‘My Name Is Legion, For We Are Many’ (Mark 5:1–5:13)

So spoke the many evils in the body of one person. (And so might speak the many people within the body of one evil?) Legion, a unit of thousands within an army as it moves against another. Legion, the host, the multitude, the great in number, the too many to single out. The questions raised by Legion are the questions of collectivity, individuality, power, possession, control, responsibility, ethics and voice. Legion reminds us that we’d like to isolate the bad into something singular and extractable, that we’d like to see in black and white, that we’d like purification of certainty. And Legion questions whether any of these are possible.

‘Common sense’ assumes we start from a shared position, and that that position is neutral. As an idea it’s shed a lot of light, but also cast a lot of shadows. How many versions of ‘common sense’ might there be? If we stay inside our comfort zone, our own bubble of assurance, might we ever notice there’s more than one? How easy is it to forget that most knowledge is sustained by convention, that our foundations for knowing (such as language) are not solid and singular but fractured, partial and entangled more than we could imagine? How easy is it to forget that our voice is almost never our own?

What’s dissolved in the cry of the many? What’s the logic of a swarm? What do the masses blur? What does the group protect? Where is your voice inside the crowd? Where is the decision amongst the multitudes? Where do we draw the lines? How dangerous or powerful is the unnamed, and how dangerous or powerful the act of naming? What kind of solution is Legion?

Abridged is looking for poetry and art that explores the fear of difference, the tyranny of common sense and the voice of the crowd. You may submit up to three poems to abridged@ymail.com which must be in a Word or PDF format. Unusually formatted poems we prefer in an PDF format, material that is more straightforward in Word. Art should be 300dpi or above and in jpeg or similar format. Please note this issue will be A5 portrait-sized/shaped. Please also send a short bio and put your name and address on the email or it might get lost in the Spam folder. We can’t send proofs so please send the final version of your poem. The deadline for submissions is the 21st December 2024.

This issue is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Abridged is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and The Arts Council of Ireland.