Fundamentals
1. There is only one ball
but countless ways to help your team.
2. Intentions matter: win or lose
each game requires your fullest effort
3. The jump-shot is a fickle partner
restless — it will stray from time to time;
don’t fall in love with it.
Drive to the basket, keep your defender honest.
4. Dribble with purpose,
be aware of when to share the rock.
5. Attack without rest or warning.
6. Support your comrades.
7. Let each possession teach you.
8.There is no moment more important
than this one. Right now.
Elontra Hall is a Black-American poet based in Northampton. He has been published in HeadFake, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Propel, Prairie Schooner, Anthropocene, and Shō. His poems have also been broadcast by the BBC. He is a 2nd year student on the Poetry School MA in conjunction with Newcastle University as well as a holder of its Outstanding Candidate Scholarship for the 2023 – 2025 cohort. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, A Watering Hole Fellow, and a Griot’s Well Alumni.
Elontra will be with us from July through October 2025 . To find out how to submit poetry prose, word & image, filmpoems and reviews to him please check out our submissions page here.
IS&T internships run for 4 months each consecutively, and in order to go some way towards redressing the balance in publishing, will for the foreseeable future come from the Black, Asian, Latinx and others from the global majority (ethnic minority in the UK). More details are below.