Tokyo Poetry Journal's Volume13 "Maladies, Calamities & Misfortunes" is a broad poetic response to the pandemic but also includes responses to the killing of George Floyd in the US, the killing of Mahsa Amini in Iran, the invasion of Ukraine, the mob lynching of Madhu in India, as well as other events in the wake of the early 2020 outbreak. Trauma, in certain respects, seems to be the ongoing global ‘new norm’ and we at ToPoJo wanted to give voice to diverse poetic expressions with our first completely open submissions for poetry. The result, these poems on theme, are eloquent expressions of events that seem to unfold endlessly and on a daily basis. We at ToPoJo believe that we all long for some glimmer of hope on the horizon that presents a turn away from many of the events over recent years. Godspeed.