Editor’s Preface — The Tiger Moth Review

*Mae Boun Nam* © Ethan Leong (Singapore)

Remember this girl from the Elephant Conservation Centre (ECC) in Xayaboury, Laos? Last issue, I was sharing about the urgency of raising funds to buy Mae Boua Ngeun from her mahout so that she could spend the rest of her life growing up like a wild elephant under the care and protection of the ECC. Well, we did it! I am so happy to share that through individual and collective efforts, the fundraiser by Patrick Rouxel managed to raise 84, 800 euros, and Mae Boua Ngeun is now officially under the ECC’s care since 8 May 2024. When I heard the news, my heart was full of joy and relief. A beautiful girl would get the chance to grow up in the wild and contribute towards the conservation of the Asian Elephant. To everyone who has donated and/or helped to publicise this cause, thank you!

The cover image of this issue by Ethan Leong pays homage to interspecies kinships and relational ways of being on earth, themes that we continue to discover and explore in Issue 12. Whether it is “bury[ing] [our] warm mud/ until there is dirt everywhere” as in Ilika Motani’s opening poem, living alongside nocturnal nature in an urban city in The Urban Common Palm Civets of Singapore by Tan Yong Lin, imagining a woman slowly transforming into whale form in Elizabeth Hansen’s Sea Life, negotiating our relationship with the wilderness and the domestic in the works of Adam Anders, Alka Balain and Johnny Kovatch, or staying with the more alchemical processes of life, death and the afterlife in the poetry and prose of Meenakshi Palaniappan, Pauline P Lee and Lea Camille Smith, the creative works in Issue 12 remind us of what it means to live on earth in right relationship with others.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet that “You don’t need to be perfect. What’s important is that you have a path to follow, a path of love.” On the cover image, an elephant walks with a man along a path. I wonder, who they are? I wonder, where they might be going? I wonder, who they might meet along the way?

As you walk your own path, may Issue 12 be a gentle companion to you. May you find love wherever you go.

Esther Vincent Xueming

The Tiger Moth Review