The American rebel poet Emily Dickinson wrote: "She sweeps with many-colored brooms/" personifying Mother Nature and her shamelessly rich tableau of sky. The creative writing students of Warnborough College have chosen this line from Dickinson, a poet who was well before her time, a poet who was, in fact, stranded in her time, as a pioneer who was often deemed as lunatic as nature and her too colorful displays of imagination. Warnborough creative writers aim to achieve better success during their lifetimes.
We spell "Colored" the American way because we have chosen a line from an American poet of significant pioneer spirit and rebellion to name our cyber journal. Since American spelling broke with the British for largely political reasons and as a cultural statement of national identity, we are simply staying true to the original. A line from Ted Hughes, or Shakespeare, would have required different spelling since it is so important to reflect the primordial, the national, the natural state of things. Thus, to spell Dickinson's "Colored" as "Coloured" would be blasphemy. Dickinson endured the insult of having her work altered to fit convention for about a century. It was not until the Johnson edition of her poems appeared in the 1950's that the dashes were restored to her texts, as well as idiosyncratic capitalization. We could not continue to propagate such errors, even if our mother campus is in Ireland. Warnborough, by its very nature, is an international institution.
You will find both American and British spelling and grammatical conventions in this journal. We will not force American conventions upon the British; nor will we require Americans to write like Brits. Warnborough has students from around the globe. Each has a way of approaching the grand language. Interestingly, Canadians seem to be forging a third grammar, something that is as natural as biodiversity itself.