Alaric's death brought to an untimely end the work of an artist whose sheer variety of working methods - in performance, in visual art, in music and in poetry - ironically obscured his achievement. Masthead guest editor Lawrence Upton and I hope that this feature will redress a little of what has been overlooked.  And we hope that readers will enjoy the humour, audacity, intelligence and beauty of this work as much as we do. 

The work is presented chronologically, and it is possible to follow the restless evolution of his ideas to their fruition in some major later works.  As this later work especially demonstrates, Alaric died prematurely - he had much to do, and was beginning to develop methods and styles of work which were totally unique to him. Remembering Alaric Sumner: A Retrospective is intended as a resource for anyone interested in Sumner's work, and as well as the largest selection of his work available in one place, we have included a series of interviews with people who knew and worked with him, some extra documentation and a complete record of his publications and performances. 

Issue 8 also features some exciting younger writers: from Melbourne, two writers deeply involved in theatre, Dan Spielman and Jasmine Chan, and Mark Goodwin from the UK.  But the young don't have it all their way: there's a fantastic selection of poetry and prose from Michael Ayres, Trevor Joyce, Tom Lowenstein, Rebecca Seiferle, Colin Robinson, Mairéad Byrne, Jeff Harrison, Iain Britton and James Graham: which is to say, passionate, formally questioning and various work from all around the globe, presented here for your pleasure and delight.

Masthead at last has its own domain name and server, although the archives of the past eight issues will remain at the old site until further notice.  Masthead is tested on Explorer, Netscape, Safari and Opera.  Please note that magnifying text can destroy the lineation of some poems; if you have problems with this issue, check the text zoom under the "view" command on the browser menu and reduce the size of the text.  The magazine is best viewed at 90 per cent on Explorer and 100 per cent on most other browsers.  Unfortunately, due to the size of each issue, downloadable files of the whole magazine are impracticable at this point, but the pages are designed to be print-friendly.

This issue's cover art is by Alaric Sumner, part of To Start Out From, a collaboration with Lawrence Upton.  The contents page features Alaric's Complex Sound.  Check out the feature for more of his visual work. 

I hope you enjoy Issue 8.