It is a work in progress, a training ground for a community of artists.