Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Humphrey Clucas: ONE FOR A WISH; Peter Dent: SURFACES: Royal Murdoch: I’M CONTRA. All from the Interim Press, Northcroft Villas, Northcroft Road, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey TW20 0DZ; 40p each.

     Interim Press is the latest entrant to the limited edition game (150 copies, numbered and signed by the poet, at inflated prices). There is something frail and endearing about the appearance of its productions: title and author are sited in the bottom right-hand quarter of chastely monochrome covers, inside which nestle a handful of exquisitely crafted poems on tinted paper through which the print shows from behind.

     Humphrey Clucas and Peter Dent are of the AGENDA school of writers (also patronised by Hippopotamus Press), and one therefore looks for carefully turned verse of a certain introspective quality. In this, one is not disappointed, although Clucas’ sequence of seven short poems, memories of one of those girl friends loved and lost In the course of a distant summer falls far behind William Cookson’ s recent DREAM TRACES sequence (Hippopotamus Press) which it resembles In style and approach. Unlike Cookson, however, this poet blunders into sentimentality at times, and is not entirely free of cliche.

     I had expected great things of Dent after his excellent PROXIMA CENTAURI (Agenda Editions, 1972) and THE TIME BETWEEN (Hippopotamus, 1974). I was, therefore, rather disappointed that SURFACES did no more than live up to its title, in view of his usual faculty of being able to penetrate beneath appearances. This is not to deny that a few of the nine poems in his collection do not equal his past achievement. It is only that in most the effect just fails to tome off. Partly this is the fault of the sentimentality which is a besetting temptation on the brink of which he frequently hovers. Again, his usual simplicity and directness of language is marred by the Intrusion of ‘smart’ foreign phrases - MARE NOSTRUM, TROUVE, POINTILLISTE - which have no place in his style. It is as if be is falling back on a lazy shorthand, even forcing a mode of writing which he has, perhaps, outgrown and tired of, and it is this which gives to some poems their ephemeral and superficial quality.

     Royal Murdoch is an amiable septuagenarian who lives in Mexico and Is better known in the U.S.. One turns to his gently satirical rhymed epigrams with something of relief after the rather thin fare so far. They are, on the whole, well-made, astute and pleasing. Two out of the seven, however, have weak and obvious endings; this is excessive in so narrow a compass. The editor of the series seems Inclined neither to be critical nor to give his readers value for their money.