Current Issue

The annual, distinctive print issue of Tab: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics engages the reader with poetry as a material object and asks the reader to negotiate between image and text. The design does not assume a traditional role of unobtrusively framing content; instead, design actively shapes the reading experience and experiments with the intersections between form and content, object and space, and reader and reading.

The 2025 print issue explores concepts of trickster, chance, and shifting expectations. The trickster appears in the folklore of many cultures and is one of the oldest expressions of growing civilizations. The trickster embodies wit and deceit, taking advantage of expectation and chance, building meaning only to unravel it. To “describe the trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found—sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there,” writes Lewis Hyde in Trickster Makes This World. Poetry, too, invites convention and surprise as it creates lines, crosses lines, erases, and moves. 

The design of this issue of Tab Journal echoes this duality, complementarity, and contradiction with the contrast between striking color and stark black and white, as well as the layered scapes that alter reality into warped realms that redefine portals, trap doors, and concealed dead ends and loops. Typography and alignment shift playfully between order, disorder, and reorder to mirror the trickster’s sleight of hand in the process of reading the poem. The format revisits the large sheet of earlier print issues, folded to create the expectation of order but ultimately revealing deconstructed panels and variations of skew.

To request one or more copies of the print issue, please use the Contact form.


Special Issue: California Coastal Commission Poetry Contest 

Every year, Tabula Poetica selects finalists for the Coastal Poetry Contest for K-12 students hosted by the California Coastal Commission. This year, Chapman University students in Tab Journal Editor Anna Leahy’s MFA poetry writing class selected the finalists. Tab Journal is thrilled to share the poems of young Californians as part of this collaboration with the community and Annie Frankel, the Public Education Program of the California Coastal Commission.

Kindergarten–1st Grade

Avyan Gupta: Coastal Chuckles 

Coastal Chuckles by Avyan Gupta

Devarsh Murthy: The Beach

Udit Sankaranarayanan: Carmel Beach Time

Nila Sivaprakash: Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz by Nila Sivaprakash

2nd–3rd Grade

Adam Sadi: Coastal Harmony

Coastal Harmony by Adam Sadi

Isaac Angelini: Jumping Elephants

Jumping Elephants by Isaac Angelini

Advay Hodge: I Love the Beach

I Love the Beach by Advay Hodge

Ashwath Narayanaganesh: Coastal Wonders

Coastal Wonders by Ashwath Narayanaganesh

Lily Nguyen: Silly Willet  

Silly Willet by Lily Nguyen

4th–6th Grade

Stephen Chen: Whispers of the California Coast 

Whispers of the California Coast by Stephen Chen

Margo Beccaris: Coastal Forest

Eleanor Checketts: The Estuary

Derek Leonard: The Sea Cookie

The Sea Cookie by Derek Leonard

Sabina Soenen: Purple Octopus 

Purple Octopus by Sabina Soenen

7th–9th Grade

Brianna Su: we’re eight again

Maximilian Doan: #140  

Arjun Kannan: Whispers of the Deep

Bao Le: A Vision of the Coast

Hyeonah Lee: A Fortunate Stroke of Crab-Shaped Serendipity

A Fortunate Stroke of Crab-Shaped Serendipity by Hyeonah Lee

SiXian Zhang: SD Sunset 

10th–12th Grade

Annika Trueheart Sklar: sunset

sunset by Annika Trueheart Sklar

Ayan Bera: Ocean’s Healing Serenade

Albert Hill: Surprises by the Sea 

Manya Sinvhal Kumar: Life of a Bubble on the Californian Coast 

Emily Liu by SiXian Zhang: elegy for the drowning girl

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